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buybuydandavis comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I said most admirable, not most powerful.
But let's take your example as is, because it demonstrates another point. When Hermione fought bullies, that actually brought about a lasting change in Hogwarts. Compare the good of that accomplishment to the good of setting free one prisoner from Azkaban, the one most likely, capable, and intent on wreaking destruction in the world.
Who has done more good? I don't think that's a slam dunk win for Harry, and could be a devastating loss.
In a similar way, recall that Hermione won the first battle of the generals because neither Harry nor Draco knew how to effectively organize a group of people to a shared goal. Also, if Harry is supposed to learn goodness from Hermione, isn't that a rather huge power, determining whether the world gets one more Voldemort, or one more Dumbledore? Influence of others is power to do good as well. Similarly, it's McGonagall who actually runs Hogwarts and sets an example for students, not Dumbledore.
Hermione had a lasting power for good. Harry is "exceptionally good at killing things". If you want something killed, you want Harry on your side. Or Quirrell. Or Voldemort. Or Dumbledore. If you wanted a leader to delegate authority to run an organization to build something good instead of destroy something evil, you want Hermione without question. Same for McGonagall.
The main change between HPMOR and canon is the hugely increased power, intelligence, capability, and potential for evil of the protagonist, who yes, we assume has a penis. If your mind pattern matches this as an affront to women everywhere, you have a problem.
So to the first part, lasting amount of good from a long-term consequentialist standpoint isn't the same as how much impact someone has. And if one is trying to think of long-term issues then Harry has also discovered how to destroy otherwise unkillable creatures, and has set Draco Malfoy on the path to redemption. Even if Harry dies tomorrow, the total utility of there being one less dementor in the world will add up a lot over the long term. (In canon dementors can reproduce, but I strongly suspect this isn't the case in HPMOR.)
This isn't the only change. There's also a massive increase in power, intelligence and capability of the antagonist, who, yes, we assume has a penis. There's a massive increase in Dumbledore's genre awareness and awareness of the cost of his actions to others, and his general power level (using Time Turners), who yes, we assume has a penis. There's a massive increase in Draco Malfoy's manipulative skill, who yes, we assume has a penis.
Moreover, while some female characters have become more interesting (Daphne and Tracy are obvious examples), they still are orders of magnitude less important. And there have been other possible options which could have been interesting. For example, rather than just having Petunia as a helpless housewife, while her husband is a professor, Eliezer could have had written something where she was also an academic, or a successful businesswoman, or a lot.
I'm not sure if this is a strawman or a genuine failure on my part (and possibly others who are concerned) to explain our concerns. No one anywhere in either this discussion thread or the previous HPMOR discussion thread has made the argument "that this is a general affront to women everywhere". And I'm pretty sure that I don't believe that. (Introspecting quickly, it is possible that my stated and actual beliefs don't align. However, if I did think that it was such an affront I douubt, I would have used as my interesting icebreaker fact last Friday that I had cosplayed as a character from a Harry Potter fanfic, and then used that as a way of getting an opportunity to tell people to read Methods of Rationality.)
To state it more explicitly problem is that this is a set of not great role models. My guess is that close to half the readers of HPMR, or certainly a large fraction, are female, and likely pretty young, which makes them impressionable. So, subtle (or not so subtle) differences in what male and female protagonists can do are important. And if some young girl gets pushed slightly over the edge by this into not becoming a chemist or a biologist, or just becoming interested in rationality, we all lose. Moreover, if part of the goal of the story is to get people as a whole interested in rationality and Less Wrong, then for women of all ages, having a substantially weaker female lead is going to make it harder for them to identify with the characters, and all the more so, when that weaker female is (apparently) killed off without even saving anyone in the process.
There's a lot of room for legitimate concerns without thinking that this is an affront to women everywhere.
If the issue is the set of role models, I submit that Hermione is the best role model in the book.
You can't model yourself after Harry, redo your birth, and have a superhuman dark side to call on. Similarly, you can't choose to have a university professor as a parent, who can serve as a role model to you in scientific method, and fully support your efforts in studying science. You can't trade in your two dentist parents, who think your intelligence is "cute', for parents who will respect and support your gifts.
But you can be diligent, hard working, honest, caring, and brave. You can do what is right. Though you won't be as smart as Hermione, she is the best role model the book has to offer.
Because it's much easier to identify with a 10 year old with a superhuman dark side who wants minions and a sparkly throne. Much healthier too.
Role models in fictional works are by nature characters who are interesting more than they are perfect role models. No one wants to read a story about a character who is perfectly good, goes to classes every day, and never gets in trouble. The nature of role models is more subtle than simply being good. For a young child, they aren't someone with magical talent, but they can still identify with characters with magical talent, and that's easier when the character is of the same gender. (I remember at last year's Vericon there was a panel on feminism and science-fiction and fantasy, and every single female author on the panel, including Tamora Pierce, expressed how much frustration they had growing up with the depiction of female characters, not just that they weren't protagonists, but that when they were a side-kick or a secondary protagonist, how utterly boring they would be. This is a very old set of problems.)
That's assuming that Draco's half-year of interacting with his new friend can't be countervailed by his subsequent several years of interacting with his loving-but-evil father. I would barely rate that as a possibility, much less an obvious assumption.
The question of Draco does have interesting is-HPMOR-feminist implications, though. Suppose we swapped the genders of Draco and Hermione, both of whom just had many of their often-similar arcs cut short for very-similar reasons. Now, Herman is the one who maintains his convictions in the face of an overwhelming villainous threat, and so the villain is forced to murder him via a plot using the third most perfect killing machine in nature, properly prepared using sabotage and magical upgrades because otherwise the troll would have lost. Now, Draca is the one who gets taken out of the action by half-a-plot (a plot which depends on Draca making rash egotistical mistakes), but she survives under her father's thumb because ending her influence on Harry doesn't even take killing her. Did the story just become more gender-equal, or less?
I hope I understand your model correctly as "p(girl scientist | no HPMoR) < p(girl scientist | current HPMoR) < p(girl scientist | feminist HPMoR)".
I wouldn't call it "feminist HPMoR"- as I've said before, there's a big difference between a feminist tract and simply taking into account certain concerns that might be described as feminist. But yes, I agree that's an accurate summary of the model (heck I wouldn't have gone and told a 16 year old girl to read it this weekend if that weren't my model).
On what do you base this guess?
Primarily anecdotal and a function of who I know who is reading it, along with the fact that in general fanfic is a heavily female media form, with a lot of young people. From my personal sample, I'd say that about 60% of readers I know are male, but since I'm friends with substantially more men than women, that suggests that that percentage (tentatively) should be correct towards 50/50.