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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Cognitive Biases due to a Narcissistic Parent, Illustrated by HPMOR Quotations - Less Wrong Discussion
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Nope.
What does this 'Nope' apply to, exactly? There is significant in-universe evidence that HJPEV does have narcissistic traits, after all. This is made abundantly clear when the Sorting Hat very nearly sends him to Slytherin House, as well as during his exchanges with e.g. Dumbledore, Hermione, perhaps McGonagall.
The post hypothesized Harry has a pattern of biases due to having a narcissistic parent who seeks validation through the child’s academic achievements. Harry having narcissistic traits? Sure, I could see that. Harry's pathologies being due to his mother seeking validation through her child’s academic achievements? That's about as likely as Baba Yaga murdering Harry's pet rock.
Why not? Consider that HJPEV's life history is a major, perhaps the most important point of departure from canon, so this actually makes for a highly parsimonious explanation of his other differences from canon, most relevantly the activity of his Dark soul fragment, the fact that unlike canon!Harry he could not really qualify for House Gryffindor (as revealed by the Sorting Hat) and possibly others.
Keep in mind that Love is freely acknowledged as being the most important magical force in Harry Potter's world, so it stands to reason that an unusual lack of Love, even from adoptive parents, could have very bad side effects. It should be noted that while canon!Harry was also raised by Muggle adoptive parents, and is known to have been severely bullied/punished for his accidental magic, his life was otherwise quite ordinary and not really marked by other kinds of abuse or unusual narcissism.
And there are intriguing analogies between HJPEV's posited childhood as adopted child of narcissist parents, and Tom Riddle's.
I agree that a small percentage of people fit the pattern of
but I've shown that the Harry/Petunia relationship seems to fit the pattern. It sounds like you're either not updating on this evidence (hopefully for a reason you'll share), or are saying that Baba Yaga probably did kill Harry's pet rock.
Most of the evidence for this theory presented came down to:
Even if we stipulate 1 and 2, getting to 3 is just affirming the consequent. Affirming the consequent can be a valid Bayesian inference, but I don't think it works well here. Harry's narcissism would be explained away by Voldemort accidentally bestowing his conceit when marking Harry as his equal. Or professor Michael Verres-Evans' raising a far more confident child than Uncle Vernon. Or Harry's narcissism just being part of the this author's conception of Harry. There are many reasons Harry could be narcissistic, and very little of the probability mass comes from Harry's mother being narcissistic.
Most of my prior evidence speaks against this reading (Harry challenging his parents repeatedly where Draco and Hermione do not, Harry's parents' jaw-droppingly good letters of consolation, a conspicuous lack of evidence for Petunia's narcissism in Status Differential, Harry's happy thought being "you can never have enough books"). I have no doubt that you can think of reasons for all of those to fit the theory, but please keep in mind confirmation bias.
Though I did update slightly in favor of Petunia being narcissistic, I still mentally put the odds at 9 to 1 against. That was before the author of the story swooped in and said "Nope."
Thanks for clarifying. I agree there are other possible explanations, but I see evidence in the text for Petunia's narcissism that you don't see. I've shared the theory and evidence I wanted to share so I understand if further argument is not worthwhile. My confidence in my own sanity decreases as this discussion continues. Plunging ahead regardless:
In "Status Differential" (Ch.36), there's more evidence that Harry's parents pushed Harry to be a prodigy for their own (narcissistic) validation:
Here, Harry's parents want Harry to be a prodigy - specifically, better than others - while Hermione's parents care about Hermione regardless of her achievements. Hermione says her parents "don't know that [she is a prodigy], and (Harry will) never be able to tell them, but they love (her) anyway."
Harry's mother's letter of consolation talks only about her needs (for Harry to survive because Harry owes it to her), not about Harry's needs.
The happy thought refers to Harry's father, not Petunia.
Harry challenges his parents only to protect them and their connection to him (e.g. after the Troll Incident) but recognizes their dominance in other situations (early chapters).
I'm still not sure what to make of the "nope", because it doesn't say why or what part of the theory is wrong. Additionally, it's possible (though somewhat unlikely) that the author is basing Petunia on a real person whose narcissism he does not recognize. This seems like a "don't poke the sleeping bear" situation.
I wouldn't question your sanity, and I wouldn't speak against interpreting the story as you have. It doesn't matter one way or another if an image is the author's interpretation; if you get something out of it, go for it.
Other possible "Nope" reasons include "I'm not going to run the risk of damaging my motivation by thinking about this" and "It's possible to recover from the error of ignoring this (someone with higher karma will tell me later if it's important) but it's not possible to recover from being a few hours' too late to stop a superhuman AI from destroying humanity."
I assume this is a "Nope, because of secret author evidence that justifies a one-word rebuttal" or a "Nope, you're wrong in several ways but I have higher-value things to do than retype the sequences".
(Also, it's an honor; I share your goal but take a different road.)
Further evidence that Petunia is emotionally demanding of Harry is the short letter she sends after the Incident With The Troll: "You promised me that you wouldn't let magic take you away from me. I didn't raise you to be a boy who would break a promise to his Mum. You must come back safely, because you promised" (Ch.93). The letter is entirely about Petunia's needs: Petunia does not attempt to help or console Harry.
It does sound somewhat off-putting out of context. However, she wants him to be safe, and she knows him well enough to realize that the best way to make him want to be safe is not to appeal to his own self-preservation instinct, but to his sense of duty and responsibility. This desire to keep your child safe might be selfish, but it is hardly indicative of narcissism. Most loving parents, especially mothers, would go to some length to keep their underage child out of mortal danger. If this requires some blatant guilt-tripping, so be it.
I would have expected a longer letter, with more offers of help, and reassurances of love and validation of Harry's needs, in addition to the guilt-tripping, had Petunia not been narcissistic.The letter comes across as controlling (I raised you to be X; you must be X). You may be right -- Petunia may have stopped herself from writing a longer letter, after reasoning about it -- but I am skeptical because she doesn't seem to be that subtle in her interactions with others. I'll be interested to see how Harry and Petunia interact in the future.
What goal do you understand yourself to share with Eliezer, and what different road?
I don't deserve to be arrogant here, not having done anything yet. The goal: I had a sister once, and will do what I can to end death. The road: I'm working as an engineer (and, on reflection, failing to optimize) instead of working on existential risk-reduction. My vision is to build realistic (non-nanotech) self-replicating robots to brute-force the problem of inadequate science funding. I know enough mechanical engineering but am a few years away from knowing enough computer science to do this.
This is rationalist evidence??
Yep.
OK
The simplest explanation for choosing a career in existential risk reduction is that it makes not building a humanity-saving superintelligent AI a virtue instead of a failure. Not that there's anything wrong with failing every now and then.
It says a lot of things. Let's unpack.
You are wrong. That is, I think you are wrong. That is, I see value in saying you are wrong. This suggests I expect my argument to be convincing. But I'm not giving an argument. This is unconventional, and suggests I deliberately do not intend to give an argument. This would normally cause my point to be dismissed; thus I believe there to be an obvious reason why my point would stand up in the face of this absence of evidence. A likely candidate seems to be Special Authoral Foreknowledge, which I have cited before.
I said you were wrong in response to a detailed post by you. Thus, I have already accounted for your arguments and did not find them convincing. Having already brought to mind Special Authoral Foreknowledge, the lack of engagement with the question suggests that answering it would require citing Special Authoral Foreknowledge, which I do not want to do [and which you should not want me to do]. Nonetheless, I believe that revealing that your theory is incorrect due to conflict with SAF is not in itself spoilerful. [Also, none of this is unambiguous but I believe it to be bolstered to prominence by reading "Nope."]
In conclusion, Draco is obviously Voldemort.
You might review the concept of Bayesian evidence. A lot of things happen to be evidence.
Good point. The above one-word replies are weak evidence in favor of my hypothesis.
This response is quite funny, now (in 2015) that we know what we know about why Harry is the way he is. EY was clearly chuckling to himself while reading this article.