Also, one of Eliezer’s weaker points as a fiction writer is his inability to simulate poor reasoners in a realistic way. His fictional poor-reasoners tend to lay out their poor arguments with exceptional clarity, almost to the point where you can spot the exact line where they add 2 to 2 and get 5. They don’t have muddled worldviews, where it’s a challenge even to grasp what they are thinking.
Good observation. It would barely be less subtle if Dumbledore had just said “I’m privileging an arbitrary hypothesis!” in the scene regarding Harry’s parents’ large rock. And when Draco said something to the effect of “I’d rig the experiments to make them come out right” after Harry asked what he’d do if an experiment showed muggle-borns were not worse at magic than pure-blood wizards, etc.
Then again, these particular instances may be explained as 1) Dumbledore has some secret brilliant plan in which the rock actually is important, and his overtly-fallacious explanation was just part of his apparent pattern of explicitly trying to model certain tropes; and 2) Draco has been trained in sophistry and fed very strong unsupported beliefs his whole life, to the point where he may not even realize that there is any purpose of experiments beyond convincing people of what one already believes. Still, I see your point.
Edit: These don’t count as spoilers, do they? They don’t mean much out of context (and they didn’t really seem like significant plot points in context anyway).
Good observation. It would barely be less subtle if Dumbledore had just said “I’m privileging an arbitrary hypothesis!” in the scene regarding Harry’s parents’ large rock. And when Draco said something to the effect of “I’d rig the experiments to make them come out right” after Harry asked what he’d do if an experiment showed muggle-borns were not worse at magic than pure-blood wizards, etc.
Then again, these particular instances may be explained as 1) Dumbledore has some secret brilliant plan in which the rock actually is important, and his overtly-fallacious explanation was just part of his apparent pattern of explicitly trying to model certain tropes; and 2) Draco has been trained in sophistry and fed very strong unsupported beliefs his whole life, to the point where he may not even realize that there is any purpose of experiments beyond convincing people of what one already believes. Still, I see your point.
Edit: These don’t count as spoilers, do they? They don’t mean much out of context (and they didn’t really seem like significant plot points in context anyway).
If one wants other examples, there’s a pretty similar problem in Eliezer’s The Sword of Good.
ROT 13ed for spoilers: Va snpg, gur ceboyrzf jrer fb oyngnag gung gur svefg gvzr V ernq vg V fhfcrpgrq gung vg jnf tbvat gb ghea bhg gung gur qnex fvqr jnf npghnyyl tbbq va fbzr jnl. Gur fgrc gung ernyyl znqr vg frrz yvxryl jnf jura gurl ner qvfphffvat gur yvsr rkgrafvba hfvat gur jbezf nf rivy. Ryvrmre znqr vg ernyyl pyrne gung gur cevznel ceboyrz gurl unq jnf guvf jnf tebff.