HPMOR characterisation
Mar. 3rd, 2016 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackAs always spoilers, although this may be of interest to people who haven't read all of it, as long as they don't mind spoilers about the ending.
Harry's Genius
Why is Harry so precocious? A big part of the answer is, Voldemort's personality was overwritten onto him by the failed horcrux spell. I'm not clear if that was supposed to include thing V developed as he got older, or if it's just, it's not a coincidence there's TWO such similar characters.
One person changing the world
Another part of the answer is, the wizarding community is really small, so it makes sense there are a lot of things that are possible, but no-one ever thought to try. EY went to considerable effort to explain why he thought that was plausible. And I agree in general, there often is unexploited potential that people fail to see.
But here I think something that HPMOR touched on in passing but didn't really commit to, that genius discoveries tend to require both intelligence and a willingness to try new things even if they seem stupid AND a lot of hard work. Like, if a bold new experiment needs one step, it's strange no-one has tried it. But if it needs ten steps, someone would have to really know what they were looking for to do it. And I think it's natural that fiction short-circuits hard work because it's hard to portray well, HPMOR makes a good effort to do so! But many of the big insights do come as sudden inspirations rather than sudden inspirations only after a lot of dead ends, however much it tried to avoid that.
Lack of empathy
I don't know how psychologically realistic this is, but a big point is that V happened to almost completely lack empathy, and this leads him into doing lots of evil things to people, whereas H is almost the same personality, but WITH empathy left over from his original personality as Lily and James' child, which makes all the difference.
There seems to be an ongoing theme of people struggling to express friendship, empathy and happiness in very abstract ways.
One bit that left an impression on me (and that I've heard elsewhere, though I don't know if it's completely accurate?) was that people naturally feel empathy for people they see as "us", and naturally feel little empathy for "them". And that people who don't feel empathy at all are unusual, but that feeling empathy for people you don't have any connection to, is also something that most people don't do much by default?
Harry's Genius
Why is Harry so precocious? A big part of the answer is, Voldemort's personality was overwritten onto him by the failed horcrux spell. I'm not clear if that was supposed to include thing V developed as he got older, or if it's just, it's not a coincidence there's TWO such similar characters.
One person changing the world
Another part of the answer is, the wizarding community is really small, so it makes sense there are a lot of things that are possible, but no-one ever thought to try. EY went to considerable effort to explain why he thought that was plausible. And I agree in general, there often is unexploited potential that people fail to see.
But here I think something that HPMOR touched on in passing but didn't really commit to, that genius discoveries tend to require both intelligence and a willingness to try new things even if they seem stupid AND a lot of hard work. Like, if a bold new experiment needs one step, it's strange no-one has tried it. But if it needs ten steps, someone would have to really know what they were looking for to do it. And I think it's natural that fiction short-circuits hard work because it's hard to portray well, HPMOR makes a good effort to do so! But many of the big insights do come as sudden inspirations rather than sudden inspirations only after a lot of dead ends, however much it tried to avoid that.
Lack of empathy
I don't know how psychologically realistic this is, but a big point is that V happened to almost completely lack empathy, and this leads him into doing lots of evil things to people, whereas H is almost the same personality, but WITH empathy left over from his original personality as Lily and James' child, which makes all the difference.
There seems to be an ongoing theme of people struggling to express friendship, empathy and happiness in very abstract ways.
One bit that left an impression on me (and that I've heard elsewhere, though I don't know if it's completely accurate?) was that people naturally feel empathy for people they see as "us", and naturally feel little empathy for "them". And that people who don't feel empathy at all are unusual, but that feeling empathy for people you don't have any connection to, is also something that most people don't do much by default?
no subject
Date: 2016-03-04 01:12 pm (UTC)"Connection" is an interesting one. Physical proximity, seeing people with your own eyes, etc. may be sufficient; or may be sufficient in the absence of special things that cause empathy to be turned off. Adam Smith (yes, that Adam Smith) talks about: "pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner."
I mean, I think there's a difference between the sort of person who minds their own business and the business of their ingroup and leaves outgroups alone, and the sort of person who seeks out outgroup members to exploit, or at any rate exploits those that they come across.