16 KiB
Chapter: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Ch117 by Less Wrong
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Author: u/MugaSofer *
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Score: 16
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Created: 2015-03-08T19:23:21
Post:
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (10 hours later)
So I've been thinking about what my problem with these last two or three chapters has been, and I think I've figured it out: we don't get much of an idea about what Harry is thinking.
This starts midway through chapter 115, after Harry does all this moralizing about what's to be done with Voldemort and ends up removing almost all of his memories and transfiguring him into a gem.
And then Harry has an idea, which the audience doesn't get to see, and begins putting a plan into motion, which the audience can guess by the end of the chapter. But we don't actually see any of what Harry is thinking - what train of thought leads him down that path. We can only make guesses, and the guesses ... they don't endear me to Harry, because they seem so self-serving.
So then the next chapter is told entirely from someone else's point of view, and we're still left in the dark about what Harry is thinking. We see him sitting quietly in the bleachers after having killed all those people, and then we see him put on this act and lie to everyone. We still don't know what his motivations are in this plan, we can only guess at them, and we certainly don't know what he's feeling while he's sitting there watching the Quidditch game. And in the next chapter, there's so much glossed over - a long conversation with McGonagall where he spewed more lies? Harry hiding the Philosopher's Stone so that no one would find it? Surely he spoke to other people, and listened to the gossip.
And it's not until the news of the Death Eaters dying that we get back into Harry's head again, and it's only then that he realizes that he's killed anyone. It strikes me as disingenuous, or maybe just inconsistent. It's part of Harry's story that he tells at the Quidditch stands that the Death Eaters have been killed, and he says this with horror. It's implied that he's told this story against to McGonagall and the Aurors.
Are we supposed to believe that he's entered a dissociative state? That he has enough presence of mind to enact a self-serving conspiracy where he tells people that the Death Eaters were being slaughtered but doesn't have the presence of mind to realize that he was the one who killed them?
I don't begrudge Harry having killed them, or even necessarily that he failed to think of reviving them (though the moralizing about his children's children's children does ring a bit hollow for that reason). But there seems to be this disconnect between "Harry is a traumatized eleven-year-old" and "Harry is lying through his teeth in order to serve his own goals", and I think that quite a bit of the reason that I feel this way is because there's a very long time where Harry's thoughts are opaque.
u/Tholo [+10] (13 hours later)
Top of 115:
Something like a fugue state had come over Harry's mind.
From wikipedia:
Dissociative fugue, formally fugue state or psychogenic fugue is a DSM-IV Dissociative Disorder. It is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality, and other identifying characteristics of individuality. [...]Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode
Why is Harry acting out of character? Because he is out of character. Author said so, right at the top of the chapter. We can see in chapter 115 that every time his mind gets too close to thinking about what he has done, it shies away like a kicked puppy:
What he'd just done - The thought was shut off, making space for an awareness of other things.
The silver masks stayed on, making all the hair originate in skulls instead of human faces - The thought was shut off, making space for awareness of other things.
Given all of this, I don't understand why we are suprised when there is a giant blind spot in Harry's thinking in regards to the death eater's fate. The really awful truth is the death eaters existed far outside Harry's monkeyshphere. They were nazis, or stormtroopers, or substitute in your favorite faceless bad. LV, twisted as it is, was inside the monkeysphere, and therefor was a person to save. Being a rationalist doesn't actually repair the broken mechanisms in your brain, it just gives you firmware to counter act them. Break the firmware, and ymmv.
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (21 hours later)
I don't know. The fact is that my sympathy towards Harry has been heading rapidly downhill these last few chapters, and I've been trying to figure out why that is, when relatively few people seem to be having this same problem (though I have seen some).
It might go back to this paragraph:
Harry Potter was speaking rapidly but loudly. "Voldemort - tried to revive - he summoned Death Eaters and he killed them, stole their blood and life - Hermione's body was there, I don't know why, maybe Voldemort was planning to use it for something - Voldemort came back, he resurrected himself, but Hermione followed him back and she destroyed him, he's gone, it's over. It happened in a graveyard near Hogwarts, it's," Harry Potter rose to his feet, still swaying, "I think it's in that direction." Harry Potter pointed in the rough direction the CRACK had come from, "I'm not sure how far. The sound from there took twenty seconds to get here, so maybe two minutes on a broomstick -"
This lie feels so calculated, and so ugly to me. Maybe I can draw an analogy here - an analogy of what it feels like to me, not necessarily what it is.
A burglar breaks into a man's home. The man kills the burglar with a shotgun. Then, instead of calling the police, he digs a shallow grave in his backyard, buries the body, cleans up the blood, and wipes down his gun. When the police come by the next day - someone thought they heard the gunshot - the man lies to the police and says that nothing happened. His motivations for this might be sympathetic. Perhaps he's worried that castle doctrine in his state is far from secure, and that he might be in legal trouble. Perhaps he's worried about retaliation from the burglar's friends or family. Perhaps he just doesn't want anyone to know what he's done. But this deception still erodes my sympathy for the man, and it makes me see the man's grief over what he's done as somewhat suspect.
Anyway, that's what I think I've been feeling. It probably doesn't match what you've been feeling. But I don't think it's necessarily wrong for me to feel that way.
u/JackStargazer [+9] Primordial Apologist (22 hours later)
I fully understand your issue.
The problem is that you expect Harry to be better than that.
He spent so much time in the earlier chapters espousing to Draco, Dumbledore, and Hermione that he had learned to think properly, that his mind did not shy away from the dark and dangerous thoughts he did not want to think, things it would be painful to think about.
He mentioned that he had trained himself to turn his mind toward the painful thoughts instead of away from them. To confront them.
And that's exactly what he's not doing here. He's running away. He's fleeing as fast as he can from his actions and the consequences of those actions, and stopping himself from even considering what he's done in a rational manner.
There's probably a joke or reference to be made here about how Vol d'Mort "Flight from Death" would respond in a similar situation. There's also a pragmatic argument to be made. But I see where you are coming from - Harry seems to have abandoned a lot of what made him Harry.
A burglar breaks into a man's home. The man kills the burglar with a shotgun. Then, instead of calling the police, he digs a shallow grave in his backyard, buries the body, cleans up the blood, and wipes down his gun. When the police come by the next day - someone thought they heard the gunshot - the man lies to the police and says that nothing happened. His motivations for this might be sympathetic. Perhaps he's worried that castle doctrine in his state is far from secure, and that he might be in legal trouble. Perhaps he's worried about retaliation from the burglar's friends or family. Perhaps he just doesn't want anyone to know what he's done. But this deception still erodes my sympathy for the man, and it makes me see the man's grief over what he's done as somewhat suspect.
I think the problem with this analogy is that you are looking at it from a modern context, where the burglar's friends may retaliate, or the state might object, but one would be minor and physical and the other would be ordered but major.
That's not the real situation though. Harry in a similar metaphor to yours is a man who has just killed a Nobleman's firstborn son in the middle ages, inside that Nobleman's city. He hides the body and his act now because he knows that the entire society he occupies will target him regardless of circumstance.
He killed many of the most prominent purebloods. They have children, political allies, and huge fortunes who could now be turned into finding and punishing their killer, in a culture that still believes in honor-debts, death-duels and revenge killing or punishment.
He also took an ancient artifact which half the world would search for and happily murder him to take, and which helps to accomplish some or all of his stated goals. Keeping that hidden is again, the only choice if he wants to live.
And on top of all this, he's lost Dumbledore. The powerful wizard who was protecting him from the rest of the world, a strong political and combat figure, and one who trusted him implicitly.
(As an aside, I just realized that Voldemort defeated Dumbledore and then Harry defeated Voldemort - It is possible Harry is now Master of the Elder Wand.)
The actions Harry has taken are realistic for his position, they are the best way for him to ensure both his future survival and his own plans. In taking them however, he's lost some of his idealism, the Code of Batman has already been sacrificed, but now he's also dropping the Code of Truth. He's sacrificing what he needs to sacrifice now in order to save himself and his future plans. It's a very Slytherin move.
That these actions seem cold and callous is a consequence of the story's realism.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Thanks for the insightful comment. And yeah, I think you're right. Harry is losing all of the things that made me like him. He used to believe in truth, and he's thrown that away because it didn't seem practical to him. I see in his actions a cynicism that's replaced his idealism.
"The truth is sacred," Harry said tonelessly. "One of my most treasured possessions is a button which reads 'Speak the truth, even if your voice trembles'."
That was one of my favorite passages.
Heroes are supposed to overcome their flaws as the story reaches the climax. They're supposed to triumph through their virtues. Harry's biggest virtue was his belief in life and truth, and he won by killing and lying.
I thought that Harry was a hero, but it turns out he's not - he's just a protagonist. And that bums me out. I'll grant that it might be realistic, but that's the source of my discontent.
u/Escapement [+5] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)
Re: Truth-telling.
Harry liked, from the very start of HPMOR, to make a game of speaking the literal truth in a deceptive manner intended to mislead and deceive even though the exact words were not technically if adjudicated by a court of law a "falsehood". I never really counted him as a fan of straight-up truth - if you say a combination of words that you strongly believe will cause the listener to believe X, while you instead believe ¬X, then even if your words are in some sense technically "not false", for all moral and ethical intents and purposes your use of words to mislead makes you a liar anyways, and not meaningfully different morally from someone who speaks straight-up lies. Harry's always been deceitful and manipulative, but also for some reason a fan of pretending to himself that speaking no sentence that is not technically false is the same thing as honesty, which it really, really isn't.
u/Fellero [+3] (a day later)
He is a Tom Riddle after all.
Father taught him well.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
I agree. This doesn't feel like Harry.
u/DrunkenQuetzalcoatl [+1] (18 hours later)
I think he knew all the time that he has killed people and would have choosen another path where he wouldn't have to if he could have thought of one.
The realisation in the great hall was that he didn't just kill random masked strangers trying to kill him but that he killed fathers. And fathers of people he knows. And with Lucius even people he knows himself.
u/JackStargazer [+9] Primordial Apologist (an hour later)
We still haven't seen Hermione.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (5 hours later)
For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.
I am confused. How could Harry go eight to nine hours since the fight and still refuse to recognize he killed thirty-six people in self-defense. Nothing he says now about "the value of human life" or "death would be sad" will ever mean anything, ever. Harry has had more than enough time to calm down and think, and yet the thought of killing actual humans never crossed his mind? Not once?
Harry fails as a rationalist. He completely fails. Despite all his minor triumphs and improvements, he is still exactly where he began when it actually counts. I'm going to have to agree with /u/alexanderwales that Harry cannot call himself the hero of the story anymore -- he has acted in the most selfish ways possible.
Damn, he really, really needs Hermione.
u/nohat [+8] (6 hours later)
Why do you quote that, then say the exact opposite? Harry's been asleep most of this time (he's been doing a lot). He has no right to call himself a hero? Really? 36 blooded terrorists literally about to murder him, and you are calling him selfish for killing them and taking a bit to emotionally realize they were leaving behind family?
u/AmeteurOpinions [+3] Finally, everyone was working together. (6 hours later)
It's not the opposite. If Harry can't spare four minutes of several hours to consider what happened, especially considering his intent to tell an incredibly risky lie, he is not a rationalist. And I say he's selfish for the lie, not the self-defense.
u/RolandsVaria [+7] (9 hours later)
He's trying very hard to preserve his deception (and admittedly, trying not to be overcome by guilt). I think he's afraid that if he focuses on the dozens of people he just killed, he'll just break down and possibly ruin everything.
I do agree that it was a definite failure on his part. As much as this story tries to be rational, there are often times where it isn't.
u/RandomDamage [+1] (19 hours later)
Even the best of us are cursed with limited rationality.
That doesn't mean we can't (and shouldn't) strive for perfect logic and consistency, it just means that we are doomed to failure.
The measure of a person is whether they keep trying after a flamingo-up on their principles, or if they use it as an excuse to give up on the whole mess.