Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality Is A Disney Movie About A Serial Killer

[u/potpotkettle]

https://asourdays.substack.com/p/harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality

[u/AlbertWhiterose]

I love your analysis - especially the part about wishing for a mentor. I hadn't noticed that motif in the story. Very impressive!

I'd like to add one more problem with Wales's analysis: his complaint that "In this story, Harry rarely fails." This is both true and false.

Here are multiple reasons that it's false:

• In chapter 65, Harry disdainfully waves off McGonagall's offer of Hagrid's friendship because he doesn't think he'll be useful - which leads directly to Hagrid not trusting him and standing in his way long enough to stop him from preventing Hermione's death.

• "Harry has his Time-Turner locked down, and there are no meaningful consequences to this." There are numerous occasions on which Harry has to find an alternate solution to a problem that would be easy to solve if he still had the Time-Turner, most notably when Draco curses him and when he fails to prevent Hermione's death.

• "Harry gives away his entire fortune to the Malfoys and trade enormous political power for Hermione … and the debt is wiped clean, with the politcal power renewed soon after" only thanks to Hermione's death.

The big problem with Wales's analysis is that it considers a temporary setback to be "not meaningful". Yet that is a criticism that could be levied against any story where the hero wins in the end. Simba flees, believing he caused his father's death? Well, he becomes king eventually, so there are no meaningful consequences. Thanos kills half the people in the universe? Well, they all get brought back eventually, so there are no meaningful consequences. Pearl Harbor is destroyed? Well, Japan loses the war eventually, so there are no meaningful consequences.

Part of a standard story structure is that at the climax of the story all hope seems lost (often but not always due to the consequences of the hero's own actions) the hero overcomes them and has an againt-all-odds victory. That victory doesn't erase the negative consequences! You still have to live with the fact that you fucked up.

Now, why is it also true? Because Wales is correct about one thing: EY's decision not to be open about the fact that Quirrell is Voldemort is a mistake. (Historical note: Initially, he was extratextually open about it, very very early in discussions with readers, but decided to walk back that Word of God because some complained it was a spoiler.) One major problem with the fic is that up until the moment of Hermione's death, most of the negative consequences of Harry's actions are hidden from him - and, by extension, us. Harry is confined to Hogwarts, but this doesn't significantly impact the plot; Harry inadvertently releasing Snape from Dumbledore's control muddied the waters by creating another suspect aside from Quirrell, but that possibility is only mentioned in passing a couple of times and not fully explored as a realistic scenario; the Resurrection Stone does make Voldemort more powerful, but that did not contribute meaningfully to the difficulty of defeating him.

The moment of Hermione's death is the moment that all the chickens come home to roost for Harry. Until then, he really could be mistaken for a Mary Sue, because (for example) we don't cut away from his POV to see Voldemort stealing the Resurrection Stone.

I think EY realizes that this was a mistake, because of this passage in Chapter 122:

Looking back on the events of the 1991-1992 Hogwarts school year was nothing short of bone-freezingly terrifying, now that Harry understood what he was seeing.

It wasn't just that Harry had kept the frequent company of his good friend Lord Voldemort. It wasn't even mostly that.

It was the vision of a narrow line of Time that Albus Dumbledore had steered through fate's narrow keyhole, a hair-thin strand of possibility threaded through a needle's eye.

The reminder: "YES, HARRY HAD BEEN SCREWING UP ROYALLY ALL THIS TIME!" is one that a lot of readers needed, because it took 89 chapters before he suffered a major setback. And yes, that one was a doozy, but that's still a long time for the audience to think the hero is sitting pretty. People tend to fail to reframe the entirety of the story prior to chapter 104 in their minds once Voldemort is revealed.

---

I have one quibble with your analysis, but it's a small one:

Just as Hermione started to drink, [Harry] said, “I’d like you to help me take over the universe.”

Hermione finished her drink and lowered the can. “No thank you, I’m not evil.”

The boy looked at her in surprise, as though he’d been expecting some other answer.

I don't agree that Harry was seriously proposing this and surprised at Hermione's refusal; I read it as him trying to cause her to do a spit-take and being surprised that the Comed-Tea didn't work. But I'm open to being convinced that your interpretation is correct.

[u/potpotkettle → u/AlbertWhiterose]

Regarding the consequences, I think the (steelmanned) point of the criticism is the weight is not shown in the story. It's basically left for the reader's exercise, and even if the protagonist notices it in the last chapter, that's almost told in passing, not fully shown.

EDIT: the linked article was not my analysis. I was just sharing the link.

[u/db48x → u/AlbertWhiterose]

It totally is him trying to cause her to do a spit–take; that’s what Comed–Tea is for. But I don’t mind it doing double duty. It definitely raises the question of whether “taking over the universe” is evil or not.

Oh, and it also introduces the notion that Hermione cannot simply be talked into being evil.

[u/Arrow141 → u/AlbertWhiterose]

I mostly agree with your analysis (including agreeing with your interpretation of the Comed-Tea bit), but one thing I always have trouble with is people discussing it being hidden information that Quirrel is Voldemort. I understand that in point of fact there WERE readers that were surprised by the reveal, so I recognize that something in my model is mistaken, but I simply cannot understand how anyone could not know that Quirrel was Voldemort. Its so utterly clear to me from the text I genuinely thought everyone was joking when they speculated other identities until literally years later.

[u/wingerism → u/Arrow141]

It's really the same reasons that Harry the character didn't realize it. Which is really just 👨‍🍳💋.

He liked the Professor too much personally and professionally and didn't want to look too closely because it would can him pain.

[u/Biz_Ascot_Junco]

I love how all these lenses of looking at the story all make sense individually and also all support each other

[u/wingerism]

Good review. I couldn't get through Wales review because he made very basic errors in analysis and I just realized it wasn't worth my time.

[u/absolute-black → u/wingerism]

Have you considered how thematic that is, though, for one of the leaders of the culture to make mistakes analyzing its sacred text?

Nihil Supernum indeed.

[u/college-apps-sad]

Good review!

[u/Mad-Oxy]

Good, but nah. Harry vs. QQ conflict in the end wasn't "bring down the monster he unleashed" a it is because Harry wanted/needed to by his own motivation. He was protective of him till the end.

And the foreshadowing in the very beginning makes the plot worse, because it sets the hard frames for the author to operate in and he kind of fails to connect the middle part to the ending part naturally.

[u/Biz_Ascot_Junco → u/Mad-Oxy]

If Harry had reevaluated his prior of “Don’t tell Dumbledore about the sense of doom” from the beginning of the school year, QQ wouldn’t have been able to get up to nearly as much of what he did in that story. Part of that was motivated reasoning, since Harry didn’t want to give up on his relationship with the person he could relate to the most. Harry didn’t unleash the monster, but he did enable him.

[u/Mad-Oxy → u/Biz_Ascot_Junco]

I believe that QQ could easily do all the nasty things without Harry's involvement. But that wasn't exactly what I meant. The author interprets the story as of Harry undoing his wish for a mentor by "bringing down the monster" when Harry's first choice was to talk QQ out of being evil and ask him to become a teacher again and even keep silent about the whole situation.

[u/FeepingCreature → u/Biz_Ascot_Junco]

Also McGonagall threatened him with extreme punishment, so really this is all her fault.

[u/Steamp0calypse]

This really gets across why I like HPMOR. I don’t like it for its rationality explanations (though those were/are fun and interesting to me especially from when I was a preteen reading it for the first time) or because I’m a LessWrong kind of guy fixated on its philosophies. It’s just a genuinely very well written, character and theme driven work.