I’m sorry, but “Hagrid is lonely” is not a concern worth five seconds of thought when Harry could be working on getting rid of dementors or Azkaban or Death Eaters or death.
This is a nonsensical statement. It’s not as if Harry was using up those five seconds, or five minutes for any of those concerns.
I sometimes feel like there’s a fallacy that’s similar to privileging the hypothesis, only in the moral domain. Hogwarts is full of people who’d find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention. Before he was confined to Hogwarts, he could have gone out to visit all kinds of people who are in really horrible straits but would remember for the rest of their lives that The Boy Who Lived cared enough to stop over and take the day to talk to them.
We don’t think Harry was “being a little jerk” because he didn’t previously go to the effort of visiting those people. Why should we think that he’s being jerkish when he’s offered a similar chance and explicitly turns it down, when we didn’t mind him implicitly turning down a thousand such chances before?
“Hogwarts is full of people who’d find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention.”
Harry has given lots of people his personal attention, which he justified by the fact it would help them—Neville, whom he pranked, Padma Patil, whom he pranked, Gregory Goyle, whom he pranked, Lesath Lestrange who he pranked others for… Even his own past self he pranked.
So why not Hagrid? I don’t see this really being about Harry time-budgeting, it’s more about the fact that he can’t be simply nice to people—McGonnaggal would likely have achieved better results if she had asked Harry to devise an elaborate prank that would have dubiously potentially helped Hagrid in some ambiguous way.
McGonnaggal would likely have achieved better results if she had asked Harry to devise an elaborate prank that would have dubiously potentially helped Hagrid in some ambiguous way.
Why should we think that he’s being jerkish when he’s offered a similar chance and explicitly turns it down, when we didn’t mind him implicitly turning down a thousand such chances before?
Because most humans don’t utility-maximize like Harry, and so their implicit choices don’t predict what they’ll do when faced with an explicit choice. And when one is considering whether to befriend or ally with someone, it’s the explicit choices that would matter from then on; one would no longer be anonymous to them.
But actually befriending Hagrid is a decision that would take up a considerable amount of Harry’s time.
Harry’s only human, he can’t devote all of his free time to saving the world. He needs intellectual and emotional cooldown time. But Harry’s also an introvert. Spending social time with people he doesn’t relate to is not cooldown time for him, it’s something he’d need cooling down from. That being the case, being friends with Hagrid would eat into Harry’s productivity time. It’s a transparently bad move, and he doesn’t have to spend five seconds considering it in much the same way that a competent chess player does not spend five seconds considering whether to checkmate himself.
Harry also stated, quite reasonably, that he was concerned about being linked to the past events of the Chamber of Secrets, and being revealed as a Parselmouth.
This is a nonsensical statement. It’s not as if Harry was using up those five seconds, or five minutes for any of those concerns.
Harry was just being a little jerk.
I sometimes feel like there’s a fallacy that’s similar to privileging the hypothesis, only in the moral domain. Hogwarts is full of people who’d find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention. Before he was confined to Hogwarts, he could have gone out to visit all kinds of people who are in really horrible straits but would remember for the rest of their lives that The Boy Who Lived cared enough to stop over and take the day to talk to them.
We don’t think Harry was “being a little jerk” because he didn’t previously go to the effort of visiting those people. Why should we think that he’s being jerkish when he’s offered a similar chance and explicitly turns it down, when we didn’t mind him implicitly turning down a thousand such chances before?
“Hogwarts is full of people who’d find it awesome if Harry Potter gave them some of his personal attention.”
Harry has given lots of people his personal attention, which he justified by the fact it would help them—Neville, whom he pranked, Padma Patil, whom he pranked, Gregory Goyle, whom he pranked, Lesath Lestrange who he pranked others for… Even his own past self he pranked.
So why not Hagrid? I don’t see this really being about Harry time-budgeting, it’s more about the fact that he can’t be simply nice to people—McGonnaggal would likely have achieved better results if she had asked Harry to devise an elaborate prank that would have dubiously potentially helped Hagrid in some ambiguous way.
Well, you’ve surely got that right.
Because most humans don’t utility-maximize like Harry, and so their implicit choices don’t predict what they’ll do when faced with an explicit choice. And when one is considering whether to befriend or ally with someone, it’s the explicit choices that would matter from then on; one would no longer be anonymous to them.
But actually befriending Hagrid is a decision that would take up a considerable amount of Harry’s time.
Harry’s only human, he can’t devote all of his free time to saving the world. He needs intellectual and emotional cooldown time. But Harry’s also an introvert. Spending social time with people he doesn’t relate to is not cooldown time for him, it’s something he’d need cooling down from. That being the case, being friends with Hagrid would eat into Harry’s productivity time. It’s a transparently bad move, and he doesn’t have to spend five seconds considering it in much the same way that a competent chess player does not spend five seconds considering whether to checkmate himself.
Harry also stated, quite reasonably, that he was concerned about being linked to the past events of the Chamber of Secrets, and being revealed as a Parselmouth.