= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
nydwracu comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117 - 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 (152)
Being ready to wage war when necessary, to risk death to defeat the enemy, is a nigh-universal part of the role of the adult male. When children enter combat, outside conditions of total desperation or cases where the existing technology means more meat = more force, it's often as help to the adults.
Is this intended as a moral consideration, or only an evolutionary reason? When you're judging the killing of Harry, an 11-year-old child who (arguably) isn't from an enemy tribe, this seems to be the latter.
Those aren't the only two options! It's a cultural pattern. It doesn't apply on reflection -- if you're an Austrian soldier and Momčilo Gavrić points his gun at you, you shoot him -- but it comes up on the quick first pass.
Like tomatoes. Tomatoes are vegetables because they function as vegetables: you put them on sandwiches and in salads, and you don't eat them plain or put them in fruit salad. Then you think about it and realize that tomatoes are technically fruit. Or like that last sentence: tomatoes are the classic example of a vegetable that's actually a fruit, but come to think of it, cucumbers do the same thing, and sometimes you put apples or pears in salads...