Given Harry’s knowledge about basic game theory and decision making theory how come he’s so bad at producing fake information? I refer both to his dealings in conversations (where he arguably has increased his game level), but even more so in the mock battles. Not hiding the creation of green sunglasses did seem unnaturally stupid taking into consideration:
He knew scouts might be sent to track his dealings (it is after all a basic of military tactics as well as the logical thing to do against an enemy you know is outnumbered when you have to figure out what he does to deal with his disadvantage).
The cost/benefit was vastly in favour of benefit.
He himself had trained Draco to acquire better information before acting.
Furthermore I’m rather stunned by how bad at constructing ambushes and firing lines Harry is.
It was unlikely that his enemies would see what was being done, so unlikely that they did not think to prepare. So unlikely that, appropriately enough, it was mentioned in chapter 78:
The Dragons had started the combat with a feint to provide a distraction for Mr. Goyle’s approach through the forest; Neville hadn’t realized there were two brooms attacking until almost too late. But the Chaos Legion had gotten the other pilot. That was why broomsticks usually didn’t attack before armies met, it meant a whole army would concentrate fire on the broomstick.
The Dragons sacrificed a broom to see what was up. This is a significant sacrifice as they have only two and their enemies have a total of four between them.
It would not be surprising for the next battle, if there is one, to include some protection against aerial espionage. Better spy-planes would be another reasonable result of this battle. The first thing you do is fly higher.
First of all. Thank you for pointing this quote out!
Well, I’d say the first thing you do is hide better :) It hardly needed much more than a cloack over the object about to be transfigured. Perhaps another weakness of Harry’s, overcomplicating?
I appreciate the sacrifice made and the development by the character of Draco. Still, for any good mastermind in the making keeping your top-secret plan top-secret is usually an extremely good idea.
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.
Given Harry’s knowledge about basic game theory and decision making theory how come he’s so bad at producing fake information? I refer both to his dealings in conversations (where he arguably has increased his game level), but even more so in the mock battles. Not hiding the creation of green sunglasses did seem unnaturally stupid taking into consideration:
He knew scouts might be sent to track his dealings (it is after all a basic of military tactics as well as the logical thing to do against an enemy you know is outnumbered when you have to figure out what he does to deal with his disadvantage).
The cost/benefit was vastly in favour of benefit.
He himself had trained Draco to acquire better information before acting.
Furthermore I’m rather stunned by how bad at constructing ambushes and firing lines Harry is.
It was unlikely that his enemies would see what was being done, so unlikely that they did not think to prepare. So unlikely that, appropriately enough, it was mentioned in chapter 78:
The Dragons sacrificed a broom to see what was up. This is a significant sacrifice as they have only two and their enemies have a total of four between them.
It would not be surprising for the next battle, if there is one, to include some protection against aerial espionage. Better spy-planes would be another reasonable result of this battle. The first thing you do is fly higher.
First of all. Thank you for pointing this quote out!
Well, I’d say the first thing you do is hide better :) It hardly needed much more than a cloack over the object about to be transfigured. Perhaps another weakness of Harry’s, overcomplicating? I appreciate the sacrifice made and the development by the character of Draco. Still, for any good mastermind in the making keeping your top-secret plan top-secret is usually an extremely good idea.
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.