I suspect that everyone discounts the “I was Imperiused!” claim for being an obvious lie, and thus discounts the implications of it being officially true. It’s certainly a plausible hole in worldview—ignoring the implications of a false statement being “true” is an easy mistake to make.
It seems like a pretty glaring one to me; I argued in the tvtropes discussion thread that I didn’t think this solution was going to be implemented, because I found it hard to believe that Dumbledore wouldn’t have thought of it. It was actually the first thing that came to my mind when I was reading chapter 80, and trying to think of holds Harry had on Lucius; when you know someone’s been lying, catching them out in the consequences of it is one of the handiest ways to gain advantage over them. By the time I finished the chapter, I had already dismissed it on the grounds that if Dumbledore, who’s been maneuvering against Lucius in the realm of politics for over a decade, hadn’t suggested it, there was probably some reason why it wouldn’t work. The fact that he would let such a clear opportunity to use his opponent’s deceptions against him slip has forced me to revise my estimate of his cunning considerably downwards.
Do we actually know that Dumbledore came out of Gryffindor in the MoRverse? He did in canon, and he certainly talks a good game, but neither one’s necessarily decisive in this context.
But everything was still all right, they’d tell Dad someday, and meanwhile...
...meanwhile Dumbledore had happened to sneeze while passing them in the hallway, and a small package had accidentally dropped out of his pockets, and inside had been two matched wardbreaker’s monocles of incredible quality. The Weasley twins had tested their new monocles
on the “forbidden” third-floor corridor, making a quick trip to the magic mirror and back, and they hadn’t been able to see all the detection webs clearly, but the monocles had shown a lot more than they’d seen the first time.
Of course they would have to be very careful never to get caught with the monocles in their possession, or they would end up in the Headmaster’s office getting a stern lecture and maybe even threats of expulsion.
It was good to know that not everyone who got Sorted into Gryffindor grew up to be Professor McGonagall.
The mere fact that they defeated their enemy does not mean that they did not lose. A war fought for no greater reason than that your opponent wishes to fight you is a pointless and futile one: you have nothing to gain, and only things to lose.
They were victorious, yes; but they lost. Based on the descriptions of how “everyone” has someone they lost in that war—they lost greatly. Winning a war doesn’t mean you don’t lose things during the fight.
If you suffer far lesser consequences than if your opponent were victorious, you didn’t lose. Obviously, yes, you lose things in the process, unless you have a ludicrous mismatch like the Anglo-Zanzibar War, but if you’re going by a definition by which nearly anyone who has fought in a war on any side has lost, you’re being misleading and abusing your words.
but if you’re going by a definition by which nearly anyone who has fought in a war on any side has lost, you’re being misleading and abusing your words.
The mere fact that you, personally, dislike the contextual definition I am using does not make that context nor the definition illegitimate.
If you suffer far lesser consequences than if your opponent were victorious, you didn’t lose.
You didn’t lose … as much as you could have. You still lost. If you do not gain at least as much as is taken from you, that is a loss. If you gamble twenty dollars and win a five dollar pot; you have won your wager but have lost fifteen dollars. Did you lose as much as you could have had you lost the wager altogether? No. But you still are down in real terms; you have still lost compared to before the wager.
There is absolutely nothing misleading about this. There is nothing abusive of the words about this. It’s a simple factual and literal use of the term “to lose”. It really doesn’t matter if you were forced into the wager; you have still lost.
This is a legitimate usage of the term, “to lose”, and I really don’t see why you’re so vehemently opposed to it.
This is a legitimate usage of the term, “to lose”, and I really don’t see why you’re so vehemently opposed to it.
Because there is already a contextual definition of “lose” with association to war that is so well established that it’s assumed by default.
If Voldemort hadn’t started the war, they would almost certainly be better off. We would also be better off if we never got dustspecks in our eyes. Some utility hits are for practical purposes unavoidable. But Dumbledore’s faction resisted, and resisted successfully; they were not overcome by their aggressor and did not take the major utility hit of defeat. If they had resisted ineffectually, failed to even delay his conquest, that would have been pointless and futile, but that didn’t happen. Nor did they “win” the war in a way that left them at least as badly off as if they had been defeated. The effort they invested into resistance paid utility dividends.
Because there is already a contextual definition of “lose” with association to war that is so well established that it’s assumed by default.
Ahh, I see. Because your availability heuristic tells you it’s obvious. I’m afraid you might want to consider recalibration of your Level I cognition. It’s off.
What I here mean to say is that your rejection of other contexts within this topic demonstrates an inability to take the outside view; what’s obvious to you just, well, isn’t.
Please note: I never said that anyone had “lost the war”. I said that the war itself was futile. And it was—because they could do nothing in it but hope to mitigate losses. They had no avenue to gain. They won the war, sure; but it was a pointless war fought against an enemy who fought only because he could.
So yes. Please update your modal thinking. Yours is not the only legitimate usage of “to lose” here. After all; they did not lose the war but they sure as hell all lost something/someone. And for no good reason.
If that’s not a pointless and futile loss, I’m afraid that I simply no longer know how to speak the English language.
So yes. Please update your modal thinking. Yours is not the only legitimate usage of “to lose” here. After all; they did not lose the war but they sure as hell all lost something/someone. And for no good reason.
If they lost things “for no good reason,” every war of defense ever engaged in is pointless and futile. You might be able to define your terms such that this is the case, but it’s tremendously misleading. Sometimes we have to expend efforts to stop bad things from happening, not just to cause good things that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.
If they lost things “for no good reason,” every war of defense ever engaged in is pointless and futile. You might be able to define your terms such that this is the case, but it’s tremendously misleading.
Reductio ad absurdum much? Wars of defense fought against an enemy with at least the facsimile of a legitimate cause—historical hatred, societal need to expand (or else face their own extinguishment), and so on—represent something more than “for the hell of it”. Fighting a defensive war against an enemy who is doing it for the hell of it is what I labelled “pointless and futile”.
There is nothing “misleading” about this claim; there is nothing “deceptive” about this claim.
Are you even trying to read-and-comprehend anything I write here? I’m not getting that impression.
So instead of a war, let’s look at a potential asteroid strike. It takes an enormously expensive project to deflect an asteroid which has absolutely no motive to hit the earth, and nothing to gain from it. It’s just there, and unless we funnel countless billions of dollars into stopping it, civilization is screwed. Would the project to stop it be pointless and futile? If not, what distinguishes it from the Voldemort scenario?
In any case, Voldemort almost certainly had motives for going to war (MoR Quirrelmort at least is very much not a “for the hell of it” sort of guy,) his motives are simply opaque.
I am trying to understand what you write, but the idea that it’s somehow more pointless to resist utility hits from people who’re acting for bad reasons than sensible ones doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t see how anything you’ve said so far clarifies why that should be the case.
So instead of a war, let’s look at a potential asteroid strike.
I didn’t say that there weren’t good reasons for resisting the pointlessly-occurring phenomenon. I said only that it was pointless. Or are you now going to impose fundamental purposefulness and agency onto the very fabric of the cosmos? This gets exceedingly ridiculous. I have never once argued that your usage is invalid. Why do you insist on refusing to recognize mine, despite the legitimacy of the terms and the framing with which I have presented them demonstrating clearly that I was using a definition you were not?
This is what passes for reasoned discourse?
Revise your position.
but the idea that it’s somehow more pointless to resist utility hits
Oh bloody hell. I never said anything of the sort. Update your position, and stop tilting at windmills. This conversation has ceased, in the meantime, to be worthy of any investment by me.
Interesting. I’d thought this chapter gave us evidence of Snape being evil, because a greater-than-or-equal-to-double agent should think immediately of disguises that need to seem real. And if we assume he’s not evil then he probably sympathizes with Hermione’s anti-bullying campaign. But he might not go against Dumbledore if DD didn’t want to use the debt. (Still seems slightly sinister that he didn’t tell Harry secretly. But not much, given their history and the likelihood Harry would think of it anyway.)
Eh? Snape was there when they discussed a possible exchange of debts. I was saying that I’d expect him to think of the solution even if Dumbledore did not.
I think Dumbledore is more into the “general wanting to win a war” mindset. In that mindset, you don’t spend a trump card like a blood debt from one major enemy just to save one life. So he shouldn’t (in his pov) speak about that issue to Harry.
I think this would be a more meaningful consideration if he had much reason to expect he’d be able to control how Harry would cash in that debt, and by the time it came up I think his acquaintance with Harry should have largely disabused him of that.
He has shown to be a slow learner with respect to his ability to control Harry. In the last chapter, in fact, when he tries to stop Harry from accepting the debt. This slow learning is to be expected, because he’s been able to control every other rebellious child he’s had to deal with in N years of being headmaster, plus most of his political opponents, etc. And he believes that of course the Hero will listen to the guidance of the Wise Old Mentor.
For that matter, why didn’t Dumbledore mention the Imperius debt when they were talking about debts?
Dumbledore’s being awfully incompetent… Wonder why that would be.
I suspect that everyone discounts the “I was Imperiused!” claim for being an obvious lie, and thus discounts the implications of it being officially true. It’s certainly a plausible hole in worldview—ignoring the implications of a false statement being “true” is an easy mistake to make.
It seems like a pretty glaring one to me; I argued in the tvtropes discussion thread that I didn’t think this solution was going to be implemented, because I found it hard to believe that Dumbledore wouldn’t have thought of it. It was actually the first thing that came to my mind when I was reading chapter 80, and trying to think of holds Harry had on Lucius; when you know someone’s been lying, catching them out in the consequences of it is one of the handiest ways to gain advantage over them. By the time I finished the chapter, I had already dismissed it on the grounds that if Dumbledore, who’s been maneuvering against Lucius in the realm of politics for over a decade, hadn’t suggested it, there was probably some reason why it wouldn’t work. The fact that he would let such a clear opportunity to use his opponent’s deceptions against him slip has forced me to revise my estimate of his cunning considerably downwards.
Dumbledore may simply not have considered Hermione WORTH the debt.
That seems rather more cynical than I’d expect from a Gryffindor with a phoenix riding around on his shoulder.
Do we actually know that Dumbledore came out of Gryffindor in the MoRverse? He did in canon, and he certainly talks a good game, but neither one’s necessarily decisive in this context.
Chapter 27:
I think it’s been mentioned a few times, but I can’t remember a specific citation off the top of my head.
… who also watched as his friends, loved ones, and family all died in a pointless, futile war against an enemy who is not dead.
Pointless and futile? They didn’t lose.
The mere fact that they defeated their enemy does not mean that they did not lose. A war fought for no greater reason than that your opponent wishes to fight you is a pointless and futile one: you have nothing to gain, and only things to lose.
They were victorious, yes; but they lost. Based on the descriptions of how “everyone” has someone they lost in that war—they lost greatly. Winning a war doesn’t mean you don’t lose things during the fight.
If you suffer far lesser consequences than if your opponent were victorious, you didn’t lose. Obviously, yes, you lose things in the process, unless you have a ludicrous mismatch like the Anglo-Zanzibar War, but if you’re going by a definition by which nearly anyone who has fought in a war on any side has lost, you’re being misleading and abusing your words.
The mere fact that you, personally, dislike the contextual definition I am using does not make that context nor the definition illegitimate.
You didn’t lose … as much as you could have. You still lost. If you do not gain at least as much as is taken from you, that is a loss. If you gamble twenty dollars and win a five dollar pot; you have won your wager but have lost fifteen dollars. Did you lose as much as you could have had you lost the wager altogether? No. But you still are down in real terms; you have still lost compared to before the wager.
There is absolutely nothing misleading about this. There is nothing abusive of the words about this. It’s a simple factual and literal use of the term “to lose”. It really doesn’t matter if you were forced into the wager; you have still lost.
This is a legitimate usage of the term, “to lose”, and I really don’t see why you’re so vehemently opposed to it.
Because there is already a contextual definition of “lose” with association to war that is so well established that it’s assumed by default.
If Voldemort hadn’t started the war, they would almost certainly be better off. We would also be better off if we never got dustspecks in our eyes. Some utility hits are for practical purposes unavoidable. But Dumbledore’s faction resisted, and resisted successfully; they were not overcome by their aggressor and did not take the major utility hit of defeat. If they had resisted ineffectually, failed to even delay his conquest, that would have been pointless and futile, but that didn’t happen. Nor did they “win” the war in a way that left them at least as badly off as if they had been defeated. The effort they invested into resistance paid utility dividends.
Ahh, I see. Because your availability heuristic tells you it’s obvious. I’m afraid you might want to consider recalibration of your Level I cognition. It’s off.
What I here mean to say is that your rejection of other contexts within this topic demonstrates an inability to take the outside view; what’s obvious to you just, well, isn’t.
Please note: I never said that anyone had “lost the war”. I said that the war itself was futile. And it was—because they could do nothing in it but hope to mitigate losses. They had no avenue to gain. They won the war, sure; but it was a pointless war fought against an enemy who fought only because he could.
So yes. Please update your modal thinking. Yours is not the only legitimate usage of “to lose” here. After all; they did not lose the war but they sure as hell all lost something/someone. And for no good reason.
If that’s not a pointless and futile loss, I’m afraid that I simply no longer know how to speak the English language.
If they lost things “for no good reason,” every war of defense ever engaged in is pointless and futile. You might be able to define your terms such that this is the case, but it’s tremendously misleading. Sometimes we have to expend efforts to stop bad things from happening, not just to cause good things that wouldn’t otherwise have happened.
Reductio ad absurdum much? Wars of defense fought against an enemy with at least the facsimile of a legitimate cause—historical hatred, societal need to expand (or else face their own extinguishment), and so on—represent something more than “for the hell of it”. Fighting a defensive war against an enemy who is doing it for the hell of it is what I labelled “pointless and futile”.
There is nothing “misleading” about this claim; there is nothing “deceptive” about this claim.
Are you even trying to read-and-comprehend anything I write here? I’m not getting that impression.
So instead of a war, let’s look at a potential asteroid strike. It takes an enormously expensive project to deflect an asteroid which has absolutely no motive to hit the earth, and nothing to gain from it. It’s just there, and unless we funnel countless billions of dollars into stopping it, civilization is screwed. Would the project to stop it be pointless and futile? If not, what distinguishes it from the Voldemort scenario?
In any case, Voldemort almost certainly had motives for going to war (MoR Quirrelmort at least is very much not a “for the hell of it” sort of guy,) his motives are simply opaque.
I am trying to understand what you write, but the idea that it’s somehow more pointless to resist utility hits from people who’re acting for bad reasons than sensible ones doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t see how anything you’ve said so far clarifies why that should be the case.
I didn’t say that there weren’t good reasons for resisting the pointlessly-occurring phenomenon. I said only that it was pointless. Or are you now going to impose fundamental purposefulness and agency onto the very fabric of the cosmos? This gets exceedingly ridiculous. I have never once argued that your usage is invalid. Why do you insist on refusing to recognize mine, despite the legitimacy of the terms and the framing with which I have presented them demonstrating clearly that I was using a definition you were not?
This is what passes for reasoned discourse?
Revise your position.
Oh bloody hell. I never said anything of the sort. Update your position, and stop tilting at windmills. This conversation has ceased, in the meantime, to be worthy of any investment by me.
It looks like the pair of you are having trouble communicating. Would you like to:
Taboo “pointless”, “futile” and “lose”,
Hug the query?
Interesting. I’d thought this chapter gave us evidence of Snape being evil, because a greater-than-or-equal-to-double agent should think immediately of disguises that need to seem real. And if we assume he’s not evil then he probably sympathizes with Hermione’s anti-bullying campaign. But he might not go against Dumbledore if DD didn’t want to use the debt. (Still seems slightly sinister that he didn’t tell Harry secretly. But not much, given their history and the likelihood Harry would think of it anyway.)
Wait—where does Snape, of all people, come into this discussion?
Eh? Snape was there when they discussed a possible exchange of debts. I was saying that I’d expect him to think of the solution even if Dumbledore did not.
I think Dumbledore is more into the “general wanting to win a war” mindset. In that mindset, you don’t spend a trump card like a blood debt from one major enemy just to save one life. So he shouldn’t (in his pov) speak about that issue to Harry.
I think this would be a more meaningful consideration if he had much reason to expect he’d be able to control how Harry would cash in that debt, and by the time it came up I think his acquaintance with Harry should have largely disabused him of that.
He has shown to be a slow learner with respect to his ability to control Harry. In the last chapter, in fact, when he tries to stop Harry from accepting the debt. This slow learning is to be expected, because he’s been able to control every other rebellious child he’s had to deal with in N years of being headmaster, plus most of his political opponents, etc. And he believes that of course the Hero will listen to the guidance of the Wise Old Mentor.
I think it hasn’t sunk in yet that he’s not Harry’s mentor; Quirrel is.