I’m curious, did others find Chapter 45 as deeply moving as I did? I’m was having trouble avoiding crying when Harry tells the Dementor why death shall lose.
DEMENTORS REALLY ONLY REPRESENT AN EXTREMIST FRINGE OF MODERN MORTALIST THOUGHT.
I FEEL LIKE ELIEZER IS FAILING TO ENGAGE WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED PRO-DEATH THINKERS. FRANKLY, HIS IGNORANCE OF THANATOLOGICAL APOLOGETICS IS STAGGERING.
Please don’t use all-caps; it makes your comment harder to read and it’s considered shouting.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about everlasting paperclips? Do you feel that all paperclips must eventually be destroyed, or do you limit the scope of your deathism to living things?
MY DUTY—sorry, my duty is toward living things only. i would prefer to leave your question on paperclips for my friend Oxidation, but he has trouble using computers. it’s the wires, you see.
I assume you just copy and pasted characters into the comment box from another source? I just played ‘newspaper ransom note’ and used the letters you used and that seems to work fine. The weird symbol you have for an ‘s’ I replaced with the lower case—which is conveniently the same as a small capital.
Edit: Yup. I downloaded BabelPad and can now insert ‘ᴋ’. It looks like the unicode section called “Latin Extended-D” (Starting at &#A720) that you used for S and F doesn’t display correctly. The ᴀ area does.
I’m not sure if I’m alone but I’ve been moved previously by other writings by Eliezer and others and it’s like I’ve, well, been moved. Death is taken for granted a known enemy to be killed on sight. Putting myself in Harry’s shoes the reaction I experience is “Death. F@#$ that! \ Whooosh!”
The other difference I suspect I would have is that I wouldn’t expect to have a human patronus. I would expect something like sentient (white) fire elemental or an elf (symbolic of an intelligent creature with humanlike values, not precisely human and the better for the difference). Perhaps I’m not a humanist so much as an intelligent-life-with-my-values-without-the-outright-obnoxious-parts-of-humanity-ist.
I’m was having trouble avoiding crying when Harry tells the Dementor why death shall lose.
That part I shied away from. It wasn’t arational emotion; it was irrational. Being passionate about life with a proactive, vigourous intent to see it flourish doesn’t mean you must mangle your beliefs such that you are overconfident. “Death shall lose” is a false claim when the correct belief is “there is a certain chance that death shall lose and it is all the greater for my efforts!” “Death shall lose” is just denial. I wouldn’t be able to create a patronus powered by denial because I’ve trained myself to see denial as the brain’s way to make pessimism palatable.
“Death shall lose” is a false claim when the correct belief is “there is a certain chance that death shall lose and it is all the greater for my efforts!”
For the most part I agree with Thom in reading that as a declaration of intention rather than a knowledge claim, but I’ll also point out that to a person who is familiar with the trajectory of science and not familiar with existential risks (which Harry might not be), “Death shall [eventually] lose” isn’t a terribly unjustified thing to believe.
Successfully casting the Patronus charm seems to require positivity-which-must-also-be-sincere rather than truth-which-must-also-be-positive. “Death shall lose” as an attitude may not be strictly correct, but under the circumstances it was instrumentally rational as demonstrated by the fact that it worked.
This leads to a question: Would this have worked just as well if a sincerely religious individual who believed in an eventual resurrection of all had cast the patronus? Does it require both belief and the likelyhood of that belief being objectively correct? I doubt that Eliezer intends for this to work with someone thinking about Death be Not Proud and making a patronus in the shape of a man on a cross.
Would this have worked just as well if a sincerely religious individual who believed in an eventual resurrection of all had cast the patronus?
It would require that they cognitively mapped the existence of the Dementor onto the concept of soul-death and that they forcefully rejected this event on an emotional level instead of just having a quiet factual opinion that it never happened. Such a hypothetical individual is simply a non-reductionist isomorph of Harry’s reductionist belief. It would just be difficult for a religious individual to get into that state of mind in the first place. It probably would help a lot if they believed that the Dementor’s Kiss actually does destroy a soul.
I mention this because I did think about what would happen if someone like a Buddhist acknowledged the existence of true Death, soul-death, and still accepted that without the tiniest bit of sour grapes; and concluded that although that wouldn’t make a Dementor-destroying Patronus, they would be able to see the Dementor’s true form and cast a perfect shield against its fear.
Incidentally, Harry didn’t say at any point that any of what he said was a certainty.
“Death shall lose” as an attitude may not be strictly correct, but under the circumstances it was instrumentally rational as demonstrated by the fact that it worked.
No, that demonstrated (at least, gave some small amount of evidence that) some people may be able to use self delusion to useful effect. In fact, there are dozens of post here on the subject. But if Harry wants to actually fight death instead of just use his beliefs for the purpose of signalling then denial doesn’t cut it. If he can’t even judge the probabilities of death defeating strategies succeeding then how can he be expected to choose between them rationally?
No, I say if Harry is deliberately deceiving herself because he thinks it is instrumentally rational then that would be a bigger concern than if he had a case of simple naivety.
instead of just use his beliefs for the purpose of signalling
“Death” isn’t a particularly cohesive force. There’s no central armory which, if emptied or sabotaged, would simultaneously disable everything that kills us. Ending a Dementor isn’t ‘just signaling;’ in doing that, Harry permanently removed something which would otherwise have gone on to destroy countless objects and minds. However many Dementors there are on Earth, Harry is now equipped to defeat them all in, at worst, linear time, which would also e.g. stop the ongoing atrocity at Azkaban.
For that matter, Harry doesn’t seem to be deliberately, consciously deceiving himself. He just did something, said what he believed, and it worked. The rationality of whatever it is he did is clear in hindsight, specifically because it worked.
Is there any course of action you can think of that Harry could have taken under the circumstances, which would have ‘actually fought death’ more effectively than what he did?
The rationality of whatever it is he did is clear in hindsight, specifically because it worked.
No, you are fundamentally confused about what rationality means. Betting your entire life savings at even odds that an unbiased dice roll comes up 6 is irrational even if in hindsight it worked. Eleizer’s catch phrase just confuses people.
Is there any course of action you can think of that Harry could have taken under the circumstances, which would have ‘actually fought death’ more effectively than what he did?
Killed the dementor the same way he did, except making claims based off a sane model of reality.
For some background on just why self delusion is harmful for people with the kind of goals that Harry has see Eliezer’s Ethical Injunctions. An excerpt:
Self-deceptions are the worst kind of black swan bets, much worse than lies, because without knowing the true state of affairs, you can’t even guess at what the penalty will be for your self-deception. They only have to blow up once to undo all the good they ever did. One single time when you pray to God after discovering a lump, instead of going to a doctor. That’s all it takes to undo a life. All the happiness that the warm thought of an afterlife ever produced in humanity, has now been more than cancelled by the failure of humanity to institute systematic cryonic preservations after liquid nitrogen became cheap to manufacture. And I don’t think that anyone ever had that sort of failure in mind as a possible blowup, when they said, “But we need religious beliefs to cushion the fear of death.” That’s what black swan bets are all about—the unexpected blowup.
First, I’m not so sure Harry’s claims are as crazy as you’re making them out to be. There’s at least one charm which violates the second law of thermodynamics, which means some basic assumptions about what’s possible and what isn’t need to be reworked.
Second, you’re comparing the immediate, apparently permanent and total defeat of a Dementor to the warm-fuzzy feelings from religion, and you’re also comparing the risk of Harry being wrong about the possibility of eliminating death to the risk of someone with strong religious beliefs neglecting proper medical care. Both comparisons are deeply flawed, due to substitution effects.
If someone wants warm fuzzy feelings, they can get them from something other than religion. A good meal, hanging out with friends, arguing about fanfiction, or even certain types of recreational drug use, provide comparable benefits without the same risks. Other people in the MoRiverse have tried to destroy dementors before, but Harry is apparently the first to succeed, so substitutes simply aren’t available. Considering the way partial transmutation works, Harry’s attitude toward death may very well be an inextricable part of the technique.
If Harry is wrong, and people will continue to die until the human race goes extinct and all evidence that we ever were slowly fades toward heat-death, if it’s really true that nothing can be done about all that, it’s not clear (to me at least) how he’s making the situation worse by trying. Hastening the collapse by a few minutes, using up resources that might otherwise have produced a slightly more amusing light-show near the end? Insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion, if you ask me. For all we know, his insane obsessions might provide a net benefit to humanity in the long term. If someone is wrong about faith-healing, the consequences are much less ambiguous: sickness and death, which could have been prevented.
Are you saying that there’s some way to end death which would, for whatever perverse reason, elude anyone totally determined to find it, but be discoverable by those with a more nuanced attitude? That there’s some better, but mutually-exclusive goal? What, exactly, is the black-swan risk you’re worried about here?
Killed the dementor the same way he did, except making claims based off a sane model of reality.
It sounds to me like you’re just upset that he used the wrong ritual but it worked anyway.
Second, you’re comparing the immediate, apparently permanent and total defeat of a Dementor to the warm-fuzzy feelings from religion, and you’re also comparing the risk of Harry being wrong about the possibility of eliminating death to the risk of someone with strong religious beliefs neglecting proper medical care. Both comparisons are deeply flawed, due to substitution effects.
I’m not doing either of those things. I did refer you to a document that explains why the author of HP:MoR believes self delusion is a mistake when it comes to important beliefs. That document did include extreme examples to demonstrate the principle tangibly.
It sounds to me like you’re just upset
I downvoted this. I am disagreeing with you because you are confused about what rational decisions are. I have explained the reasons.
that he used the wrong ritual but it worked anyway.
It didn’t work. Nor did it fail—success or failure in defeating death hasn’t happened yet. I have no reason to expect that self delusion would prevent Harry from killing a dementor, which is why I never suggested that it would.
That article was about doing things you know to be wrong, in pursuit of a flawed ‘greater good.’ The specific worst-case was believing something you know to be false. What knowably false belief are you saying Harry has accepted in the face of contravening evidence?
“Death shall lose” as an attitude may not be strictly correct, but under the circumstances it was instrumentally rational as demonstrated by the fact that it worked.
Ah, in that case I apologize for miscommunicating. By ‘strictly correct’ I meant ‘literally, objectively true in the context of the story.’ Whether Harry’s goal is in fact possible most likely won’t be revealed for quite some time; spilling the beans now wouldn’t be dramatic. But, by the same token, it’s not (yet?) knowably false.
I agree that Harry is being extremely, perhaps excessively, confident about something he can’t really prove, and that such behavior is risky. However, it’s an acceptable sort of risk, since he can always find contrary evidence later and change his mind, do something else with the rest of his life. The sort of risk entrepreneurs take. He hasn’t hit any self-modifying point-of-no-return.
What’s confusing in discussions such as this is the lack of a clear definition of self-deception.
Minds are complex. They contain stuff other than conscious verbal beliefs, things like gut-level feelings (aliefs?), unconscious assumptions, imagery, emotions, desires.
We absolutely suck at conveying mental phenomena other than explicit beliefs and attempts to do so result in silliness like “believe in yourself” or “just do it”.
This leads to two problems. First, it is not clear what you mean about self-deception. Trying to deliberately alter your beliefs is obviously bad. But what about controlling your attention? Do I self-decieve about something by refusing to look at it? What about influencing emotions through positive mental imagery? Or using a relaxation technique to calm myself down?
The second problem is that when someone says “I will win” you can’t be sure wheter he really means “I expressly believe that my success is certain” or maybe “I know of the possibility of failure but refuse to bring it to the forefront of awareness. I feel energized, motivated and determined to achieve my goal.” The second option seems like a more reasonable interpretation, unless you already have reasons to suspect the speaker of being an idiot.
Killed the dementor the same way he did, except making claims based off a sane model of reality.
Which incorrect claim, specifically, is an example of what you talk about? Death will lose more or less inevitably, under the condition that civilization survives (and death has no say in whether it does).
Which incorrect claim, specifically, is an example of what you talk about?
p(death is defeated). Not p(death is defeated | civilization survives).
Death will lose more or less inevitably, under the condition that civilization survives (and death has no say in whether it does).
Yes, more or less. The most obvious cases where it wouldn’t are
If one of Robin’s speculated Malthusian futures came to pass. Or
If someone goes and creates a dystopian singularity. (For example, if a well intentioned AI researcher implements CEV, gives humanity what it wishes for and it turns out that humans are coherently extrapolatably as silly as Dumbledore.)
“Death shall lose” as an attitude may not be strictly correct...
In E’s defence, the tradition of normative English grammar is that “shall” expresses a determination or volition, whereas “will” expresses a fact statement.
I will not be having cake, because the restaurant is out of it,
vs
I shall not be having cake, because I am on a diet.
the tradition of normative English grammar is that “shall” expresses a determination or volition, whereas “will” expresses a fact statement.
Actually, believe it or not, the tradition of “normative English grammar” (i.e. high-status language) is that what you what you wrote is correct for persons other than the first. For the first person (I/we), it’s the reverse.
I honestly don’t know what the origin of this distinction is, unless it’s the fact that British people seem to say “I shall” a lot.
Neither “shall” nor “will” originated as any sort of future marker. Originally “will” denoted intention, and “shall” denoted obligation. “He will do that” |-> “He intends to do that”, “He shall do that” |-> “He is obligated to do that”. The first-person/others asymmetry comes from what you can know about what you intend vs. what you can know about what others intend.
It was interesting to see confirmation of my silly theory in the first sentence:
IT is unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen (who will find most of this section superfluous), is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it;
Yes, I definitely get the impression from Fowler that, while he knows the correct high-status English usage and can explain how it came about and how to use, he also knows that it’s a little silly.
All the same, I do find ‘shall’ useful. As long as I remember not to use it when Fowler would use it as a simple future marker (‘will’ is the only simple future marker in my American dialect), I can use it to express determination. If people think that ‘shall’ and ‘will’ are interchangeable, then I can’t do that; but as long as people know that ‘shall’ is something funny, then at least they can look up what I mean if they don’t know.
It would be much nicer if things worked the way that simplicio said. Once the last first-person-simple-future user of ‘shall’ dies, then it will be safe to implement this rule. (So please hold off on the Singularity until then.)
Grammar note: Actually, that’s exactly what Harry should have said, which would not have been denial. According to Fowler, that sentence is not a statement of fact about the future, but a promise (in the “coloured-future” system). As others have said, in this sentence Harry is expressing his intention to defeat death.
However, that’s not a direct quotation, and Harry almost always used “will” instead of “shall”. Of course, Fowler’s advice is obsolete, and we now rarely use “shall” (even in England, and more so in other English-speaking countries). So it’s possible that Harry still meant “shall”, although that’s not what he said.
Right. But still a promise that he intends to keep. (And who knows, the way the story is going, he just might keep it!)
Although he didn’t use that language, that is how I (ETA: initially) read it. So I would fault him for using imprecise language rather than for self-deception. But it’s not clear what he meant; you may well be right.
Downvoted for reading in distinctions that aren’t there. What Fowler may have thought is irrelevant, what matters is what was actually meant and how the words are actually used. “Will” and “shall” are interchangeable in almost all dialects of English, and in the few in which they aren’t, the exact distinction is complicated.
What Fowler may have thought is irrelevant, what matters is what was actually meant and how the words are actually used.
The change since Fowler has been to use ‘will’ in place of ‘shall’, not the other way around. I have read more than Fowler on ‘will’ vs ‘shall’, but I’ve never read anything to suggest that any dialect uses ‘shall’ with the third person in a declarative statement to mean the simple future.
This is all only a minor point, since Harry didn’t say ‘shall’ and it’s clear what wedifrid meant. But I hope that it gets downvoted for unimportance rather than incorrectness. Some time a character may say ‘shall’ for a good reason.
ETA further clarification: My previous comment contains an element of saying that wedifrid used bad grammar. I stand by that, but I also accept the response (from your reply) that grammar usage varies and what wedifrid really meant is what matters. And that’s why I wouldn’t write a comment whose purpose was to say that wedifrid used bad grammar.
But my real purpose was to point out how, with a certain interpretation, ‘will’ and ‘shall’ give different meanings, which are just the meanings that people are debating as to what Harry meant: a factual claim that is (I admit) unjustified, or a declaration of intent that is (I would argue) justified. And the second meaning could be what Harry meant, if he used bad (or at least unnecessarily ambiguous) grammar.
The change since Fowler has been to use ‘will’ in place of ‘shall’, not the other way around. I have read more than Fowler on ‘will’ vs ‘shall’, but I’ve never read anything to suggest that any dialect uses ‘shall’ with the third person in a declarative statement to mean the simple future.
The problem is that this isn’t a “change since Fowler”, since it predates him by centuries. Also really we shouldn’t speak of using either in place of the other, since after all the original meaning of both of them became replaced with the meaning of just being a future marker. (Also this isn’t exactly “grammar”. :P )
I should be clear—I didn’t downvote it simply because it was wrong as such, I downvoted it for spreading confusion about language when there’s already a lot of that. :P
the original meaning of both of them became replaced with the meaning of just being a future marker
This is not correct. For further discussion, I refer you to Fowler. I will write no more on the subject, since I think that it’s getting pretty far off-topic.
Perhaps I’m not a humanist so much as an intelligent-life-with-my-values-without-the-outright-obnoxious-parts-of-humanity-ist.
Edit: quote syntax anyone?
I feel like embracing humanity, but actively striving to overcome the “outright obnoxious” parts like biases IS humanism. At least, moreso than just adopting an “I love humanity unconditionally” attitude. I think harry’s patronus, as eliezer’s own would likely be, represents not just simple anthropocentrism, but the hope for a better future for humanity without losing those “my-values” that make us distinctively human.
Having a patronus that takes the shape of an intelligent life form with your values and no obnoxiousness is just representing abstractly that hope for the future of humanity.
I think the underlying values are one in the same. And the difference in shape does not correspond to a difference in concept.
Further, the Humanism sub-arc contained some of the best chapters, overall. I hadn’t yet become bored with the chapters about armies, but it seemed a noticeable dip in interestingness.
I’m curious, did others find Chapter 45 as deeply moving as I did? I’m was having trouble avoiding crying when Harry tells the Dementor why death shall lose.
DEMENTORS REALLY ONLY REPRESENT AN EXTREMIST FRINGE OF MODERN MORTALIST THOUGHT.
I FEEL LIKE ELIEZER IS FAILING TO ENGAGE WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED PRO-DEATH THINKERS. FRANKLY, HIS IGNORANCE OF THANATOLOGICAL APOLOGETICS IS STAGGERING.
Your comments intrigue me; I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Please don’t use all-caps; it makes your comment harder to read and it’s considered shouting.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about everlasting paperclips? Do you feel that all paperclips must eventually be destroyed, or do you limit the scope of your deathism to living things?
MY DUTY—sorry, my duty is toward living things only. i would prefer to leave your question on paperclips for my friend Oxidation, but he has trouble using computers. it’s the wires, you see.
I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT YOUR MORE SOPHISTICATED DEATHISTS.
Why don’t they have Asscaps in this wiki/blog/forum?
Yᴏᴜ ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟ ᴘᴀɴᴇʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴᴀʙʟᴇ ᴀᴜɢᴍᴇɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴀʀᴋᴜᴘ.
Iɴᴛᴇʀᴇsᴛɪɴɢ
I assume you just copy and pasted characters into the comment box from another source? I just played ‘newspaper ransom note’ and used the letters you used and that seems to work fine. The weird symbol you have for an ‘s’ I replaced with the lower case—which is conveniently the same as a small capital.
Edit: Yup. I downloaded BabelPad and can now insert ‘ᴋ’. It looks like the unicode section called “Latin Extended-D” (Starting at &#A720) that you used for S and F doesn’t display correctly. The ᴀ area does.
I got bored of doing that and just put my text through
def sc(x): return unicode(x).translate(dict([(ord('a') + i, c) for i, c in enumerate(u"ᴀʙᴄᴅᴇꜰɢʜɪᴊᴋʟᴍɴᴏᴘ-ʀꜱᴛᴜᴠᴡxʏᴢ")]))I find it odd that Unicode doesn’t have a Latin Letter Small Capital Q but does have all the others.
Iᴛ ɪꜱ ǫᴜɪᴛᴇ ᴏᴅᴅ, ʏᴇꜱ.
Why oh why does unicode do fonts?
Small capital letters are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet and extensions thereof.
It’s a trap!
Why did I get downvoted ;_;
lol spidey i dunno
Hmmm Yᴏᴜ ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ꜰɪɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴇᴄʀᴇᴛ ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴏʟ ᴘᴀɴᴇʟ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴᴀʙʟᴇ ᴀᴜɢᴍᴇɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴍᴀʀᴋᴜᴘ.
I believe D. is imitating the style of Terry Pratchett, who uses small-caps for his “Death” character. The full-size caps are a bit annoying, I agree.
Death is allowed to use all-caps.
It would seem so !.
I’m not sure if I’m alone but I’ve been moved previously by other writings by Eliezer and others and it’s like I’ve, well, been moved. Death is taken for granted a known enemy to be killed on sight. Putting myself in Harry’s shoes the reaction I experience is “Death. F@#$ that! \ Whooosh!”
The other difference I suspect I would have is that I wouldn’t expect to have a human patronus. I would expect something like sentient (white) fire elemental or an elf (symbolic of an intelligent creature with humanlike values, not precisely human and the better for the difference). Perhaps I’m not a humanist so much as an intelligent-life-with-my-values-without-the-outright-obnoxious-parts-of-humanity-ist.
That part I shied away from. It wasn’t arational emotion; it was irrational. Being passionate about life with a proactive, vigourous intent to see it flourish doesn’t mean you must mangle your beliefs such that you are overconfident. “Death shall lose” is a false claim when the correct belief is “there is a certain chance that death shall lose and it is all the greater for my efforts!” “Death shall lose” is just denial. I wouldn’t be able to create a patronus powered by denial because I’ve trained myself to see denial as the brain’s way to make pessimism palatable.
No, it’s something to protect. There are certain ways one needs to communicate with a human, and this is an example of that. See The Affect Heuristic and Trying to Try.
Edit: changed “something to protect” into a link.
For the most part I agree with Thom in reading that as a declaration of intention rather than a knowledge claim, but I’ll also point out that to a person who is familiar with the trajectory of science and not familiar with existential risks (which Harry might not be), “Death shall [eventually] lose” isn’t a terribly unjustified thing to believe.
Successfully casting the Patronus charm seems to require positivity-which-must-also-be-sincere rather than truth-which-must-also-be-positive. “Death shall lose” as an attitude may not be strictly correct, but under the circumstances it was instrumentally rational as demonstrated by the fact that it worked.
This leads to a question: Would this have worked just as well if a sincerely religious individual who believed in an eventual resurrection of all had cast the patronus? Does it require both belief and the likelyhood of that belief being objectively correct? I doubt that Eliezer intends for this to work with someone thinking about Death be Not Proud and making a patronus in the shape of a man on a cross.
It would require that they cognitively mapped the existence of the Dementor onto the concept of soul-death and that they forcefully rejected this event on an emotional level instead of just having a quiet factual opinion that it never happened. Such a hypothetical individual is simply a non-reductionist isomorph of Harry’s reductionist belief. It would just be difficult for a religious individual to get into that state of mind in the first place. It probably would help a lot if they believed that the Dementor’s Kiss actually does destroy a soul.
I mention this because I did think about what would happen if someone like a Buddhist acknowledged the existence of true Death, soul-death, and still accepted that without the tiniest bit of sour grapes; and concluded that although that wouldn’t make a Dementor-destroying Patronus, they would be able to see the Dementor’s true form and cast a perfect shield against its fear.
Incidentally, Harry didn’t say at any point that any of what he said was a certainty.
No, that demonstrated (at least, gave some small amount of evidence that) some people may be able to use self delusion to useful effect. In fact, there are dozens of post here on the subject. But if Harry wants to actually fight death instead of just use his beliefs for the purpose of signalling then denial doesn’t cut it. If he can’t even judge the probabilities of death defeating strategies succeeding then how can he be expected to choose between them rationally?
No, I say if Harry is deliberately deceiving herself because he thinks it is instrumentally rational then that would be a bigger concern than if he had a case of simple naivety.
“Death” isn’t a particularly cohesive force. There’s no central armory which, if emptied or sabotaged, would simultaneously disable everything that kills us. Ending a Dementor isn’t ‘just signaling;’ in doing that, Harry permanently removed something which would otherwise have gone on to destroy countless objects and minds. However many Dementors there are on Earth, Harry is now equipped to defeat them all in, at worst, linear time, which would also e.g. stop the ongoing atrocity at Azkaban.
For that matter, Harry doesn’t seem to be deliberately, consciously deceiving himself. He just did something, said what he believed, and it worked. The rationality of whatever it is he did is clear in hindsight, specifically because it worked.
Is there any course of action you can think of that Harry could have taken under the circumstances, which would have ‘actually fought death’ more effectively than what he did?
No, you are fundamentally confused about what rationality means. Betting your entire life savings at even odds that an unbiased dice roll comes up 6 is irrational even if in hindsight it worked. Eleizer’s catch phrase just confuses people.
Killed the dementor the same way he did, except making claims based off a sane model of reality.
For some background on just why self delusion is harmful for people with the kind of goals that Harry has see Eliezer’s Ethical Injunctions. An excerpt:
First, I’m not so sure Harry’s claims are as crazy as you’re making them out to be. There’s at least one charm which violates the second law of thermodynamics, which means some basic assumptions about what’s possible and what isn’t need to be reworked.
Second, you’re comparing the immediate, apparently permanent and total defeat of a Dementor to the warm-fuzzy feelings from religion, and you’re also comparing the risk of Harry being wrong about the possibility of eliminating death to the risk of someone with strong religious beliefs neglecting proper medical care. Both comparisons are deeply flawed, due to substitution effects.
If someone wants warm fuzzy feelings, they can get them from something other than religion. A good meal, hanging out with friends, arguing about fanfiction, or even certain types of recreational drug use, provide comparable benefits without the same risks. Other people in the MoRiverse have tried to destroy dementors before, but Harry is apparently the first to succeed, so substitutes simply aren’t available. Considering the way partial transmutation works, Harry’s attitude toward death may very well be an inextricable part of the technique.
If Harry is wrong, and people will continue to die until the human race goes extinct and all evidence that we ever were slowly fades toward heat-death, if it’s really true that nothing can be done about all that, it’s not clear (to me at least) how he’s making the situation worse by trying. Hastening the collapse by a few minutes, using up resources that might otherwise have produced a slightly more amusing light-show near the end? Insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion, if you ask me. For all we know, his insane obsessions might provide a net benefit to humanity in the long term. If someone is wrong about faith-healing, the consequences are much less ambiguous: sickness and death, which could have been prevented.
Are you saying that there’s some way to end death which would, for whatever perverse reason, elude anyone totally determined to find it, but be discoverable by those with a more nuanced attitude? That there’s some better, but mutually-exclusive goal? What, exactly, is the black-swan risk you’re worried about here?
It sounds to me like you’re just upset that he used the wrong ritual but it worked anyway.
I’m not doing either of those things. I did refer you to a document that explains why the author of HP:MoR believes self delusion is a mistake when it comes to important beliefs. That document did include extreme examples to demonstrate the principle tangibly.
I downvoted this. I am disagreeing with you because you are confused about what rational decisions are. I have explained the reasons.
It didn’t work. Nor did it fail—success or failure in defeating death hasn’t happened yet. I have no reason to expect that self delusion would prevent Harry from killing a dementor, which is why I never suggested that it would.
That article was about doing things you know to be wrong, in pursuit of a flawed ‘greater good.’ The specific worst-case was believing something you know to be false. What knowably false belief are you saying Harry has accepted in the face of contravening evidence?
The one you conceded at the beginning of this conversation. This is the entire basis of the disagreement:
Ah, in that case I apologize for miscommunicating. By ‘strictly correct’ I meant ‘literally, objectively true in the context of the story.’ Whether Harry’s goal is in fact possible most likely won’t be revealed for quite some time; spilling the beans now wouldn’t be dramatic. But, by the same token, it’s not (yet?) knowably false.
I agree that Harry is being extremely, perhaps excessively, confident about something he can’t really prove, and that such behavior is risky. However, it’s an acceptable sort of risk, since he can always find contrary evidence later and change his mind, do something else with the rest of his life. The sort of risk entrepreneurs take. He hasn’t hit any self-modifying point-of-no-return.
What’s confusing in discussions such as this is the lack of a clear definition of self-deception.
Minds are complex. They contain stuff other than conscious verbal beliefs, things like gut-level feelings (aliefs?), unconscious assumptions, imagery, emotions, desires. We absolutely suck at conveying mental phenomena other than explicit beliefs and attempts to do so result in silliness like “believe in yourself” or “just do it”.
This leads to two problems. First, it is not clear what you mean about self-deception. Trying to deliberately alter your beliefs is obviously bad. But what about controlling your attention? Do I self-decieve about something by refusing to look at it? What about influencing emotions through positive mental imagery? Or using a relaxation technique to calm myself down?
The second problem is that when someone says “I will win” you can’t be sure wheter he really means “I expressly believe that my success is certain” or maybe “I know of the possibility of failure but refuse to bring it to the forefront of awareness. I feel energized, motivated and determined to achieve my goal.” The second option seems like a more reasonable interpretation, unless you already have reasons to suspect the speaker of being an idiot.
Which incorrect claim, specifically, is an example of what you talk about? Death will lose more or less inevitably, under the condition that civilization survives (and death has no say in whether it does).
p(death is defeated). Not p(death is defeated | civilization survives).
Yes, more or less. The most obvious cases where it wouldn’t are
If one of Robin’s speculated Malthusian futures came to pass. Or
If someone goes and creates a dystopian singularity. (For example, if a well intentioned AI researcher implements CEV, gives humanity what it wishes for and it turns out that humans are coherently extrapolatably as silly as Dumbledore.)
In E’s defence, the tradition of normative English grammar is that “shall” expresses a determination or volition, whereas “will” expresses a fact statement.
vs
Actually, believe it or not, the tradition of “normative English grammar” (i.e. high-status language) is that what you what you wrote is correct for persons other than the first. For the first person (I/we), it’s the reverse.
I honestly don’t know what the origin of this distinction is, unless it’s the fact that British people seem to say “I shall” a lot.
Neither “shall” nor “will” originated as any sort of future marker. Originally “will” denoted intention, and “shall” denoted obligation. “He will do that” |-> “He intends to do that”, “He shall do that” |-> “He is obligated to do that”. The first-person/others asymmetry comes from what you can know about what you intend vs. what you can know about what others intend.
Fowler has a pretty thorough explanation of this history. It’s a bit out of date, but that’s OK; it’s history.
But also note, EY mostly wrote ‘will’ or ‘‘ll’, not ‘shall’.
It was interesting to see confirmation of my silly theory in the first sentence:
Yes, I definitely get the impression from Fowler that, while he knows the correct high-status English usage and can explain how it came about and how to use, he also knows that it’s a little silly.
All the same, I do find ‘shall’ useful. As long as I remember not to use it when Fowler would use it as a simple future marker (‘will’ is the only simple future marker in my American dialect), I can use it to express determination. If people think that ‘shall’ and ‘will’ are interchangeable, then I can’t do that; but as long as people know that ‘shall’ is something funny, then at least they can look up what I mean if they don’t know.
It would be much nicer if things worked the way that simplicio said. Once the last first-person-simple-future user of ‘shall’ dies, then it will be safe to implement this rule. (So please hold off on the Singularity until then.)
Grammar note: Actually, that’s exactly what Harry should have said, which would not have been denial. According to Fowler, that sentence is not a statement of fact about the future, but a promise (in the “coloured-future” system). As others have said, in this sentence Harry is expressing his intention to defeat death.
However, that’s not a direct quotation, and Harry almost always used “will” instead of “shall”. Of course, Fowler’s advice is obsolete, and we now rarely use “shall” (even in England, and more so in other English-speaking countries). So it’s possible that Harry still meant “shall”, although that’s not what he said.
So in that nomenclature Harry isn’t in denial, he is just making promises he can’t keep. ;)
Right. But still a promise that he intends to keep. (And who knows, the way the story is going, he just might keep it!)
Although he didn’t use that language, that is how I (ETA: initially) read it. So I would fault him for using imprecise language rather than for self-deception. But it’s not clear what he meant; you may well be right.
Downvoted for reading in distinctions that aren’t there. What Fowler may have thought is irrelevant, what matters is what was actually meant and how the words are actually used. “Will” and “shall” are interchangeable in almost all dialects of English, and in the few in which they aren’t, the exact distinction is complicated.
The change since Fowler has been to use ‘will’ in place of ‘shall’, not the other way around. I have read more than Fowler on ‘will’ vs ‘shall’, but I’ve never read anything to suggest that any dialect uses ‘shall’ with the third person in a declarative statement to mean the simple future.
This is all only a minor point, since Harry didn’t say ‘shall’ and it’s clear what wedifrid meant. But I hope that it gets downvoted for unimportance rather than incorrectness. Some time a character may say ‘shall’ for a good reason.
ETA further clarification: My previous comment contains an element of saying that wedifrid used bad grammar. I stand by that, but I also accept the response (from your reply) that grammar usage varies and what wedifrid really meant is what matters. And that’s why I wouldn’t write a comment whose purpose was to say that wedifrid used bad grammar.
But my real purpose was to point out how, with a certain interpretation, ‘will’ and ‘shall’ give different meanings, which are just the meanings that people are debating as to what Harry meant: a factual claim that is (I admit) unjustified, or a declaration of intent that is (I would argue) justified. And the second meaning could be what Harry meant, if he used bad (or at least unnecessarily ambiguous) grammar.
The problem is that this isn’t a “change since Fowler”, since it predates him by centuries. Also really we shouldn’t speak of using either in place of the other, since after all the original meaning of both of them became replaced with the meaning of just being a future marker. (Also this isn’t exactly “grammar”. :P )
I should be clear—I didn’t downvote it simply because it was wrong as such, I downvoted it for spreading confusion about language when there’s already a lot of that. :P
This is not correct. For further discussion, I refer you to Fowler. I will write no more on the subject, since I think that it’s getting pretty far off-topic.
Edit: quote syntax anyone?
I feel like embracing humanity, but actively striving to overcome the “outright obnoxious” parts like biases IS humanism. At least, moreso than just adopting an “I love humanity unconditionally” attitude. I think harry’s patronus, as eliezer’s own would likely be, represents not just simple anthropocentrism, but the hope for a better future for humanity without losing those “my-values” that make us distinctively human.
Having a patronus that takes the shape of an intelligent life form with your values and no obnoxiousness is just representing abstractly that hope for the future of humanity.
I think the underlying values are one in the same. And the difference in shape does not correspond to a difference in concept.
From: Comment formatting
Use a > before the paragraph.
“Death. F@#$ that! \ Whooosh!”
yes. F@#$ that!
Not really—I found it long-winded, even though (perhaps because) I already agree with the content.
Yes. That was one of the most beautiful scenes in all of fiction.
Yes. That part made me simultaneously tingly and teary.
I came here to post almost exactly that. Additionally, it inspired me to make another donation to the SENS Foundation.
Yes, I did.
Further, the Humanism sub-arc contained some of the best chapters, overall. I hadn’t yet become bored with the chapters about armies, but it seemed a noticeable dip in interestingness.