“I asked Professor Quirrell why he’d laughed,” the boy said evenly, “after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And Professor Quirrell said, these aren’t his exact words, but it’s pretty much what he said, that he’d found it tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent girl begged for help, while he had been the one to defend her. And he told me then that by the time good and moral people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually did was nothing; or, if they did act, you could hardly tell them apart from the people called bad. Whereas he could help innocent girls any time he felt like it, because he wasn’t a good person. And that I ought to remember that, any time I considered growing up to be good.”
Isn’t this equivalent to renouncing Harry’s entire rational approach of weighing costs vs. benefits?
In the chapter, what Harry is arguing is very different from what Quirrell said. Harry is arguing that Dumbledore is not optimizing correctly, presumably because he feels the pain of the deaths of his friends more than he feels the pain of all the things that were prevented by their deaths. Quirrell is saying, Don’t try to optimize; just be free, amoral, and chaotic, and do whatsoever you will.
Isn’t this equivalent to renouncing Harry’s entire rational approach of weighing costs vs. benefits?
Yes. Which is why the very next thing Harry said was
“Don’t worry, Headmaster,” said the boy. “I haven’t gotten my wires crossed. I know that I’m supposed to learn goodness from Hermione and Fawkes, not from Professor Quirrell and you.”
According to you:
Quirrell is saying, Don’t try to optimize; just be free, amoral, and chaotic, and do whatsoever you will.
The relevant quote would be from Chapter 20:
“What makes something right, if not your wanting it?”
“Ah,” Harry said, “preference utilitarianism.”
“Pardon me?” said Professor Quirrell.
“It’s the ethical theory that the good is what satisfies the preferences of the most people—”
“No,” Professor Quirrell said. His fingers rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t think that’s quite what I was trying to say. Mr. Potter, in the end people all do what they want to do. Sometimes people give names like ‘right’ to things they want to do, but how could we possibly act on anything but our own desires?”
The talk about Fawkes also confused me. When Harry goes on to say that, next time, he’ll do what he thinks Fawkes would do, that’s also renouncing optimizing—in a different way. Fawkes doesn’t plan ahead or optimize; it (Phoenixes are ) represents completely rule-based, not goal-based, ethics.
How do we know this? They repeatedly burn themselves to rejuvenate but do we know anything about their reproduction. After being remade in fire it is the same phoenix.
Also, parthenogenesis isn’t the same thing as hermaphroditic self-fertilization. If phoenices were parthenogenetic (which we have no reason to believe) that just means they would be female, not “it”.
HPMoR phoenixes have a fairly thorough fire symbolism; the teleportation is compared to a flame extinguishing in one place and rekindling elsewhere. It seems reasonable to assume that phoenixes reproduce in the same way that flame spreads, kindling themselves wherever they can find a hero to burn for fuel.
It seems reasonable to assume that phoenixes reproduce in the same way that flame spreads, kindling themselves wherever they can find a hero to burn for fuel.
“The phoenix’s price isn’t inevitable,” the boy said. “It’s not part of some deep balance built into the universe. It’s just the parts of the problem where you haven’t figured out yet how to cheat.”
It might be a burning-bush type of thing where the hero doesn’t get ‘used up’ by the phoenix. The metaphor is still strong enough that, in my opinion, phoenixes should work like that.
I just thought the wording of ‘phoenix’s price’ was auspicious, I agree that that’s an interesting and poetic idea. (And looking back through, the fire symbolism is even more robust than I remembered.)
Problem: Dumbledore (who presumably should know) says in Chapter 62
“Harry,” whispered the old wizard, “phoenixes do not understand how winning a battle can lose a war.” Tears were streaming down the old wizard’s cheeks, dripping into his silver beard. “The battle is all they know. They are good, but not wise. That is why they choose wizards to be their masters.”
Edit: Does that make it clearer? I just thought the quote seemed to indicate a relationship other than ‘use as fuel for reproduction’.
If you’re optimising without vast computing power, and without complete knowledge of your utility function, you can seek heuristics and decide to follow them even when subsequent calculations tell you otherwise.
From chapter 76:
“I asked Professor Quirrell why he’d laughed,” the boy said evenly, “after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And Professor Quirrell said, these aren’t his exact words, but it’s pretty much what he said, that he’d found it tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent girl begged for help, while he had been the one to defend her. And he told me then that by the time good and moral people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually did was nothing; or, if they did act, you could hardly tell them apart from the people called bad. Whereas he could help innocent girls any time he felt like it, because he wasn’t a good person. And that I ought to remember that, any time I considered growing up to be good.”
Isn’t this equivalent to renouncing Harry’s entire rational approach of weighing costs vs. benefits?
In the chapter, what Harry is arguing is very different from what Quirrell said. Harry is arguing that Dumbledore is not optimizing correctly, presumably because he feels the pain of the deaths of his friends more than he feels the pain of all the things that were prevented by their deaths. Quirrell is saying, Don’t try to optimize; just be free, amoral, and chaotic, and do whatsoever you will.
I don’t think that is what Quirrell is saying. He is criticising a real failure mode in in ‘good’ people.
Yes. Which is why the very next thing Harry said was
According to you:
The relevant quote would be from Chapter 20:
Yay, ethical egoism!
The talk about Fawkes also confused me. When Harry goes on to say that, next time, he’ll do what he thinks Fawkes would do, that’s also renouncing optimizing—in a different way. Fawkes doesn’t plan ahead or optimize; it (Phoenixes are ) represents completely rule-based, not goal-based, ethics.
How do we know this? They repeatedly burn themselves to rejuvenate but do we know anything about their reproduction. After being remade in fire it is the same phoenix.
Also, parthenogenesis isn’t the same thing as hermaphroditic self-fertilization. If phoenices were parthenogenetic (which we have no reason to believe) that just means they would be female, not “it”.
Okay, I’m going to change that to ‘asexual’.
What makes you think that phoenices are asexual, exactly?
HPMoR phoenixes have a fairly thorough fire symbolism; the teleportation is compared to a flame extinguishing in one place and rekindling elsewhere. It seems reasonable to assume that phoenixes reproduce in the same way that flame spreads, kindling themselves wherever they can find a hero to burn for fuel.
“The phoenix’s price isn’t inevitable,” the boy said. “It’s not part of some deep balance built into the universe. It’s just the parts of the problem where you haven’t figured out yet how to cheat.”
It might be a burning-bush type of thing where the hero doesn’t get ‘used up’ by the phoenix. The metaphor is still strong enough that, in my opinion, phoenixes should work like that.
I just thought the wording of ‘phoenix’s price’ was auspicious, I agree that that’s an interesting and poetic idea. (And looking back through, the fire symbolism is even more robust than I remembered.)
Problem: Dumbledore (who presumably should know) says in Chapter 62
Edit: Does that make it clearer? I just thought the quote seemed to indicate a relationship other than ‘use as fuel for reproduction’.
Okay, I think I see now.
I don’t think that Dumbledore knows as much about phoenixes as he thinks he does.
I don’t see what that quote has to do with fire symbolism.
Fire burns its fuel.
The inexorable conclusion is that phoenixes are fueled… by evil!
Edited for clarity.
Okay, setting aside the tangent of phoenix gender… I think
is an interesting idea, that could perhaps be correct.
(I’m struggling to figure out what the Gunpowder Plot and deontology have to do with each other, though.)
If you’re optimising without vast computing power, and without complete knowledge of your utility function, you can seek heuristics and decide to follow them even when subsequent calculations tell you otherwise.