Anyone else find the stuff about indifference to be rather deepish? Indifference has no power at all, it’s the absence of power.
You’re going to have to define “power” for that statement to be meaningful.
And now we learn that to cast Avada Kevada, you have to either want the person dead, or not care whether they live or die? So, I guess that means the only condition in which you can’t cast is if you want the person to live, in which case you wouldn’t want to cast it anyway.
I thought the point was that by default, a psychologically healthy human being assigns others’ lives a value above zero, even strangers, and for Avada Kedavra you have to either overcome this with hatred (by assigning them a value below zero) or by indifference (by assigning them a value of zero). Both achieve the goal of expressing a preference for death (zero or below) over life (positive value), but the former requires an increasing amount of effort (because you’re deliberately making yourself feel something) while the latter is “always on” and theferore doesn’t.
I still don’t see why repeat castings with hatred would require higher amounts of effort each time, but otherwise the concept is not incoherent.
I still don’t see why repeat castings with hatred would require higher amounts of effort each time,
This is weird: In many cases hatred would peter out into indifference, rather than positive value, which ought to make AK easier. In fact, the idea that killing gets easier with time because of building indifference is a recognised trope. It’s even weirder that the next few paragraphs are an author tract on how baseline humans let people die out of apathy all the time, so it’s not like Yudkowski is unfamiliar with the ease with which people kill.
In many cases hatred would peter out into indifference
Perhaps, but this is not likely to happen in the middle of a battle where you’re trying to kill each other. And even if you felt indifference, you would still have to think of trying to cast Avada Kedavra from your indifference, not from your hate, which is how you learned to cast AK in the first place and never questioned. You would have to force a new mindset of calm emptiness upon yourself, which would take practice. Even the worst Death Eaters are not likely to have taken an analytical approach to battle, realized the possibility, and then practiced killing people in their spare time with indifference to make sure it was reliable in the (other guy’s) heat of the moment.
You’re going to have to define “power” for that statement to be meaningful.
I thought the point was that by default, a psychologically healthy human being assigns others’ lives a value above zero, even strangers, and for Avada Kedavra you have to either overcome this with hatred (by assigning them a value below zero) or by indifference (by assigning them a value of zero). Both achieve the goal of expressing a preference for death (zero or below) over life (positive value), but the former requires an increasing amount of effort (because you’re deliberately making yourself feel something) while the latter is “always on” and theferore doesn’t.
I still don’t see why repeat castings with hatred would require higher amounts of effort each time, but otherwise the concept is not incoherent.
This is weird: In many cases hatred would peter out into indifference, rather than positive value, which ought to make AK easier. In fact, the idea that killing gets easier with time because of building indifference is a recognised trope. It’s even weirder that the next few paragraphs are an author tract on how baseline humans let people die out of apathy all the time, so it’s not like Yudkowski is unfamiliar with the ease with which people kill.
Perhaps, but this is not likely to happen in the middle of a battle where you’re trying to kill each other. And even if you felt indifference, you would still have to think of trying to cast Avada Kedavra from your indifference, not from your hate, which is how you learned to cast AK in the first place and never questioned. You would have to force a new mindset of calm emptiness upon yourself, which would take practice. Even the worst Death Eaters are not likely to have taken an analytical approach to battle, realized the possibility, and then practiced killing people in their spare time with indifference to make sure it was reliable in the (other guy’s) heat of the moment.