= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
WalterL comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
Comments (365)
Harry recognizes the power of truth, and doesn't want give that power out indiscriminately. That makes perfect sense.
Harry doesn't care about sentient-but-not-sapient things (or thinks that animals including unicorns are mostly not even sentient), so under his ethical system, Quirrel hasn't done anything wrong (which he knows about). Harry didn't have the power to "punish" the centaur through anything short of death. He knows the centaur is only after him, and not children in general, and that it probably won't get another chance to kill him. Filch and Hagrid have not only done things that are bad, but they are dangers to students.
I disagree. Harry watches Quirrel stun the professor and 3 Aurors, let them tumble off their brooms and false memory charm them, but Quirrel hasn't done anything wrong? That's, what, 8 felony equivalents at least? (Assault x4, and presuming False Memory Charm would be at least equivalent to assault, probably more like rape).
Filch's crime, for which Harry wants him to serve jail time, is that he sent Draco & co to the Forbidden Forest, potentially exposing them to assault. Quirrel actually assaulted them.
To grossly simplify, there's a consistent set of ethics that says that Filch and Quirrel both need to be punished. (action -> consequences) There's another, which says both ought to be forgiven. (no harm, no foul) Forgiving those who are cool and punishing those who are lame is unethical, particularly given the disparity between their offenses.
On another tack, how on earth can Harry know anything about the Centaur? It attacked a child after rambling on for a while. Jumping to the conclusion that its fixated on him and won't just attack some other child is really arbitrary. I mean, plenty of serial bad guys fixated on their victims, it doesn't make them safe for other folks. Today 'the stars' told Centaur to kill Harry. Tomorrow they tell him to kill Ron, or Hagrid, or set himself on fire. I wonder what they told him to do yesterday?
Filch testified that he intentionally wanted to expose them to assault and a chance of dying. Quirrel didn't do anything that gave Draco a chance of dying.
Quirrel on the other hand drinks the unicorn blood to safe it's own life. As far as Harry thinks Qurirrel also only stunned the centaur and wanted to safe Harry's life.
For Harry morality being alive and saving lifes is very important. Short term pain and being stunned doesn't factor much into Harry's utility calculations.
Maybe this is just my narrative epistemic advantage talking, but: the centaur mentioned stuff relevant to the prophecy, knew specifically who Harry was, and probably was trying to kill him for a very specific reason.
Even if Harry doesn't realize what the centaur is talking about, it seems to me that of the people who try to attack and kill Harry Potter, probably most of them are actually trying to kill him specifically and are not just random psychopaths.
The net result of Quirrell's actions were to prevent some people from knowing that he was feeding on unicorns. Consequentially, that's keeping Quirrell's secret, which McGonagall (and Dumbledore?) seems to want in the first place to keep him as Defense Professor.