I don’t follow. Or, it seemed like you were listing reasons why he should suspect he’s in a story, but then you seemed to think I was committing hindsight bias for thinking so. Is it because “3 hours” is an exaggeratedly short time to make the inference? ’Cuz “I’m the main character” had secretly been Harry’s hypothesis since forever, as was revealed under the Sorting Hat.
ETA: (Main character status qua main character status is hard to get without teleological optimization, and that’s hard to get without authors behind the scene. (Evolution counts as an author but that just gets rolled into your baseline… I can’t easily express that. I feel a faint urge to cry.))
The first part is a response to your observation about abnormal intelligent. My point was that there are around six million people of Harry’s intelligence level, so being that intelligent is not a good reason to think one is a protagonist.
I then agreed that Harry’s aware of the genre in question which might help slightly.
My point about Gryffindor and the like was that even if Harry thinks he’s in a story he doesn’t have good reason to necessarily assume he’s the protagonist. In fact, look at the confusion from other genre aware characters about what genre they are in. So Harry could be a well simulated villain for later use.
Harry under the sorting Hat thinks he’s important. That’s not the same thing as thinking one is a protagonist in a story. Being willing to believe that one is the prophesied hero upon everything will fall is something lots of little kids want to believe. A lot of them convince themselves that they are somehow important or unique. (A weird example are Emo and Goth kids who convince themselves that they somehow have terrible suffering which no one else understands. Similarly, this is why X-Men is such a popular comic.)
The hindsight bias is that you know that Harry really is the main character. So in that context it is easy for you to look at all the evidence and say “yeah! See. It is obvious.”
(If I implied that Harry should know he’s the main character then I take that back; I only meant to say he should know he’s character of note in a story.)
I think that Harry’s supposed to be about one in 2 million intelligence, since Eliezer was at one in a million and Harry’s supposed to be somewhat smarter than Eliezer. Has this been discussed here before? If so, what were the conclusions?
I thought Harry was supposed to be as intelligent as Eliezer, but on the path sooner. Writing characters more intelligent than yourself is generally considered extremely difficult and not often done, though HPMoR breaks enough “rules” already that I wouldn’t be too surprised if you were correct.
And Father had finished by saying that plays like this were always unrealistic, because if the playwright had known what someone actually as smart as Light would actually do, the playwright would have tried to take over the world himself instead of just writing plays about it.
(Of course, nothing says he couldn’t write plays as a hobby...)
Interestingly it might be less hindsight bias than typical mind fallacy/heuristic. Harry is like Eliezer, I am like Eliezer, I am like Harry, and I’ve always guiltily thought I was the main character, and I’m pretty sure that Eliezer and Harry have too. (Luckily there are many stories going on.) Combined with all the explicit cues about wanting to become God and thinking he’s incredibly important and then being sorta vindicated by the prophecy...
“Being the Messiah is like being Athlete of the Year.”
I don’t follow. Or, it seemed like you were listing reasons why he should suspect he’s in a story, but then you seemed to think I was committing hindsight bias for thinking so. Is it because “3 hours” is an exaggeratedly short time to make the inference? ’Cuz “I’m the main character” had secretly been Harry’s hypothesis since forever, as was revealed under the Sorting Hat.
ETA: (Main character status qua main character status is hard to get without teleological optimization, and that’s hard to get without authors behind the scene. (Evolution counts as an author but that just gets rolled into your baseline… I can’t easily express that. I feel a faint urge to cry.))
Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
The first part is a response to your observation about abnormal intelligent. My point was that there are around six million people of Harry’s intelligence level, so being that intelligent is not a good reason to think one is a protagonist.
I then agreed that Harry’s aware of the genre in question which might help slightly.
My point about Gryffindor and the like was that even if Harry thinks he’s in a story he doesn’t have good reason to necessarily assume he’s the protagonist. In fact, look at the confusion from other genre aware characters about what genre they are in. So Harry could be a well simulated villain for later use.
Harry under the sorting Hat thinks he’s important. That’s not the same thing as thinking one is a protagonist in a story. Being willing to believe that one is the prophesied hero upon everything will fall is something lots of little kids want to believe. A lot of them convince themselves that they are somehow important or unique. (A weird example are Emo and Goth kids who convince themselves that they somehow have terrible suffering which no one else understands. Similarly, this is why X-Men is such a popular comic.)
The hindsight bias is that you know that Harry really is the main character. So in that context it is easy for you to look at all the evidence and say “yeah! See. It is obvious.”
(If I implied that Harry should know he’s the main character then I take that back; I only meant to say he should know he’s character of note in a story.)
I think that Harry’s supposed to be about one in 2 million intelligence, since Eliezer was at one in a million and Harry’s supposed to be somewhat smarter than Eliezer. Has this been discussed here before? If so, what were the conclusions?
I thought Harry was supposed to be as intelligent as Eliezer, but on the path sooner. Writing characters more intelligent than yourself is generally considered extremely difficult and not often done, though HPMoR breaks enough “rules” already that I wouldn’t be too surprised if you were correct.
(Of course, nothing says he couldn’t write plays as a hobby...)
Interestingly it might be less hindsight bias than typical mind fallacy/heuristic. Harry is like Eliezer, I am like Eliezer, I am like Harry, and I’ve always guiltily thought I was the main character, and I’m pretty sure that Eliezer and Harry have too. (Luckily there are many stories going on.) Combined with all the explicit cues about wanting to become God and thinking he’s incredibly important and then being sorta vindicated by the prophecy...
“Being the Messiah is like being Athlete of the Year.”