Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

daenerys

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93 — LessWrong

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Whether people "feel" it's a fridging is frankly irrelevant, since an author's control over people's feelings is rather limited. However, under the definition Eliezer's working from, as of ch. 93, people are in fact wrong that it's another bloody fringing.

Eh? We're not playing Scrabble here; anyone Eliezer's pissed off with the last few chapters isn't going to suddenly feel retroactively fine about them if it turns out that the events don't count as fridging by a strict dictionary definition. Whether people feel it's a fridging, or functionally equivalent to one, isn't just relevant; it's the only thing that's relevant in this particular context.

DSherron13y160

You see an animal at a distance. It looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. You start to get offended by the duck. Then, you get closer and realize the duck was a platypus and not a duck at all. At this point, you realize that you were wrong, in a point of fact, to be offended. You can't claim that anything that looks like a duck, but which later turns out not to be, is offensive. If it later turns out not to be a duck then it was never a duck, and if you haven't been able to tell for sure yet (but will be able to in the future) then ... (read more)

0pjeby13y

Of course not. But that doesn't mean they can correctly accuse Eliezer of doing what has been claimed. The moment someone pattern matches to "it's a fridging", confirmation bias is bound to take over, and it would be an exceptional person who could undo that matching after the fact. Are there things Eliezer could've done (prior to Hermione's death) to draw a clearer connection to her arc? Yes, plenty, and I've posted an idea or two myself. But the connection is there, even if lots of us missed it on first reading. [...] It's not relevant to Eliezer, since he has not actually done what he was accused of doing: i.e., treating females in the story as if their main purpose is to provide motivation for the men. If the accusation were reduced to "your story made me feel bad" (as you seem to be implying it should), then I doubt Eliezer would've bothered to respond. Just because somebody feels bad doesn't mean Eliezer is bad or has done a bad thing.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

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