How about we don’t carry the idea of exclusivity of virtue too far? Nobody should identify with any of these houses, everybody should strive to develop in all ways. For narrative purposes, it’s a neat metaphor to split kids into groups which highlight different aspects of a functioning adult, but it would be a horrible, dystopian, broken society that did this with real humans.
It’s fine to say “I think we’re undervaluing the things that HPMOR described as Hufflepuff virtues”, but trying to make that into a membership/identity thing were we’re hoping to attract people to identify as Hufflepuff-sorted heroes is way over the line.
I’m not sure if I understand this well enough to know if it’s the thing I’m trying to do (and/or the thing I’m doing, regardless of my intent)
I will say that I’m trying to do something pretty nuanced, but that I think building motivation and interest in a thing requires laying out some strong, salient examples. (For reference, there is a sense in which I think it was ridiculous and epistemically unsound for Eliezer to include fictional stories about a Secret Bayesian Order of Monks among his posts about decision theory and AI, but those stories did in fact play an important role in causing a community to exist and a lot of good things to happen)
In the end, my goal here is to have trust/communication/emotional skills feel sufficiently exciting that people actually take them seriously. Not have them become the be-all-end-all of a new tribal identity.
In the end, my goal here is to have trust/communication/emotional skills feel sufficiently exciting that people actually take them seriously. Not have them become the be-all-end-all of a new tribal identity.
Your post doesn’t conjure up an image of a person who has trust/communication/emotional skills.
You don’t get an inspiring myth by doing literary criticism. When you want to research how a good model of a person who has those skills looks like neither EY writing nor Rowlings work provide a good foundation.
How about we don’t carry the idea of exclusivity of virtue too far? Nobody should identify with any of these houses, everybody should strive to develop in all ways. For narrative purposes, it’s a neat metaphor to split kids into groups which highlight different aspects of a functioning adult, but it would be a horrible, dystopian, broken society that did this with real humans.
It’s fine to say “I think we’re undervaluing the things that HPMOR described as Hufflepuff virtues”, but trying to make that into a membership/identity thing were we’re hoping to attract people to identify as Hufflepuff-sorted heroes is way over the line.
I’m not sure if I understand this well enough to know if it’s the thing I’m trying to do (and/or the thing I’m doing, regardless of my intent)
I will say that I’m trying to do something pretty nuanced, but that I think building motivation and interest in a thing requires laying out some strong, salient examples. (For reference, there is a sense in which I think it was ridiculous and epistemically unsound for Eliezer to include fictional stories about a Secret Bayesian Order of Monks among his posts about decision theory and AI, but those stories did in fact play an important role in causing a community to exist and a lot of good things to happen)
In the end, my goal here is to have trust/communication/emotional skills feel sufficiently exciting that people actually take them seriously. Not have them become the be-all-end-all of a new tribal identity.
Your post doesn’t conjure up an image of a person who has trust/communication/emotional skills.
You don’t get an inspiring myth by doing literary criticism. When you want to research how a good model of a person who has those skills looks like neither EY writing nor Rowlings work provide a good foundation.