Risky as all get out, but Hermione is easily worth an otherwise useless debt and substantially all of Harry’s material wealth—especially if the actual villain gets caught, which helps lead to the rule of law in Magical Britain.
I don’t think Harry’s dark side is supposed to be limited to dark solutions, it just happens to be an ultra proficient problem solver. It may have dark tendencies by virtue of being an embedded copy of the mind of Voldemort, but there’s no obvious reason it can’t be used for good.
So Harry has an advanced intelligence of questionable tendencies locked away, but it’s tantalizingly offering to be ultra useful to him if he’ll only give it freer reign outside of its box?
I think Harry’s ‘dark side’ corresponds approximately to an unfriendly AI. It’s not evil, just very creative. Or, put another way, it can be horrifyingly indifferent to the goals of regular Harry when constructing its plans, and can sacrifice important things without thought on its way to completing the goal.
Now, ofcourse, his Plan B would have been to let the Dementor feast on the souls of the Malfoy faction of the wizengamot. That’s dark. Slightly so. :-)
We don’t have a way to be sure our universe runs on casuality. It’s just generalization from our experiences. The same could be true for Dumbledore and his universe.
Why not? Why, indeed, would wizards with enough status and wealth to turn their hands to almost any endeavor, choose to spend their lives fighting over lucrative monopolies on ink importation? The Headmaster of Hogwarts would hardly see the question; of course most people should not be powerful wizards, just as most people should not be heroes. The Defense Professor could explain at great and cynical length why their ambitions are so trivial; to him, too, there is no puzzle. Only Harry Potter, for all the books he has read, is unable to understand; to the Boy-Who-Lived the life choices of the Lords and Ladies seem incomprehensible—not what a good person would do, nor yet an evil person either. Now which of the three is most wise?
I can’t say that Quirrel is more wrong than Harry, but Dumbledore’s position (“of course some people should not be powerful wizards”) is fatuous in his own universe, much less in the real world. It might turn out to be right, but there’s no of course about it. In short, my only assertion is that Dumbledore is not qualified to be our moral ideal in an imperfect universe, even if he is a better choice that Fawkes.
A) Dumbledore argues that Dumbledore is a better moral ideal than Fawks, but he doesn’t do it very well
B) Even if we are in a universe that runs on causality, we often misunderstand how the causality mechanics interact with us. Likewise, Dumbledor thinks he is the eccentric mentor when sometimes he is the obstructive zealout.
My interpretation has been more that the ‘dark’ plans rely primarily on application of force (most often political rather than physical)--threatening, blackmailing, bribing—and trickery. They tend to work in the short run, but in the long run can poison his reputation (people notice how dark he acts over time) and have nasty side effects. For the most part Harry’s dark plans are pretty clever, because his dark side is pretty ruthless and very clever.
If you take that definition for the plans his dark side comes up with, he actually started out with a light side plan (talk reason with Lucius, however undiplomatically) but resorted to a much darker plan B (force the issue via political loopholes) when that failed. Releasing the Dementor actually doesn’t strike me as the kind of plan Harry’s dark side tended to come up with, since for all its risk it doesn’t really solve the problem or use his resources efficiently. It sounds like what normal Harry would come up with when very angry; the same normal Harry who was having happy thoughts about Guillotines right before the sorting.
Well if she actually did it, then he’d have fired off most of his ammunition to save a girl who tried to kill an innocent kid. Even if it’s not “Dark”, it certainly doesn’t help the light side.
Edit: I don’t think she did, just following through on a comment I made on the last thread.
Insanity plea is a legitimate one, you know. Even if she did do it, she was severely manipulated, to the point that I’d argue it’s similar to just manually reaching in and changing the weighting functions in her brain.
What was dark about any of what Harry did?
Risky as all get out, but Hermione is easily worth an otherwise useless debt and substantially all of Harry’s material wealth—especially if the actual villain gets caught, which helps lead to the rule of law in Magical Britain.
I don’t think Harry’s dark side is supposed to be limited to dark solutions, it just happens to be an ultra proficient problem solver. It may have dark tendencies by virtue of being an embedded copy of the mind of Voldemort, but there’s no obvious reason it can’t be used for good.
So Harry has an advanced intelligence of questionable tendencies locked away, but it’s tantalizingly offering to be ultra useful to him if he’ll only give it freer reign outside of its box?
This is sounding awfully familiar...
I think Harry’s ‘dark side’ corresponds approximately to an unfriendly AI. It’s not evil, just very creative. Or, put another way, it can be horrifyingly indifferent to the goals of regular Harry when constructing its plans, and can sacrifice important things without thought on its way to completing the goal.
I have nothing to add to this, other than perhaps “tendencies, huh?”. I just thought it deserved quotation.
Who said the solution had to be dark?
Now, ofcourse, his Plan B would have been to let the Dementor feast on the souls of the Malfoy faction of the wizengamot. That’s dark. Slightly so. :-)
Might have been a net win in the long run.
I think we’re meant to understand from previous ‘dark’ plans that HJPEV’s dark side makes plans that specifically don’t do well for the long run.
It’s clear that Dumbledore thinks that, but I’m not sure he’s right. Dumbledore thinks the universe runs on narrative.
Dumbledore’s universe does.
But he has no way of knowing that. Objects in our world don’t come labelled “Chekov’s gun,” even when it turns out that they should have.
We don’t have a way to be sure our universe runs on casuality. It’s just generalization from our experiences. The same could be true for Dumbledore and his universe.
I can’t say that Quirrel is more wrong than Harry, but Dumbledore’s position (“of course some people should not be powerful wizards”) is fatuous in his own universe, much less in the real world. It might turn out to be right, but there’s no of course about it. In short, my only assertion is that Dumbledore is not qualified to be our moral ideal in an imperfect universe, even if he is a better choice that Fawkes.
A) Dumbledore argues that Dumbledore is a better moral ideal than Fawks, but he doesn’t do it very well
B) Even if we are in a universe that runs on causality, we often misunderstand how the causality mechanics interact with us. Likewise, Dumbledor thinks he is the eccentric mentor when sometimes he is the obstructive zealout.
My interpretation has been more that the ‘dark’ plans rely primarily on application of force (most often political rather than physical)--threatening, blackmailing, bribing—and trickery. They tend to work in the short run, but in the long run can poison his reputation (people notice how dark he acts over time) and have nasty side effects. For the most part Harry’s dark plans are pretty clever, because his dark side is pretty ruthless and very clever.
If you take that definition for the plans his dark side comes up with, he actually started out with a light side plan (talk reason with Lucius, however undiplomatically) but resorted to a much darker plan B (force the issue via political loopholes) when that failed. Releasing the Dementor actually doesn’t strike me as the kind of plan Harry’s dark side tended to come up with, since for all its risk it doesn’t really solve the problem or use his resources efficiently. It sounds like what normal Harry would come up with when very angry; the same normal Harry who was having happy thoughts about Guillotines right before the sorting.
Harry spoke out of turn.
Harry threatened his betters.
Harry brought up awkward subjects without regard to how uncomfortable they would make people.
Harry showed off how powerful he was when he really didn’t need to.
Harry totally cheated his enemies out of a well earned victory.
That all sounds Gryffindor.
The most Slytherin thing was done by McGonagal when she invoked a technicality.
Also:
Harry terrified that poor Dementor
McGonagall defied oppressors in defense of the powerless. That’s Gryffindor.
Well if she actually did it, then he’d have fired off most of his ammunition to save a girl who tried to kill an innocent kid. Even if it’s not “Dark”, it certainly doesn’t help the light side.
Edit: I don’t think she did, just following through on a comment I made on the last thread.
Insanity plea is a legitimate one, you know. Even if she did do it, she was severely manipulated, to the point that I’d argue it’s similar to just manually reaching in and changing the weighting functions in her brain.
I don’t think the debt is “otherwise useless” it could have been used as much more powerful political weapon.
But that isn’t dark. Harry acted Gryffindor on that, not Slytherin.