To be a good con man, you have to think like other people. Harry’s not good at that.
A con man has to be good at playing to other people’s superficiality.
Harry can’t stand not asking questions. So he finds it hard to model others’ willingness to not ask questions. Also, he’s in love with getting the right answer, which makes it hard for his brain to think over wrong answers to offer people, even enemies. This is why Harry has no instinct for ambushes and active (lie-based, rather than silence-based) deceptions.
Someone like Harry can train to actively lie, deceive, ambush, etc. He’d do fine. But active deception is one of those social skills, like flirting, that mucks with the user’s own cognition and so takes more practice than smart people initially think.
As for formation tactics, drilling people to act together is another less-questions-more-cooperation trait that Harry’s never been good at. Chaos is definitely his right army name.
To be a good con man, you have to think like other people. Harry’s not good at that.
Quirrel made a little speech, at the end of Azkaban, about how unusually good Harry was at that. It was plausible enough to make Harry himself tentatively believe it.
Well, I’d say there’s a clear difference between ambushing (deception in tactical combat situations) and lying/manipulating (social deception in micro-situations).
The first requires way less self-deception: the requirement here is not control of vocal tone, facial expression and knowledge innuendo and social graces; no, here an understanding of which parts of the enemy forces the enemy appreciates, and which targets he would like to hit in your own army. The second calculations; terrain and so on are also logical advantages. So in effect it can easily be a silence-based deception yet Harry is still surprisingly mediocre in this aspect. Given that they are already in military outfits, a well-constructed ambush should be able to drop more than third of an enemy force before they even knew what hit them (this just by the most simple solution: half hidden, half baiting). A little instigated chaos by the non-hiding part might very well be necessary so as to negate the counter-ambush advantage of the maps.
About the “drilling people” together; that has already been mostly done by his reputation and being in a situation very much like The Robber’s Cave scenario. All he had to do was exploit the chaos he loves to create and have his running troops run so as to V around two sides of the enemy’s O positions (V and O are here used as visual representations of the formations in question).
I concur with you on the second part and I applaud the sharp observation on the aspect of self-deception/mucking one’s own cognition when it comes to social interactions.
To be a good con man, you have to think like other people. Harry’s not good at that.
A con man has to be good at playing to other people’s superficiality.
Harry can’t stand not asking questions. So he finds it hard to model others’ willingness to not ask questions. Also, he’s in love with getting the right answer, which makes it hard for his brain to think over wrong answers to offer people, even enemies. This is why Harry has no instinct for ambushes and active (lie-based, rather than silence-based) deceptions.
Someone like Harry can train to actively lie, deceive, ambush, etc. He’d do fine. But active deception is one of those social skills, like flirting, that mucks with the user’s own cognition and so takes more practice than smart people initially think.
As for formation tactics, drilling people to act together is another less-questions-more-cooperation trait that Harry’s never been good at. Chaos is definitely his right army name.
Quirrel made a little speech, at the end of Azkaban, about how unusually good Harry was at that. It was plausible enough to make Harry himself tentatively believe it.
And, as we already know, Quirrel is a very, very good con man.
Well, I’d say there’s a clear difference between ambushing (deception in tactical combat situations) and lying/manipulating (social deception in micro-situations).
The first requires way less self-deception: the requirement here is not control of vocal tone, facial expression and knowledge innuendo and social graces; no, here an understanding of which parts of the enemy forces the enemy appreciates, and which targets he would like to hit in your own army. The second calculations; terrain and so on are also logical advantages. So in effect it can easily be a silence-based deception yet Harry is still surprisingly mediocre in this aspect. Given that they are already in military outfits, a well-constructed ambush should be able to drop more than third of an enemy force before they even knew what hit them (this just by the most simple solution: half hidden, half baiting). A little instigated chaos by the non-hiding part might very well be necessary so as to negate the counter-ambush advantage of the maps.
About the “drilling people” together; that has already been mostly done by his reputation and being in a situation very much like The Robber’s Cave scenario. All he had to do was exploit the chaos he loves to create and have his running troops run so as to V around two sides of the enemy’s O positions (V and O are here used as visual representations of the formations in question).
I concur with you on the second part and I applaud the sharp observation on the aspect of self-deception/mucking one’s own cognition when it comes to social interactions.