Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (113 page)

HAMLET
Thou shalt not be avenged, save that thou swear:
an I slay thine killer, so wilt thou vouchsafe to me the means
by which I might slay death.

He who killed you will join you in the Pit,
and then that’s it. No further swelling of Hell’s ranks will I permit.

Ghost
Done. When my brother is slain, he who poured the poison in my ear,
then will I pour in yours the precious truth:
the making of the Philosopher’s Stone. With this Stone, thou may’st procure
a philter to render any man immune to death, and more transmute
base metal to gold, to fund the provision of this philter to all mankind.

HAMLET
Truly there is nothing beyond the dreaming of philosophy.
Wait.
The man whom I must kill-my uncle the king?

Ghost
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-

HAMLET
Indeed, he has such gifts I near despair,
of killing him and yet succeeding to his throne.
‘twill be an awesome fight for awesome stakes.
Hast thou advice?

A cock crows. Exit Ghost.

(HonoreDB has now extended this to a complete ebook)
(entitled _A Will Most Incorrect to Heaven: The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet and the Philosopher’s Stone_)
(available for $3 at makefoil dot com)
(yes, really)

MOBY DICK AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY

(as related by
Eneasz
on LessWrong)

“Revenge?” said the peg-legged man. “On a
whale?
No, I decided I’d just get on with my life.”

ALICE IN THE LAND WHERE THINGS ARE EVEN CRAZIER THAN HERE

(as first written by
braindoll
in a review of this chapter, with some further edits)

Alice was sitting by her sister on the bank, reading a book. She had several friends who were older, and if she just asked nicely, they were often happy to lend her books without
quite
so many pictures and conversations as was thought appropriate for a girl her age.

Hot days often made her feel sleepy and stupid, so Alice had thoughtfully wet a handkerchief and placed it at the back of her neck. Still her mind had gone off wandering (just as if it was some little kitten whose owner had taken off her eyes for just a moment), and she had just decided that the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth around 4/3 of the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, which was nonetheless not equal to the opportunity cost of putting down her book, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so
very
remarkable in that; nor, in fact, did Alice think it so
very
much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” But when the Rabbit actually
took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket,
and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice froze in sudden clarity and fear, for she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it. “Oh bother,” she said to herself (though not aloud; she had long since cured herself of that habit, as it made people take her even less seriously than they already did). “If I did not immediately recognize how much curiouser that was than the average rabbit, then something is interfering with my curiosity, and that is most curious of all.” So, burning with questions, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

(thanks to
dsummerstay
for reminding me to post this one)

MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn’t believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living -

NEO
(politely)
: Excuse me, please.

MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?

NEO: I’ve kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity
decreases
as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you’re telling me that their food is
the bodies of the dead, fed to the living?
Haven’t you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?

MORPHEUS: Where did
you
hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?

NEO: Anyone who’s made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!

MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?

(Pause.)

NEO: …in the Matrix.

MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.

(Pause.)

NEO
(in a small voice)
: Could I please have a real physics textbook?

MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn’t run on math.

Hermione Granger had read somewhere once, that one of the keys to staying thin was to pay attention to the food you ate, to notice yourself eating it, so that you were satisfied with the meal. This morning she’d made herself toast, and put butter on the toast, and cinnamon on the butter, and it really should’ve been enough to get her to
notice,
this time, the goodness that was in front of her…

Without noticing the cinnamon or the butter, without noticing the food or that she was eating, Hermione swallowed another bite of toast, and said, “Can you try explaining that again? I’m still completely flabbergasted.”

“It’s pretty straightforward, if you think like a Light-Side Slytherin,” said the boy that everyone else in school, excepting only the two of them, now believed to be her true love. Harry Potter’s spoon absentmindedly stirred his breakfast cereal; he hadn’t taken many bites of it this morning, not that Hermione had seen. “Every good thing in the world brings its own opposition into existence. Phoenixes are no exception.”

Hermione took another unnoticed bite out of her buttered and cinnamoned toast, and said, “How can anyone
not understand
that Fawkes thinks you’re a good enough person to ride around on your shoulder? He wouldn’t do that with a Dark Wizard! He just wouldn’t!”

And she hadn’t yelled at anyone about Fawkes’s touch on her
own
cheek, because she knew it wouldn’t be right - that if a phoenix touched you, you weren’t supposed to brag about it, that wasn’t what a phoenix was
for
.

But she’d really
hoped
that it would squash the rumors about Harry Potter going evil and Hermione Granger following him down.

And it hadn’t.

And she truly couldn’t understand why not.

Harry ate another bite of his cereal, his eyes going distant now, no longer meeting her own. “Think of it this way: You skip school one day, and you lie and tell your teacher you were sick. The teacher tells you to bring a doctor’s note, so you forge one. The teacher says she’s going to call the doctor to check, so you have to give her a fake number for the doctor, and get a friend to pretend to be the doctor when she calls -”

“You did
what?
”

Harry looked up from his cereal then, and now he was smiling. “I’m not saying I really
did
that, Hermione…” Then his eyes abruptly dropped back down to his cereal. “No. Just an example. Lies propagate, that’s what I’m saying. You’ve got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that’s connected to the first lie. And if you
kept on
lying, and you
kept on
trying to cover it up, sooner or later you’d even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn’t work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn’t work. So if someone wants to
go on
defending the lie, they’ve got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely
scientific
kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn’t exist and there’s no such thing as objective reality. A lot of common wisdom like that isn’t just
mistaken,
it’s anti-epistemology, it’s
systematically
wrong. Every rule of rationality that tells you how to find the truth, there’s someone out there who needs you to believe the opposite. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there’s a lot of people out there telling lies -” Harry’s voice stopped.

“What does that have to do with Fawkes?” she said.

Harry withdrew his spoon from his cereal, and pointed in the direction of the Head Table. “The Headmaster has a phoenix, right? And he’s Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot? So he’s got political opponents, like Lucius. Now, d’you think that opposition is going to just roll over and surrender, because Dumbledore has a phoenix and they don’t? Do you think they’ll admit that Fawkes is even
evidence
that Dumbledore’s a good person? Of course not. They’ve got to invent
something
to say that makes Fawkes…
not important.
Like, phoenixes only follow people who charge straight at anyone they think is evil, so having a phoenix just means you’re an idiot or a dangerous fanatic. Or, phoenixes just follow people who are pure Gryffindor, so Gryffindor they don’t have the virtues of other Houses. Or it just shows how much courage a magical animal thinks you have, nothing else, and it wouldn’t be fair to judge politicians based on that. They have to say
something
to deny the phoenix. I bet Lucius didn’t even have to make up anything new. I bet it had all been said before, centuries ago, since the first time someone had a phoenix riding on his shoulder, and someone else wanted people not to take that into account as evidence. I bet by the time Fawkes came along it was already common wisdom, it would have just seemed
strange
to take into account who a phoenix liked or disliked. It would be like a Muggle newspaper testing political candidates to rate their level of scientific literacy. Every force for Good that exists in this universe, there’s someone else who benefits from people discounting it, or fencing it into a narrow box where it can’t get to them.”

“But -” Hermione said. “Okay, I see why Lucius Malfoy doesn’t want anyone to think that Fawkes matters, but why does anyone who
isn’t
a bad guy
believe
it?”

Harry Potter gave a little shrug. His spoon dropped back into his cereal, and went on stirring without a pause. “Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you’ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up. Or they don’t have a phoenix themselves, so their political instinct tells them there’s no advantage to be gained from saying nice things about phoenixes. Or because being cynical feels like knowing a secret truth that common people don’t know…” Harry Potter looked in the direction of the Head Table, and his voice dropped until it was almost a whisper. “I think maybe that’s what
he’s
getting wrong - that he’s cynical about everything else, but not about cynicism itself.”

Without thinking, Hermione looked in the direction of the Head Table herself, but the Defense Professor’s seat was still empty, as it had been on Monday and Tuesday; the Deputy Headmistress had pronounced, earlier, that Professor Quirrell’s classes for today would be canceled.

Afterward, when Harry had eaten a few bites of treacle tart and then left the table, Hermione looked at Anthony and Padma, who had been coincidentally eating nearby but certainly not eavesdropping or anything.

Anthony and Padma looked back at her.

Padma said hesitantly, “Is it just me, or has Harry Potter started talking like a more
complicated
sort of book in the last few days? I mean, I haven’t been listening to him very long -”

“It’s not just you,” said Anthony.

Hermione didn’t say anything, but she was becoming increasingly worried. Whatever had happened to Harry Potter on the day of the phoenix, it had changed him; there was something new in him now. Not cold, but
hard.
Sometimes she caught him staring out a window at nothing visible, a look of grim determination on his face. In Herbology class on Monday, a Venus Fire Trap had gone out of control; and Harry had tackled Terry out of the way of a fireball even as Professor Sprout had shouted a Flame-Freezing Charm; and when Harry had risen from the floor he’d just gone back to his place like nothing interesting had happened. And when for once she’d gotten a better test score than Harry in their Transfiguration exam, later that same Monday, Harry had smiled at her as though to congratulate her, instead of gritting his teeth; and… that had bothered her
a lot
.

She was getting the sense that Harry…

…was pulling away from her…

“He seems a lot
older
all of a sudden,” said Anthony. “Not like a real grownup, I can’t imagine
Harry
as a grownup, but it’s like he suddenly turned into a
fourth-year version
of… of
whatever
he is.”

“Well,” Padma said. She daintily dabbed a chocolate-flavored scone with some scone-flavored frosting. “I think Dragon and Sunshine had better ally during the next battle or Mr. Harry Potter is going to
smash
us. We were allied last time, and even then Chaos almost won -”

“Yeah,” said Anthony. “You’re right, Miss Patil. Tell the Dragon General that we want to meet with you -”

“No!” said Hermione. “We shouldn’t
have
to gang up on General Potter just to stand a chance. That doesn’t make sense, especially now that nobody can use Muggle things anymore. It’s still twenty-four soldiers in every army.”

Neither Padma or Anthony said anything to that.

Knock-knock, knock-knock.

“Come in, Mr. Potter,” she said.

The door creaked open, and Harry Potter slipped through the opening into her office; he pushed the door shut behind him with one hand, and wordlessly seated himself in the cushioned chair that now stood in front of her desk. She’d Transfigured that chair so often that it sometimes changed form to reflect her mood, without any wand movement or incantation or even conscious intent. Right now, that chair had become deeply cushioned, so that as Harry sat down he sank into it, as though the chair were hugging him.

Harry didn’t seem to notice. There was an air of quiet determination about the boy; his eyes had locked steadily with hers, and not let up for a moment. “You called me?” said the boy.

“I did,” said Professor McGonagall. “I have two pieces of good news for you, Mr. Potter. First - have you met Mr. Rubeus Hagrid, at all? The groundskeeper? He was an old friend of your parents.”

Harry hesitated. Then, “Mr. Hagrid spoke to me a bit after I got here,” Harry said. “I think it was on Tuesday of my first week of school. He didn’t say he knew my parents, though. At the time I thought he just wanted to introduce himself to the Boy-Who-Lived… did he have some kind of hidden agenda? He didn’t
seem
like the type…”

“Ah…” she said. It took her a moment to pull her thoughts together. “It’s a long story, Mr. Potter, but Mr. Hagrid was falsely accused of murdering a student, five decades ago. Mr. Hagrid’s wand was snapped, and he was expelled. Later, when Professor Dumbledore became Headmaster, he gave Mr. Hagrid a place here as Keeper of Grounds and Keys.”

Harry’s eyes watched her intently. “You said that five decades ago was the last time a student died in Hogwarts, and you were certain that five decades ago was the last time someone heard the Sorting Hat’s secret message.”

She felt a slight chill - even the Headmaster or Severus might not have made that connection that quickly - and said, “Yes, Mr. Potter. Someone opened the Chamber of Secrets, but this was not believed, and Mr. Hagrid was blamed for the resulting death. However, the Headmaster has located the additional enchantment on the Sorting Hat, and he has shown it to a special panel of the Wizengamot. As a result, Mr. Hagrid’s sentence has been revoked - just this morning, in fact - and he will be allowed to acquire a new wand.” She hesitated. “We… have not yet told Mr. Hagrid of this, Mr. Potter. We were waiting until the deed was done, so as not to give him false hope after so long. Mr. Potter… we were wondering if we could tell Mr. Hagrid that it was you who helped him…?”

She saw the weighing look in his eyes -

“I remember Mr. Hagrid holding you when you were a baby,” she said. “I think he would be very happy to know.”

She could see it, though, on Harry’s face, the moment when he decided that Rubeus wouldn’t be any use to him.

Harry shook his head. “Bad enough that someone might deduce there was a Parselmouth in this year’s crop of students,” Harry said. “I think it’d be more prudent to just keep it all as secret as possible.”

She remembered James and Lily, who’d never hesitated to return the friendship the huge, bluff man had offered them, for all that James was the scion of a wealthy House or Lily a budding Charms Mistress, and Rubeus a mere half-giant whose wand had been snapped…

“Because you don’t expect him to prove useful, Mr. Potter?”

There was silence. She hadn’t intended to say that out loud.

Sadness crossed Harry’s face. “Probably,” Harry said quietly. “But I don’t think he and I would get along, do you?”

Something seemed to be stuck in her throat.

“Speaking of making use of people,” Harry said. “It seems I’m going to be thrown into a war with a Dark Lord sometime soon. So while I’m in your office, I’d like to ask that my sleep cycle be extended to thirty hours per day. Neville Longbottom wants to start practicing dueling, there’s an older Hufflepuff who offered to teach him, and they invited me to join. Plus there’s other things I want to learn too - and if you or the Headmaster think I should study anything in particular, in order to become a powerful wizard when I grow up, let me know. Please direct Madam Pomfrey to administer the appropriate potion, or whatever it is that she needs to do -”

“
Mr. Potter!
”

Harry’s eyes gazed directly into her own. “Yes, Minerva? I know it wasn’t your idea, but I’d like to survive the use the Headmaster’s making of me. Please don’t be an obstacle to that.”

It almost broke her. “Harry,” she whispered in a bare voice, “children shouldn’t have to
think
like that!”

“You’re right, they shouldn’t,” Harry said. “A
lot
of children have to grow up too early, though, not just me; and most children like that would probably trade places with me in five seconds. I’m not going to pity myself, Professor McGonagall, not when there are people out there in real trouble and I’m not one of them.”

She swallowed, hard, and said, “Mr. Potter, at thirty hours per day, you’ll - get
older,
you’ll age faster -”
Like Albus.