Harry Potter and the methods of rationality

What I love about it

That it (sometimes) deals with magic system asking the questions I would ask, if I saw the universe acting in such a suspiciously anthropomorphic way.

That it''s totally hilarious in places about those questions.

That I genuinely care about its version of some of the characters.

What I don't like (so much)

Obviously writing something like this is hit-and-miss, and you couldn't have the great bits without having the rough edges, so I don't mean to criticise the fic by pointing out what worked less well for me.

It sometimes seemed to be pushing Harry's hyper-rationality at the expense of common sense or normal human feeling. Which is understandable, as that's sort of the point. That's what I had a problem with when I first tried to read it, that Harry's father and to some extent Harry dismissed his mother's experiences of magic, and only reluctantly implementing a rational test, which well-characterised or not annoyed me; but I got to like it a lot more when I saw that the fic did expose Harry's own biases (such as always looking for clever solutions that made him shine, rather than sane ones), for instance when the sorting hat points them out.

But there's still a definite tendency to fetishise rationality: for instance, several times there are mentions of extreme torture or other evil stuff, and I feel like (1) yes, it's good that someone can examine this stuff objectively but (2) he needs to be more aware of most people's reluctance to face it, not as "something I'll understand once it's explained to me" but "something I will respect even before I understand why people do it".

I feel someone going around asking questions like "hm, so is torture evil?" is like someone designing an atomic bomb: most probably it will NOT lead them into unrestricted amorality if someone can't justify it quickly enough, or set fire to the entire atmosphere of the Earth, but you want to be careful examining that sort of thing.

And it's good to examine all the questionable premises of a magical story, and a commonly effective way of doing that is to take them to the logical conclusion. But it's not always the best way: sometimes it smacks of someone reading Animal Farm and saying "This doesn't make any sense, animals can't talk, and if they COULD talk, they STILL wouldn't act like that", and then driving that point into the ground. In magic systems, the details vary enormously, but a common set-up is that performing a spell correctly is something like invoking a complicated one-line perl program: incomprehensibly powerful if you don't know the rules, but amenable to a mixture of hard work and aptitude. Now, this is a good metaphor, but not a perfect metaphor, and it's perfectly possible to critique it. But I think everyone understands instinctively, even if they can't articulate it, that examining the exact correspondence between magic words and results won't hold up, and driving that into the ground is funny and may make a good point about how science works but is a dead end when criticising the world-building.

Also, some of the pop culture references, while nice, are a bit forced.

Hogwarts Houses

I mentioned this elsewhere, but decided it was worth recording as a post.

Firstly, Hogwarts houses are like a roleplaying game alignment system: an intriguing set of axes to project people onto, and an interesting premise for a fictional world, but not a complete reflection of real people.

However, it occurred to me that lots of people get stuck on questions like "Why isn't Hermione in Ravenclaw?" and that an equally plausible and possibly more consistent interpretation was also inherent in the description. Namely, what if your house reflects, not what you're best at but what you value most.

The houses might be loosely categorised as:

Gryffindor: Bravery, justice, rashness, self-importance
Ravenclaw: Intelligence, curiosity
Hufflepuff: Loyalty, hard-workingness,
Slytherin: Ambition, ruthlessness

In this interpretation, it doesn't mean that Hermione is more brave than she is academically brilliant -- but that if she had to choose, she'd think Hermione-without-brilliance is more Hermione than Hermione-without-Justice. Put in those terms, it suddenly makes a lot more sense: many people I know fall into a similar category: I don't know how I would cope without my skills, to a large extent they define who I am -- but not as much as my moral positions, as scraggly as they are.

The same for Neville: it's always difficult for him to show courage -- but he never ever gives up trying. And for Cedric Diggory: I don't know, but I can imagine that he's quite brave and intelligent, but being loyal and hard-working is what is at his core.

Of course, there are things Rowling says about the system that we never see: like a likeable Slytherin, or one who doesn't seem honestly repulsive. But I think Rowling genuinely meant that to exist, even if the books fail in presenting it.

It also ties in to the defining idea that Harry chose his destiny.

Of course, this may all be made explicit in the books, but I don't think it is. Conversely, the system may not have a plausible rationale, but I still like this way of looking at it.

Order of the Stick, General Tarquin

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