EY doesn’t seem so fond of Rand, and it’s like he’s building her up as the great bugaboo of the story. That whole talk with Hermione was one of those “Gault Recruits a Striker” speeches.
If you live in a world where you are punished for what was called Good:
And yet it was as if they tried to do everything they could to make his life unpleasant. To throw every possible obstacle into his way. I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themselves with me so quickly—not without something in it for themselves. But their power, too, was threatened; and so I was shocked how they seemed content to step back, and leave to that man all burdens of responsibility. They sneered at his performance, remarking among themselves how they would do better in his place, though they did not condescend to step forward.”
And rewarded for what was called Evil:
“And it was the strangest thing—the Dark Wizard, that man’s dread nemesis—why, those who served him leapt eagerly to their tasks. The Dark Wizard grew crueler toward his followers, and they followed him all the more. Men fought for the chance to serve him, even as those whose lives depended on that other man made free to render his life difficult… I could not understand it, Miss Granger.”
What should you do?
Voldemort Shrugged:
“Why, no,” said Professor Quirrell. “I stopped trying to be a hero, and went off to do something else I found more pleasant.”
At that point, it’s hard to complain. But I’m seeing Rand paired with Lord Foul. Consider Harry, Dumbledore, and Quirrell.
Harry: Harry’s eyes were very serious. “Hermione, you’ve told me a lot of times that I look down too much on other people. But if I expected too much of them—if I expected people to get things right—I really would hate them, then.
“No...” said Professor Quirrell. “That was not why I came here. You have made no effort to hide your dislike for me, Miss Granger. I thank you for that lack of pretense, for I much prefer true hate to false love.
Dumbledore: There is evil in this world which knows itself for evil, and hates the good with all its strength. All fair things does it desire to destroy.”
The Moral of the Story seems to be Harry finding an answer to the weakness, stupidity, and evil of others besides hating them and destroying them.
You get a lot of interesting passages just by searching for Hate.
The Killing Cure is formed of Pure Hate
And it’s not that I hate this Ron guy,” Harry said, “I just, just...” Harry searched for words. “Don’t see any reason for him to exist?” offered Draco. “Pretty much.”
“Sometimes,” Professor Quirrell said in a voice so quiet it almost
wasn’t there, “when this flawed world seems unusually hateful, I wonder
whether there might be some other place, far away, where I should have
been.
Right now this flawed world seemed unusually hateful.
And Harry couldn’t understand Professor Quirrell’s words, it might
have been an alien that had spoken, or an Artificial Intelligence, something
built along such different lines from Harry that his brain couldn’t
be forced to operate in that mode.
You couldn’t leave your home planet while it still contained a place
like Azkaban.
You had to stay and fight.
There’s no light in the place the Dementor takes you, Hermione. No
warmth. No caring. It’s somewhere that you can’t even understand happiness.
There’s pain, and fear, and those can still drive you. You can hate,
and take pleasure in destroying what you hate.
But then something in the world changed, and now
you can’t find any great scientists who still think skin color should matter,
only loser people like the ones I described to you. Salazar Slytherin
made the mistake when everyone else was making it, because he grew up
believing it, not because he was desperate for someone to hate.
“I guess I was stupid too,” Draco said. “All this time, all this time I
forgot that you must hate the Death Eaters for killing your parents, hate
Death Eaters the way I hate Dumbledore.”
“No,” Harry said. “It’s not—it’s not like that, Draco, I, I don’t even
know how to explain to you, except to say that a thought like that,
wouldn’t,” Harry’s voice choked, “you wouldn’t ever be able to use it,
to cast the Patronus Charm...”
Harry remembered it from the night the Dark Lord killed his parents:
the cold amusement, the contemptuous laughter, that high-pitched
voice of deathly hate.
Fury blazed in Harry then, blazed up like fire, it might have come
from where a phoenix now rested on his own shoulder, and it might
have come from his own dark side, and the two angers mixed within
him, the cold and the hot, and it was a strange voice that said from his
throat, “Tell me something. What does a government have to do, what
do the voters have to do with their democracy, what do the people of a
country have to do, before I ought to decide that I’m not on their side
any more?”
The old wizard’s voice was pleading. “And it is
possible to oppose the will of your fellows openly or in secret, without
hating them, without declaring them evil and enemy! I do not think the
people of this country deserve that of you, Harry! And even if some of
them did—what of the children, what of the students in Hogwarts, what
of the many good people mixed in with the bad?”
“Don’t go!” The voice came in a scream from behind the metal door.
“No, no, no, don’t go, don’t take it away, don’t don’t don’t—”
Why had Fawkes ever rested on his shoulder? He’d walked away.
Fawkes should hate him.
Fawkes should hate Dumbledore. He’d walked away.
Fawkes should hate everyone—
rage grew in him alongside the self-loathing, a terrible hot wrath /
icy cold hatred, for the world which had done that to her / for himself,
and in his half-awake state Harry fantasized escapes, fantasized ways out
of the moral dilemma,
You have everything now that I wanted then. All that I know of
human nature says that I should hate you. And yet I do not. It is a very
strange thing.
A couple more that I recalled showing the difference between Harry answer and Quirrells. See the last in particular.
There was a pause at this. Then the boy said, “Professor, I have to
ask, when you see something all dark and gloomy, doesn’t it ever occur
to you to try and improve it somehow? Like, yes, something goes terribly
wrong in people’s heads that makes them think it’s great to torture
criminals, but that doesn’t mean they’re truly evil inside; and maybe if
you taught them the right things, showed them what they were doing
wrong, you could change—”
Professor Quirrell laughed, then, and not with the emptiness of before.
“Ah, Mr. Potter, sometimes I do forget how very young you are.
Sooner you could change the color of the sky.” Another chuckle, this
one colder. “And the reason it is easy for you to forgive such fools and
think well of them, Mr. Potter, is that you yourself have not been sorely
hurt. You will think less fondly of commonplace idiots after the first
time their folly costs you something dear.
“I’m certainly becoming a bit frustrated with… whatever’s going wrong
in people’s heads.”
“Yes,” said that icy voice. “I find it frustrating as well.”
“Is there any way to get people not to do that?” said Harry to his
teacup.
“There is indeed a certain useful spell which solves the problem.”
Harry looked up hopefully at that, and saw a cold, cold smile on the
Defense Professor’s face.
Then Harry got it. “I mean, besides Avada Kedavra.”
The Defense Professor laughed. Harry didn’t.
I find some of the most relatable parts of the story to be the vague hero-against-the world / morality allegory, particularly in the dialogue quoted here. I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour (if only by showing how ugly her beliefs on the surface, but revealing their purer roots). Harry is basically saying “Yes, everyone is incompetent; woe that they didn’t have the luck to be not, and let’s try and change that without getting too annoyed”. With greater intelligence comes greater ability (and in a sense perceived moral obligation) to restrain or make productive one’s hatred towards that which can’t be changed or that can’t be changed easily. Harry is taking morality as being the extent to which a strength can compensate for weakness in the spirit of creating future strength. The Randian ‘strike’ is a utilitarian way to achieve Randian values, and not an inherently Randian way or whatever. I don’t think it’s immediately obvious Harry isn’t aiming for Randian values, if perhaps narratively in a way that Ayn Rand would not have imagined—i.e. strength and weakness are much more complexly intertwined.
(It’s not obvious either that I’m disagreeing with the parent post.)
I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour
Definitely. For me, EY hits some of the exact same buttons that Rand does, though maybe a little harder. In Rand’s terms, the Sense of Life is the same. EY’s money shots, Harry’s internal dialogues, are practically interchangeable with the money shots in Anthem and We The Living, also internal dialogues of the main characters. It’s a Nietzschean Yes! to life. I can’t think of anyone more similar to either in that respect.
The same sense of life, but they part ways on ideological conclusions. Quirrell as the Big Bad, is busy giving the No Duty to others, free to be an Egoist speech. I don’t think we’re intended to sympathize. Then EY makes a package deal of an egoistic love of life and it’ opposite—Despite, the contempt for life because of it’s “imperfections”. Reminds me of It’s a Wonderful Life, where a different kind of package deal is used to recommend the squashing of George’s youthful egoism.
I doubt it. I’m not familiar with any Randian protagonists but if they act in accord to what I understand of Randian philosophical agenda then their attitude would be gratingly incompatible with my sympathy. From what I understand Randians are have their options artificially constrained in the direction of a particular interpretation of ‘selfishness’. Quirrel can do whatever the heck he wants and care about whatever he wants. Doing whatever the heck he wants gets my sympathy and also a certain kind of trust.
I was thinking of Rand through this entire chapter too, but I dismissed that as a cached thought because of the recent “In Defense of Ayn Rand”. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.
The Moral of the Story seems to be Harry finding an answer to the weakness, stupidity, and evil of others besides >hating them and destroying them.
EY has made it his life goal to creating an artificial intelligence that is friendly to humans. A mind that transcends us without hating us. Harry MUST triumph over Quirrel, and he must do so by being more moral, not more intelligent. Because if Harry wins by being smarter, then EY would be conceding that morality is a weakness, or at the very least that strength and strength alone will determine which AI will win. And there would always be that risk that the AI would “grow up” as Quirrel puts it, and realize that “the reason it is easy for you to forgive such fools and think well of them, Mr. Potter, is that you yourself have not been sorely hurt”. And something tells me that EY’s solution is not to create a being that can’t be hurt.
My guess is that “The power that the dark lord knows not” is, in some way, a solution to this problem. Harry will triumph for the same reason EY’s friendly AI will (supposedly) triumph. But we will see. I haven’t read enough of EY’s stuff on friendly AI to know for certain what his solution to the AI problem is, only that he thinks he has one.
Harry MUST triumph over Quirrel, and he must do so by being more moral, not more intelligent.
That doesn’t sound right. If you’re looking for ways Harry could win, why not take Harry’s advice and draw up a list of his relative advantages? He does have them—knowledge of superrationality, knowledge of science, ability to empathize with non-psychopaths, to name three—and they’re likely to be part of the solution.
then EY would be conceding that morality is a weakness, or at the very least that strength and strength alone will determine which AI will win.
I’m pretty sure that he does believe that if an AI goes FOOM, it’s going to win, period, moral or no. The idea that an AI would not simply be more preferable, but actually win over another AI on account of being more moral strikes me as, well, rather silly, and not at all in accordance with what I think Eliezer actually believes.
As of last week Eliezer didn’t have any plans to include an allegory to FAI, and expected any such allegory to work very badly in story terms (“suck like a black hole”).
EY doesn’t seem so fond of Rand, and it’s like he’s building her up as the great bugaboo of the story. That whole talk with Hermione was one of those “Gault Recruits a Striker” speeches.
If you live in a world where you are punished for what was called Good:
And rewarded for what was called Evil:
What should you do?
Voldemort Shrugged:
At that point, it’s hard to complain. But I’m seeing Rand paired with Lord Foul. Consider Harry, Dumbledore, and Quirrell.
You get a lot of interesting passages just by searching for Hate.
A couple more that I recalled showing the difference between Harry answer and Quirrells. See the last in particular.
You should break up your quote blocks with an extra line so they look like separate quotes..
I find some of the most relatable parts of the story to be the vague hero-against-the world / morality allegory, particularly in the dialogue quoted here. I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour (if only by showing how ugly her beliefs on the surface, but revealing their purer roots). Harry is basically saying “Yes, everyone is incompetent; woe that they didn’t have the luck to be not, and let’s try and change that without getting too annoyed”. With greater intelligence comes greater ability (and in a sense perceived moral obligation) to restrain or make productive one’s hatred towards that which can’t be changed or that can’t be changed easily. Harry is taking morality as being the extent to which a strength can compensate for weakness in the spirit of creating future strength. The Randian ‘strike’ is a utilitarian way to achieve Randian values, and not an inherently Randian way or whatever. I don’t think it’s immediately obvious Harry isn’t aiming for Randian values, if perhaps narratively in a way that Ayn Rand would not have imagined—i.e. strength and weakness are much more complexly intertwined.
(It’s not obvious either that I’m disagreeing with the parent post.)
Definitely. For me, EY hits some of the exact same buttons that Rand does, though maybe a little harder. In Rand’s terms, the Sense of Life is the same. EY’s money shots, Harry’s internal dialogues, are practically interchangeable with the money shots in Anthem and We The Living, also internal dialogues of the main characters. It’s a Nietzschean Yes! to life. I can’t think of anyone more similar to either in that respect.
The same sense of life, but they part ways on ideological conclusions. Quirrell as the Big Bad, is busy giving the No Duty to others, free to be an Egoist speech. I don’t think we’re intended to sympathize. Then EY makes a package deal of an egoistic love of life and it’ opposite—Despite, the contempt for life because of it’s “imperfections”. Reminds me of It’s a Wonderful Life, where a different kind of package deal is used to recommend the squashing of George’s youthful egoism.
Oops.
It’s taken me three passes over the newest posts to figure out that you meant you sympathize with him. Upvoting for (delayed) chuckle.
Do you sympathize with Randian protagonists, too?
I doubt it. I’m not familiar with any Randian protagonists but if they act in accord to what I understand of Randian philosophical agenda then their attitude would be gratingly incompatible with my sympathy. From what I understand Randians are have their options artificially constrained in the direction of a particular interpretation of ‘selfishness’. Quirrel can do whatever the heck he wants and care about whatever he wants. Doing whatever the heck he wants gets my sympathy and also a certain kind of trust.
I was thinking of Rand through this entire chapter too, but I dismissed that as a cached thought because of the recent “In Defense of Ayn Rand”. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.
I think the “I quit and did something more fun” bit was very Rand, the rest much less so.
EY has made it his life goal to creating an artificial intelligence that is friendly to humans. A mind that transcends us without hating us. Harry MUST triumph over Quirrel, and he must do so by being more moral, not more intelligent. Because if Harry wins by being smarter, then EY would be conceding that morality is a weakness, or at the very least that strength and strength alone will determine which AI will win. And there would always be that risk that the AI would “grow up” as Quirrel puts it, and realize that “the reason it is easy for you to forgive such fools and think well of them, Mr. Potter, is that you yourself have not been sorely hurt”. And something tells me that EY’s solution is not to create a being that can’t be hurt.
My guess is that “The power that the dark lord knows not” is, in some way, a solution to this problem. Harry will triumph for the same reason EY’s friendly AI will (supposedly) triumph. But we will see. I haven’t read enough of EY’s stuff on friendly AI to know for certain what his solution to the AI problem is, only that he thinks he has one.
That doesn’t sound right. If you’re looking for ways Harry could win, why not take Harry’s advice and draw up a list of his relative advantages? He does have them—knowledge of superrationality, knowledge of science, ability to empathize with non-psychopaths, to name three—and they’re likely to be part of the solution.
I’m pretty sure that he does believe that if an AI goes FOOM, it’s going to win, period, moral or no. The idea that an AI would not simply be more preferable, but actually win over another AI on account of being more moral strikes me as, well, rather silly, and not at all in accordance with what I think Eliezer actually believes.
As of last week Eliezer didn’t have any plans to include an allegory to FAI, and expected any such allegory to work very badly in story terms (“suck like a black hole”).
For the reference of other readers
Oh. I feel a little silly now.