I never liked the old version. Harry pretty much admitted to himself that he was making a wrong choice, he expected his attempt to not kill anyone to fail, and yet he still delayed making the right decision because he couldn’t accept it emotionally. That is not a superhero of rationality. Frankly, that is not someone to whom a phoenix would come.
Phoenix utility functions are not human-friendly; they do time discounting differently from us. It’s not that rationality is hard, but that true rationality combined with human values like Harry’s does not meet with phoenix approval.
The post-edit Harry decided he would do the phoenix-right thing later. Once he decided that, the phoenix went away, and will not return. If he had decided that firmly earlier, presumably the phoenix would not have come to him in the first place.
The pre-edit Harry struggled with a similar question. To be consistent, I agree that a phoenix could and should have come to him while he was struggling. But once he had made his decision, the phoenix would definitely not come. Those are the phoenix rules, as given by the update to this chapter.
The decision Harry had come to pre-update was that he would not do whatever it took to free the prisoners of Azkaban; and also that he would not do whatever it took to protect his friends and strike down evil, until he allowed another person to die through being ineffective. Those are not decisions a phoenix would approve of. (Which is not to say I don’t approve of them.)
In the same way (in HPMOR canon) Dementors are the projections/personifications of death pheonixes may be the personifications of courage or whatever.
[Maybe there’s some sort of magical collective unconscious thing going on?]
“Heroism” has the same objection as does “Courage”: You may get many chances to be heroic. “The Call etc” is a particular trope, and only occurs once per character.
“Campbellian heroism”, perhaps. Though strictly speaking a Campbellian hero doesn’t have to be a conventional hero—the Thousand Faces/Hero’s Journey pattern is more about growing into your potential than about saving people or defeating a specific Big Bad—and both seem to be indicated here.
As I think I’ve said before, the specific construction of heroism that MoR is using seems to inherit a lot from Fate/stay night, and more specifically from the “Fate” and parts of the “Unlimited Blade Works” routes. The concept we’re pointing to usually gets translated there as “superhero” or “hero of justice”, but I’m not sure what the Japanese is, and in any case I’ve no idea if Nasu was using a conventional phrase or if he’s using a specialization of a more general word the same way we are.
How so? So far as I can tell, in this war, nobody has died, and since we don’t know it’s a war against Voldemort again, we don’t know that it’s part 2 of a war where a lot of people did. Now, there’s a good chance that the war will result in deaths, but “I should go around killing innocents if needed to win the war” is a pretty extraordinary statement, and I won’t fault him for requiring fairly ordinary evidence to make it.
A war means people risk death, Voldemort or not. The last plot tried to have Hermione die in Azkaban, and (since Harry doesn’t believe Quirrel did it) seemed designed to kill Draco right away; the next plot may succeed. And people are dying in Azkaban all the time, second by second.
Pre-edit Harry was unwilling to commit to killing as an acceptable instrumental goal given a sufficiently high payoff. Making a goal sacred and of infinite value, while also wanting to balance it with other terminal values, is a contradiction. Harry realized this, and did it anyway, and that is a rationalist sin. He disobeyed the rule that “if you know what you’re going to think or do later, you should think or do it now”.
Post-edit Harry is willing to commit to killing if that’s what it takes. He asks Moody not to harm the suspect if possible, but he doesn’t say they should not attack him if they expect to have to harm him. He is both a better rationalist and a better person.
Harry’s discussion with Moody in 86 didn’t bother me. I’m referring specifically to the old version of 85. And remember that the vast majority of conflicts in the world don’t turn out to be “war”—thus far, we’ve had one attempted murder and a jail that’s basically a worse version of a stereotypical third-world oubliette. That’s well within the realm of things police deal with on a regular basis. Police don’t generally give themselves license to, say, burn Narcissa Malfoy alive.
(Anybody have a copy of old-85? I’d like to see the exact phrasings of it if possible, for continuing this discussion)
(Anybody have a copy of old-85? I’d like to see the exact phrasings of it if possible, for continuing this discussion)
“What’s that, Lassie? Somewhere a LWer is wishing they had made use of my archiving system so they could pull a particular page out of their local cache and upload it to Dropbox? Then we’d better hurry!”
The thing is that people aren’t perfect rationalists, and part of being a good rationalist is acknowledging your own flaws and limitations.
If you accept to kill, you’ll kill, even in situations where killing wasn’t necessary, because you’ll stop searching the hypothesis space when you find a solution that involves killing. Or because you’ll estimate that killing one will save two, but your estimation was flawed—you killed one, and yet the two still die. And it’s also something you should know about the way humans work, that once you did something once, it’s easier to do it again—and the killing curse seems to model that quite well.
Harry putting himself a “I’ll not kill” rule is him forcing himself to find solutions that don’t require killing. Especially when you see how his “dark side” work, finding solutions to “impossible” problems when really pressured to do it, it doesn’t seem irrational from him to test the hypothesis that he, with his rationalist training, and his “dark side” creativity, can find solutions that don’t involve killing. And that only if that hypothesis is falsified, he’ll resort to killing.
I never liked the old version. Harry pretty much admitted to himself that he was making a wrong choice, he expected his attempt to not kill anyone to fail, and yet he still delayed making the right decision because he couldn’t accept it emotionally. That is not a superhero of rationality. Frankly, that is not someone to whom a phoenix would come.
I think part of the point of HPMOR is that rationality is hard.
Like people, phoenixes need high but achievable standards, and I think you’re setting yours too high.
Phoenix utility functions are not human-friendly; they do time discounting differently from us. It’s not that rationality is hard, but that true rationality combined with human values like Harry’s does not meet with phoenix approval.
The post-edit Harry decided he would do the phoenix-right thing later. Once he decided that, the phoenix went away, and will not return. If he had decided that firmly earlier, presumably the phoenix would not have come to him in the first place.
The pre-edit Harry struggled with a similar question. To be consistent, I agree that a phoenix could and should have come to him while he was struggling. But once he had made his decision, the phoenix would definitely not come. Those are the phoenix rules, as given by the update to this chapter.
The decision Harry had come to pre-update was that he would not do whatever it took to free the prisoners of Azkaban; and also that he would not do whatever it took to protect his friends and strike down evil, until he allowed another person to die through being ineffective. Those are not decisions a phoenix would approve of. (Which is not to say I don’t approve of them.)
What are phoenixes trying to accomplish?
Do they have goals, or just drives? They’re implied to be closer to animals than people.
In the same way (in HPMOR canon) Dementors are the projections/personifications of death pheonixes may be the personifications of courage or whatever.
[Maybe there’s some sort of magical collective unconscious thing going on?]
Courage doesn’t run on a model of “if you fail one test, you’ll never get another chance”.
Perhaps they are personifications of “The Call To Go On A Magical Quest Requiring Great Courage”. But I admit it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
“Heroism” seems like a more succinct way of putting that, although it’s a fairly specific sense of heroism.
“Heroism” has the same objection as does “Courage”: You may get many chances to be heroic. “The Call etc” is a particular trope, and only occurs once per character.
“Campbellian heroism”, perhaps. Though strictly speaking a Campbellian hero doesn’t have to be a conventional hero—the Thousand Faces/Hero’s Journey pattern is more about growing into your potential than about saving people or defeating a specific Big Bad—and both seem to be indicated here.
As I think I’ve said before, the specific construction of heroism that MoR is using seems to inherit a lot from Fate/stay night, and more specifically from the “Fate” and parts of the “Unlimited Blade Works” routes. The concept we’re pointing to usually gets translated there as “superhero” or “hero of justice”, but I’m not sure what the Japanese is, and in any case I’ve no idea if Nasu was using a conventional phrase or if he’s using a specialization of a more general word the same way we are.
True, but death doesn’t wear a cloak etc. The personifications of a concept don’t necessarily have to model it perfectly,
Maybe there’s a limited supply of phoenixes and they just figure they can find better heroes if they keep trying out new people.
How so? So far as I can tell, in this war, nobody has died, and since we don’t know it’s a war against Voldemort again, we don’t know that it’s part 2 of a war where a lot of people did. Now, there’s a good chance that the war will result in deaths, but “I should go around killing innocents if needed to win the war” is a pretty extraordinary statement, and I won’t fault him for requiring fairly ordinary evidence to make it.
A war means people risk death, Voldemort or not. The last plot tried to have Hermione die in Azkaban, and (since Harry doesn’t believe Quirrel did it) seemed designed to kill Draco right away; the next plot may succeed. And people are dying in Azkaban all the time, second by second.
Pre-edit Harry was unwilling to commit to killing as an acceptable instrumental goal given a sufficiently high payoff. Making a goal sacred and of infinite value, while also wanting to balance it with other terminal values, is a contradiction. Harry realized this, and did it anyway, and that is a rationalist sin. He disobeyed the rule that “if you know what you’re going to think or do later, you should think or do it now”.
Post-edit Harry is willing to commit to killing if that’s what it takes. He asks Moody not to harm the suspect if possible, but he doesn’t say they should not attack him if they expect to have to harm him. He is both a better rationalist and a better person.
Harry’s discussion with Moody in 86 didn’t bother me. I’m referring specifically to the old version of 85. And remember that the vast majority of conflicts in the world don’t turn out to be “war”—thus far, we’ve had one attempted murder and a jail that’s basically a worse version of a stereotypical third-world oubliette. That’s well within the realm of things police deal with on a regular basis. Police don’t generally give themselves license to, say, burn Narcissa Malfoy alive.
(Anybody have a copy of old-85? I’d like to see the exact phrasings of it if possible, for continuing this discussion)
“What’s that, Lassie? Somewhere a LWer is wishing they had made use of my archiving system so they could pull a particular page out of their local cache and upload it to Dropbox? Then we’d better hurry!”
The thing is that people aren’t perfect rationalists, and part of being a good rationalist is acknowledging your own flaws and limitations.
If you accept to kill, you’ll kill, even in situations where killing wasn’t necessary, because you’ll stop searching the hypothesis space when you find a solution that involves killing. Or because you’ll estimate that killing one will save two, but your estimation was flawed—you killed one, and yet the two still die. And it’s also something you should know about the way humans work, that once you did something once, it’s easier to do it again—and the killing curse seems to model that quite well.
Harry putting himself a “I’ll not kill” rule is him forcing himself to find solutions that don’t require killing. Especially when you see how his “dark side” work, finding solutions to “impossible” problems when really pressured to do it, it doesn’t seem irrational from him to test the hypothesis that he, with his rationalist training, and his “dark side” creativity, can find solutions that don’t involve killing. And that only if that hypothesis is falsified, he’ll resort to killing.
I think Harry’s mistake is that he has left himself no setting between, “no killing” and “all bets are off”.