scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/4ctk14.md

[D] On the Tensions Between Rationality, Realism, and Humanity (x-post from /r/HPMOR)

• Author: u/Absox Iserlohn Fortress*

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4ctk14/d_on_the_tensions_between_rationality_realism_and/

• Score: 19

• Created: 2016-04-01T02:54:43

Post:

Note: Contains spoilers for HPMOR, mostly chapter 82, and parts of the ending.

Disclaimer: I'm a rather poor literary theorist at best, and only an average essayist. I hope I can at least provoke some meaningful discussion along the lines of narrative craft, though.

EDIT: Added spoiler tags.

Rationalist fiction, and to a lesser extent, rational fiction, empower their readers. We, the audience, live vicariously through the characters of these narratives as they face down nigh-insurmountable tasks, often armed only with their knowledge and logical reasoning. The best stories within these genres engage us and set our own minds to the task of observation and analysis; we take in the details of these fictional worlds, consider the resources available, and try to deduce or synthesize some solution to the predicaments in which our protagonists invariably find themselves. We smile to ourselves in smug satisfaction when it turns out that we’d figured it all out pages or chapters in advance, or chuckle, “Aha!” when the plot takes some interesting twist by the machinations of one agent or another. But almost inevitably the hero triumphs, despite whatever obstacles or hindrances are placed in his or her way; the message of rationalist fiction is overwhelmingly a triumphant one- through the power of the scientific method, we can uncover the true nature of any phenomenon; through the power of rational thinking, even the seemingly-impossible can be achieved. Often this victory does not come at any true cost to the hero. Lives may be lost, sometimes even the lives of friends or companions close to the hero. But there are few, if any, rationalist narratives where the protagonist is forced to accept a true compromise of their values, or change their outlook because of any truly intractable problems or incompatibility between their beliefs and reality. Even HPMOR’s Dumbledore, who Spoiler, is ultimately exempted from that burden; though he may have Spoiler, though he may have suffered a great loss, his own character is uncompromised, as we find out in the end that Spoiler Statements such as, “what can be destroyed by the truth ought be,” have become a rallying cry of sorts for the rationalist community. But to fail to consider the cost of victory, to ignore what is or must be lost in the process proves an equal neglect of the truth.

Perhaps it’s an enduring human quality to be blind to our own shortcomings. The planning fallacy is a pervasive optimistic bias where individuals systematically underestimate the time necessary for the completion of tasks. Yet this bias does not extend to other people; indeed, a study done by Buehler et al. in 2002 showed that when asked to predict task completion times for others, study participants tended towards pessimism, overestimating the time required. Perhaps this kind of systematic bias extends beyond the scope of estimating task completion times. One of the main ideas espoused by HPMOR is that through a conscious awareness of these cognitive biases and concerted effort, one can learn to gradually become “less wrong” than one was, as if the processes of human thought somehow allowed for the calculation of a loss function, and correction of parameters via some kind of internalized gradient descent. Yet the narrative sidesteps the meaningful treatment of any difficult moral decisions with the assertion that no such choice need be made at all. The titular Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres rejects Dumbledore’s claim that “there can be only one king upon the chessboard” when asked to Spoiler. Indeed, his later rejection of death as a fact of the natural order is the ultimate expression of his unwillingness to address these difficult decisions. But for all his efforts at rationality, Harry systematically overestimates his own abilities and underestimates that of others: he Spoiler, and mistrusts Dumbledore in part because he underestimates him. Harry refuses to accept that he is playing with agents of similar ability.

If we further examine Dumbledore’s metaphor, we find that chess, when played by two skilled players, is a game of continual tradeoffs. Move after move, players have to value advantages and weaknesses against one another: whether it’s worth it to sacrifice a material for an attack on the opposing king, to give up the initiative in order to capture an unprotected pawn, or to sacrifice a solid pawn structure in order to speed up development. Generally, players of expert level will see most of the important candidate moves in their calculations as a master. The main difference is that master-level players are able to consistently choose the correct option from among the candidate moves they’ve identified, whereas lesser players may choose inaccurately. Though both players start at rough equality (with slightly better winning chances for white, as starting with the initiative is worth about a quarter-pawn), over the course of many moves, small advantages may accumulate until one player is convincingly in the lead, and can convert his advantages into victory. Moreover, chess is a game of victory at all costs. You may capture almost all of the opponent’s material but still lose the game when checkmated. Conversely, you may sacrifice everything and yet still win the game, if you can force checkmate. Yet Harry refuses to play by these standards, and in doing so, essentially fails to take his opponents seriously.

Countless times throughout history, commanders of armies have underestimated their enemies and swiftly met a crushing defeat. Pompey Magnus faced Julius Caesar at Pharsalus in 48 BC; Pompey’s forces were well-supplied, and outnumbered Caesar’s 2 to 1. They had cut off Caesar from resupply, reinforcements, or escape, and needed only to avoid battle and starve their enemy to force a surrender. Yet urged by his sub-commanders to seek a glorious rather than bloodless victory, Pompey gave battle, and proving an inferior tactician, was utterly defeated. The first lines of The Art of War state, “The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death. Therefore, it is a matter which must be regarded with the utmost seriousness.” Yet despite failing this first and most important criterion, Harry is never forced to confront the consequences for his failures. Indeed, Dumbledore sought to prepare him to fight the same type of war against the Dark Lord: one where Harry, too, would have to constantly weigh the lives of his friends against the greater good. Yet not only is his Spoiler relatively bloodless, there is never any moment where Harry must weigh two terrible choices against one another; his “rationality” is never put to any true test of character. Even Spoiler.

No novel, however, is without fault, and HPMOR is still a wonderfully engaging narrative. Yet rational fiction in general seems to adhere to the narrative pattern of an inevitable hero’s success against overwhelming odds. Perhaps because HPMOR is a genre-defining piece of rationalist fiction, other writers feel compelled to imitate it in that regard. Or perhaps the feeling of empowerment that this kind of narrative can grant is too enticing to resist. Yet it would be better for the genre, and for narrative craft in general, if there were a more thorough and thoughtful examination of the cost of victory, and the tradeoffs that must be made- because in reality, the methods of rationality do not yield bloodless miracles. Rather, they allow one to slowly deduce the best choices from the otherwise indiscernible muddle of real living. In failing to acknowledge this, we also miss out on the opportunity to explore greater issues of societal values and morality, and their interplay with rationality. Granted, a thorough exploration of these issues would be a vastly ambitious undertaking; yet it is a task will almost certainly yield interesting and complex narratives. Whatever the case, the task of evaluating choices against one another, and the costs of achieving a near-impossible victory, are ideas that deserve more attention in the rationalist consciousness.

In sidestepping the difficult choices that Dumbledore feared Harry might one day have to make, we also ignore the fundamental tension between the pursuit of rationality and humanity itself. Perhaps there is a path to victory, but the choices that must be taken in order to achieve that goal are ones that ordinary people can’t bear to make. At the end of chapter 82 of HPMOR, we consider one such choice: whether Harry’s mother should have fled and left him to his fate, as Voldemort suggested. Yet after brief reflection, Harry says merely, “but people can’t live like that,” and the story never again picks up the thread. It’s a human quality to struggle with rationality and the choices that must be made in spite of intuitive or moral misgivings. Yet when victory always comes without cost, there’s no need for our heroes to turn aside from their singleminded pursuits; we miss the opportunity to question whether or not our goals are worth pursuing.

The neglect of these issues does not appear to be intractable or an endemic component of the genres of rationalist and rational fiction, at least not by definition. A myriad of factors, along with the sheer difficulty of crafting narrative capable of examining human issues have prevented this from happening. Yet perhaps these issues deserve our attention. It’d be interesting, at the very least, to explore the art of rational narrative along among human lines, and to consider the best of the worst kinds of choices.

Comments:

u/sixfourch [+7] (4 hours later)

(Consider this post spoilers for all HPMOR)

It's certainly correct that individual protagonists wielding a large amount of plot power are not very realistic, but that's not to say works of fiction based around these characters isn't rational. HPMOR wasn't intended to be a hyperrealistic portrayal of a rational world; it was a portrayal of a fictional world that was intended to teach rationality. While it tried to have some level of consistency, there are definitely several handwavey aspects to the worldbuilding that make it almost whimsical. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I also agree that rationalist fiction doesn't explore the realistic outcomes of realistic conflicts very well. Mostly I think this is because so much of it is derivative work, and usually from fantastical source material. I think rationalist fiction about an organization, rather than a person in particular, would be a good fit to depict this sort of realistic conflict, because an organization will outlive any of its individual members. I'm sort of surprised I haven't seen a James Bond series along this line, but other works certainly have the capability to explore it if they don't mind deviating very seriously from the source material -- so many rationalist fanfics are based on young adult fantasy that puts the protagonist in ridiculously out of their depth situations early on, just to shock readers, that not many of their protagonists would live very long.

I also think that

But there are few, if any, rationalist narratives where the protagonist is forced to accept a true compromise of their values, or change their outlook because of any truly intractable problems or incompatibility between their beliefs and reality.

this is not really justified. Malfoy was supposed to be the characterization of the rationalist ability to change your mind. Harry never really has to change his mind because he's never wrong (except about Quirrell).

HPMOR also does tackle problems of sacrifice and the cost of victory, as well, just in Harry's internal monologues and not in the reality of the conflict. Most of the characterization of this is in the revealed history of the previous war, but these threads often come through into the primary narrative. Most notably, I think, Dumbledore sacrifices the child that Harry could have been, implied to be the happy, athletic, loving, brave, noble, jocky and sort of dumb version that is canon Harry. Instead, Harry is a cold, rationalist killing machine, prophesied to be capable of making mistakes as vast as destroying the light cone, perpetually tormented by this knowledge and the knowledge that he has lost at least Dumbledore and, for a while, Hermione. One way that HPMOR softens this blow is that it always does leave a way out -- Hermione's cryopreserved corpse turned into Riddle's imprisoned semantic and procedural memory, Dumbledore is frozen in time but maybe not out of reach forever. But this is because HPMOR is meant to be enthusiastic, optimistic propaganda for a techno-utopian rationalist future. Thankfully not all rationalist fiction is hobbled by that.

u/ianstlawrence [+8] (3 hours later)

Really enjoyed this. It terms of sacrifice for victory I actually think Worm is a really great example of that done well.

I think you also illustrated a weakness of HPMOR very well. Thanks for writing this.

u/thecommexokid [+6] (2 hours later)

[For the future, it would be more in keeping with reddit etiquette to have made this post a link to your /r/HPMOR post, instead of duplicating the original post here. That way there is a single canonical place for comments.]

u/None [+7] (2 hours later)

[deleted]

u/Shadawn [+3] (7 hours later)

The main problem with rationality/realism in fiction is that reality is boring. When your enemy has that many different advantages and uses them rationally... you lose. Case closed, end of discussion.

I agree with this SO SO MUCH! My only issue with HPMOR was Final Exam battle. For one, sufficiently smart Quirrell would recognize total Obliviation as being as bad as death and modify his Deathly Hallows accordingly (since they originally can store independent backups).

That's why in a Rational Story there should be similar level of power for both sides.

u/Cariyaga [+2] Kyubey did nothing wrong (4 hours later)

Bahl's Stupefaction was a very suspiciously absent chekov's gun. While it was never pointed out explicitly that it was used, the symptoms are there.

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