Thinking about ch63 (which is among my favorite chapters to read so far)…
I am, of course, curious to see what the implications are of Harry’s formally declaring opposition to Death.
But more than that, I am curious about the implications of his epistemology.
Ultimately Harry breaks his connection to Quirrell because he realizes Quirrell can maintain a surface appearance that is radically distinct from his deep structure, and consequently Harry can’t know what Quirrell “truly” is. As distinct from, say, Hermione or Draco, who (Harry believes) can be read on the surface.
That seems to suggest that Harry has entirely given up on the idea of judging people by what they do… at least, when it comes to Quirrell.
Well, and Hermione. After all, this is precisely Harry’s criticism of Fawkes: Fawkes only judges her based on what she has done, rather than on “the notion of there being something that a person is”.
Now, in the real world, I know a lot of people who have more or less this attitude; who judge people based on their apprehension of some kind of core self, and believe that core is what really matters, and that judgments based on people’s actions are inadequate by comparison. But those people don’t describe themselves as rationalists. Indeed, most of them talk about that “core self” in language that soi-disant rationalists dismiss out of hand. Presumably Harry isn’t going that route.
I will be interested to see what route he goes instead.
Reminds me of this article. Now, Hemmens is being a little polemical there and I’m not sure the morality of the books is well-developed enough to support his reading, but there’s some interesting convergence anyway.
My take on it is that our judgments of people are ultimately about predicting how well their future behavior will align with our (moral and/or personal) interests. This is determined by their core motivations and assumptions, but our access to that deep structure is often patchy and speculative; if we don’t have a reliable enough read on it, about all we can do is fall back on nearest-neighbor matching against their past actions. It’s not a binary actions-or-motivations dichotomy, in other words: the more confident about someone’s motivations we are, the higher we weight those motivations relative to their actual deeds.
Harry’s just found out two important things about Quirrell: that his deep structure isn’t as accessible as he thought it was, and that he’s willing to use death spells in questionable circumstances. That might not be enough to completely destroy his confidence in Quirrell (and indeed I think Harry’s overreacting a bit given the evidence), but it’s definitely enough reason to take a step back and reevaluate.
That seems to suggest that Harry has entirely given up on the idea of judging people by what they do… at least, when it comes to Quirrell.
Quirrel is a schemer and what he does or rather wants you to think he does is not what he really did. Let’s take the dementor for an example. What Quirrel did was bring a powerful creature within reach of Harry with the effect of almost killing him. But also with the effect of teaching Harry the true Patronus. How would you judge Quirrel according to this deed? With a more straight forward character you could assume he really wanted to teach the children to defend themselves which probably is good. And Harry realized that this straight forward reasoning doesn’t apply to Quirrel.
In this instance Quirrel probably realized something of the problem with good and powerful wizards could not cast Patroni and thought that Harry’s absolutely odd way of thinking of things might be able to solve it. It would make sense that he should do this quickly as his plans to turn Harry into a Dark Lord might get in the way of this.
I am, of course, curious to see what the implications are of Harry’s formally declaring opposition to Death.
Meh. He declares war on Azkaban, not on Death. I suppose it could be read (very) broadly to mean he declares war on severe torture.
If only he’d shut up and calculate, he’d realize that to prevent the largest amount of suffering he should dedicate his life to researching magical means of granting immortality to everyone, like the Philosopher’s Stone.
If only he’d shut up and calculate, he’d realize that to prevent the largest amount of suffering he should dedicate his life to researching magical means of granting immortality to everyone, like the Philosopher’s Stone.
Granting immortality is not the same as preventing suffering. Maximizing life span may in fact maximize the opportunities for suffering.
Future suffering or death must be discounted to provide a present value. It is more valuable to save a life now than to save a life a year from now, all else being equal.
Harry would also have to consider opportunity costs and the likelihood of success. He knows that dementors can be killed now. Finding an acceptable magical approach to immortality is less certain, and may actually take more time to develop than a non-magical approach. Harry’s optimal approach may be to kill dementors now, research the nature of magic, and to wait for muggle science to find immortality.
I question the extent to which the two goals have to be juggled in any case, since he already knows how to kill Dementors, and isn’t willing to throw his life away to destroy them, which would be the main conflict. Destroying the Dementors is now a tactical issue that need only concern him when playing politics, so the only way it interferes with his transhumanist goals is if his politicking interferes with his research more-so than it would have if he weren’t doing it with Dementor destruction in mind.
Meh. He declares war on Azkaban, not on Death. I suppose it could be read (very) broadly to mean he declares war on severe torture.
He was already at war with Death, AND with Azkaban/severe torture. The big character-shift in 63 is that he no longer believes in democracy. If he becomes God, he will not necessarily be a CEV, he’ll do what he personally believes to be right.
It seems pretty clear that Harry’s opposition to Azkaban is because of the Dementors. He isn’t opposed to prisons in general, and all of his emotive thinking about Azkaban has centered on the Dementors.
And we’ve established that the Dementors are, in the HP:MORverse, instances of Death. I’ll admit that I haven’t the foggiest clue what that actually means, but that’s kind of true of pretty much all magic; I accept it on narrative grounds.
Harry is opposed to people feeding other people to Dementors, slowly, over many years, until they die. If Dementors were just dangerous evil creatures roaming out there and occasionally killing unlucky people who didn’t Apparate away in time—like trolls, or dragons—Harry wouldn’t care much about them and their association with Death.
This is precisely what I’m saying: he previously swore to end death (not just Dementors!) but now he’s swearing to end Azkaban—a much smaller goal. In fact it’s insignificant in comparison. Let’s hope it doesn’t get exclusive priority on Harry’s time.
This is precisely what I’m saying: he previously swore to end death (not just Dementors!) but now he’s swearing to end Azkaban—a much smaller goal. In fact it’s insignificant in comparison.
I don’t think the important thing in Ch. 63 is that Harry changed his goals (you’re right, he didn’t really) but that he changed the methods he’s willing to consider. The long-term argument (since chapter 35) between Harry and Quirrell has been about the utility of democracy. When Harry declared himself with the 3 and against the 47, he is acknowledging (at least the way I read it) a willingness to become a benevolent dictator if necessary.
Agreed that taking out the Dementors is a relatively narrow goal compared to other goals he might have adopted instead. (Like immortality, or unlimited Fun, or whatever.) He’s only human: it may take him another year or two to completely reshape the universe.
The fact remains that he just made a commitment to oppose Death, in a universe where Death really does seem to be something other than just death, and (unlike his previous oaths and determinations) this declaration seems to have had some implications in terms of the foreseeable future.
If Dementors were just dangerous evil creatures roaming out there and occasionally killing unlucky people who didn’t Apparate away in time—like trolls, or dragons—Harry wouldn’t care much about them and their association with Death.
“Humanism” suggests he’d technically want to eliminate them anyway, and as it turns out this desire seems wise. Dementors can breed (asexually) if whatever makes decisions for them decides to prepare for more victims. It happened in canon. In the absence of any Patronus 2.0 this seems like an existential risk or a risk of an unpleasant future for humanity, depending on how the Dementor decision maker works. And again, given the existence of Dolores Umbridge with her canon use of Dementors, I see no reason to believe that every present and future Ministry official will refrain from offering them Muggles. Nor does it seem wise to wait until Dementors start multiplying before reducing their numbers.
Now, Harry doesn’t know all this, but “hole in the world” sure sounds like a possible threat to humanity’s existence. He must believe in a non-zero risk from Azkaban. Logically Harry should ask if this risk exceeds the Star Goat or Anti-Pascal’s probability. (Example: the chance of cryonics working, in any particular case, seems to far exceed the Star Goat probability of it interfering with or preventing an afterlife.) And neither his pessimistic mentor nor his conditionally pro-death mentor seems to consider the chance of ending humanity through killing Dementors worth mentioning.
Thinking about ch63 (which is among my favorite chapters to read so far)…
I am, of course, curious to see what the implications are of Harry’s formally declaring opposition to Death.
But more than that, I am curious about the implications of his epistemology.
Ultimately Harry breaks his connection to Quirrell because he realizes Quirrell can maintain a surface appearance that is radically distinct from his deep structure, and consequently Harry can’t know what Quirrell “truly” is. As distinct from, say, Hermione or Draco, who (Harry believes) can be read on the surface.
That seems to suggest that Harry has entirely given up on the idea of judging people by what they do… at least, when it comes to Quirrell.
Well, and Hermione. After all, this is precisely Harry’s criticism of Fawkes: Fawkes only judges her based on what she has done, rather than on “the notion of there being something that a person is”.
Now, in the real world, I know a lot of people who have more or less this attitude; who judge people based on their apprehension of some kind of core self, and believe that core is what really matters, and that judgments based on people’s actions are inadequate by comparison. But those people don’t describe themselves as rationalists. Indeed, most of them talk about that “core self” in language that soi-disant rationalists dismiss out of hand. Presumably Harry isn’t going that route.
I will be interested to see what route he goes instead.
Reminds me of this article. Now, Hemmens is being a little polemical there and I’m not sure the morality of the books is well-developed enough to support his reading, but there’s some interesting convergence anyway.
My take on it is that our judgments of people are ultimately about predicting how well their future behavior will align with our (moral and/or personal) interests. This is determined by their core motivations and assumptions, but our access to that deep structure is often patchy and speculative; if we don’t have a reliable enough read on it, about all we can do is fall back on nearest-neighbor matching against their past actions. It’s not a binary actions-or-motivations dichotomy, in other words: the more confident about someone’s motivations we are, the higher we weight those motivations relative to their actual deeds.
Harry’s just found out two important things about Quirrell: that his deep structure isn’t as accessible as he thought it was, and that he’s willing to use death spells in questionable circumstances. That might not be enough to completely destroy his confidence in Quirrell (and indeed I think Harry’s overreacting a bit given the evidence), but it’s definitely enough reason to take a step back and reevaluate.
Quirrel is a schemer and what he does or rather wants you to think he does is not what he really did. Let’s take the dementor for an example. What Quirrel did was bring a powerful creature within reach of Harry with the effect of almost killing him. But also with the effect of teaching Harry the true Patronus. How would you judge Quirrel according to this deed? With a more straight forward character you could assume he really wanted to teach the children to defend themselves which probably is good. And Harry realized that this straight forward reasoning doesn’t apply to Quirrel.
In this instance Quirrel probably realized something of the problem with good and powerful wizards could not cast Patroni and thought that Harry’s absolutely odd way of thinking of things might be able to solve it. It would make sense that he should do this quickly as his plans to turn Harry into a Dark Lord might get in the way of this.
Unless he didn’t. He is not, after all, a good and powerful wizard :D
He may not be good, but he is good at research.
Meh. He declares war on Azkaban, not on Death. I suppose it could be read (very) broadly to mean he declares war on severe torture.
If only he’d shut up and calculate, he’d realize that to prevent the largest amount of suffering he should dedicate his life to researching magical means of granting immortality to everyone, like the Philosopher’s Stone.
Granting immortality is not the same as preventing suffering. Maximizing life span may in fact maximize the opportunities for suffering.
Future suffering or death must be discounted to provide a present value. It is more valuable to save a life now than to save a life a year from now, all else being equal.
Harry would also have to consider opportunity costs and the likelihood of success. He knows that dementors can be killed now. Finding an acceptable magical approach to immortality is less certain, and may actually take more time to develop than a non-magical approach. Harry’s optimal approach may be to kill dementors now, research the nature of magic, and to wait for muggle science to find immortality.
I question the extent to which the two goals have to be juggled in any case, since he already knows how to kill Dementors, and isn’t willing to throw his life away to destroy them, which would be the main conflict. Destroying the Dementors is now a tactical issue that need only concern him when playing politics, so the only way it interferes with his transhumanist goals is if his politicking interferes with his research more-so than it would have if he weren’t doing it with Dementor destruction in mind.
He was already at war with Death, AND with Azkaban/severe torture. The big character-shift in 63 is that he no longer believes in democracy. If he becomes God, he will not necessarily be a CEV, he’ll do what he personally believes to be right.
Democracy isn’t CEV. People will vote for all sorts of things when they’re not as good or smart as they could be.
It seems pretty clear that Harry’s opposition to Azkaban is because of the Dementors. He isn’t opposed to prisons in general, and all of his emotive thinking about Azkaban has centered on the Dementors.
And we’ve established that the Dementors are, in the HP:MORverse, instances of Death. I’ll admit that I haven’t the foggiest clue what that actually means, but that’s kind of true of pretty much all magic; I accept it on narrative grounds.
So I stand by the original statement.
Harry is opposed to people feeding other people to Dementors, slowly, over many years, until they die. If Dementors were just dangerous evil creatures roaming out there and occasionally killing unlucky people who didn’t Apparate away in time—like trolls, or dragons—Harry wouldn’t care much about them and their association with Death.
This is precisely what I’m saying: he previously swore to end death (not just Dementors!) but now he’s swearing to end Azkaban—a much smaller goal. In fact it’s insignificant in comparison. Let’s hope it doesn’t get exclusive priority on Harry’s time.
I don’t think the important thing in Ch. 63 is that Harry changed his goals (you’re right, he didn’t really) but that he changed the methods he’s willing to consider. The long-term argument (since chapter 35) between Harry and Quirrell has been about the utility of democracy. When Harry declared himself with the 3 and against the 47, he is acknowledging (at least the way I read it) a willingness to become a benevolent dictator if necessary.
Agreed that taking out the Dementors is a relatively narrow goal compared to other goals he might have adopted instead. (Like immortality, or unlimited Fun, or whatever.) He’s only human: it may take him another year or two to completely reshape the universe.
The fact remains that he just made a commitment to oppose Death, in a universe where Death really does seem to be something other than just death, and (unlike his previous oaths and determinations) this declaration seems to have had some implications in terms of the foreseeable future.
“Humanism” suggests he’d technically want to eliminate them anyway, and as it turns out this desire seems wise. Dementors can breed (asexually) if whatever makes decisions for them decides to prepare for more victims. It happened in canon. In the absence of any Patronus 2.0 this seems like an existential risk or a risk of an unpleasant future for humanity, depending on how the Dementor decision maker works. And again, given the existence of Dolores Umbridge with her canon use of Dementors, I see no reason to believe that every present and future Ministry official will refrain from offering them Muggles. Nor does it seem wise to wait until Dementors start multiplying before reducing their numbers.
Now, Harry doesn’t know all this, but “hole in the world” sure sounds like a possible threat to humanity’s existence. He must believe in a non-zero risk from Azkaban. Logically Harry should ask if this risk exceeds the Star Goat or Anti-Pascal’s probability. (Example: the chance of cryonics working, in any particular case, seems to far exceed the Star Goat probability of it interfering with or preventing an afterlife.) And neither his pessimistic mentor nor his conditionally pro-death mentor seems to consider the chance of ending humanity through killing Dementors worth mentioning.