OliveTapenade
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User ID: 1729
Random addition, I'm sorry, I'm thinking about Harry Potter now and I'm in full-on literary criticism mode.
Gryffindor and Slytherin are generally presented as each other's opposites, and Harry and Malfoy are the archetypal Gryffindor and Slytherin, respectively. We are also told that courage is the Gryffindor virtue, and ambition is the Slytherin virtue. This is never pointed out to us explicitly, but it occurs to me that, in the world of the books, Harry and Malfoy are both characters who are totally lacking in the other side's characteristic virtue.
It's easy to notice that Harry's signature virtue seems to be passivity, obedience, or lack of ambition. Since Rowling is on Harry's side, she tends to also present acceptance and passivity as one of the primary virtues. Consider how in Philosopher's Stone, Harry is able to see the location of the Stone in the Mirror of Erised, whereas no one else can, because Harry alone does not want the Stone for anything. Other people see themselves doing things with the Stone, but Harry, who only wants to find it and not use it, sees himself finding it. Throughout the series as a whole, Harry follows Dumbledore's instructions obediently, and he is generally pretty bad at taking initiative himself. When in situations that would require him to take the initiative, he tends to either sit around waiting for things to happen (cf. Goblet of Fire and even worse in Deathly Hallows), or to do what he thinks Dumbledore would want him to do (cf. Dumbledore's Army). When characters ask him what he would like to do after graduating, he tends to stammer a bit and be unsure, as he does not seem to have given it any thought. In the parable of the Deathly Hallows, with the three brothers granted wishes by Death, the two brothers who want to use their wishes to accomplish things fail and die horrible deaths, whereas the third brother, who wants to do nothing except hide, is the 'good' one; and Harry inherits the third brother's cloak, and his power of invisibility. The climax of the whole series is Harry's death in the Forbidden Forest, a scene which involves Harry obediently following prophecy, accepting death, and letting it happen to him. Harry is a person largely without ambition.
Meanwhile the most noticeable character trait Malfoy has, aside from his snobbishness or his bullying nature, is his cowardice. This almost becomes a virtue in the final few books - Voldemort and the Death Eaters try to recruit Malfoy into their army, or have him carry out important duties for them, and he always hesitates. Malfoy is afraid to actually hurt other people. It's not that he's selfish, or that he's primarily afraid to be in danger. In Deathly Hallows, for instance, Malfoy would definitely be safer, in Malfoy Manor, if he just positively identified the heroes. But he doesn't. In Half-Blood Prince, he is entrusted with a crucial task for the villains, but dilly-dallies, makes excuses, and ultimately is too squeamish to go through with it. The dramatic climax of the book is Malfoy hesitating, afraid to commit a murder. But he never becomes a hero either. He is too afraid to join them as well. The heroes save his life in Deathly Hallows but he's still unable to bring himself to join them. Just as Harry suffers a basic lack of ambition, Malfoy suffers a basic lack of courage.
In some ways that makes Malfoy one of the more interesting characters in the books, to me. Rowling could have written him as a two-dimensional villain, and she didn't. In the first book Malfoy is, like Snape, a red herring - he's nasty so he seems like the villain, but he isn't. But as the books go on, we can tell that he has actual virtues. I think the crucial chapter for him is chapter 31 of Deathly Hallows - Malfoy intervenes to stop Crabbe and Goyle from killing Harry, Crabbe betrays him and sets the room on fire, and Harry goes to save Malfoy and Goyle:
And then Harry heard a thin, piteous human scream from amidst the terrible commotion, the thunder of devouring flame.
“It’s – too – dangerous –!” Ron yelled, but Harry wheeled in the air. His glasses giving his eyes some small protection from the smoke, he raked the firestorm below, seeking a sign of life, a limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood….
And he saw them: Malfoy with his arms around the unconscious Goyle, the pair of them perched on a fragile tower of charred desks, and Harry dived. Malfoy saw him coming and raised one arm, but even as Harry grasped it he knew at once that it was no good. Goyle was too heavy and Malfoy’s hand, covered in sweat, slid instantly out of Harry’s –
“IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I’LL KILL YOU, HARRY!” roared Ron’s voice, and, as a great flaming chimaera bore down upon them, he and Hermione dragged Goyle onto their broom and rose, rolling and pitching, into the air once more as Malfoy clambered up behind Harry.
[...]
Malfoy fell off the broom and lay facedown, gasping, coughing, and retching. Harry rolled over and sat up: The door to the Room of Requirement had vanished, and Ron and Hermione sat panting on the floor beside Goyle, who was still unconscious.
“C-Crabbe,” choked Malfoy as soon as he could speak. “C-Crabbe…”
“He’s dead,” said Ron harshly.
I notice that, facing certain death by flame, Malfoy's first instinct is to grab the unconscious Goyle and try to drag him to safety. Malfoy could then drop Goyle and just hang on to Harry, but he holds on to his friend, unwilling to leave him to die. Once they all get out, Malfoy's immediate thought is for Crabbe, and he seems to be in tears. He seems to feel this way even though Crabbe had just turned on him. That tells me that Malfoy is not entirely a horrible person. He cares about his friends and responds empathetically, even when he could let go and save himself.
Malfoy's problem isn't that he doesn't have a conscience. He does. It's that he's a coward. He's a fence-sitter - in theory he believes in pure-blood supremacy, but he doesn't have the stomach for what Voldemort and his minions would do to secure it. He seems to realise that Voldemort would destroy everything he cares about (as does Lucius, by the end), but does not have the courage to stand against him.
Anyway, when I make this analysis, it seems pretty clear that what Harry and Malfoy need to do is learn from each other - or at least, learn from the house opposed to theirs. Harry's ability to accept what is necessary is to an extent a virtue (a better writer than Rowling could make something kenotic out of it), but if it were tempered with ambition, if Harry had more sense of purpose and initiative, he would be a better hero and a better man. Likewise I cannot help feeling that Draco Malfoy, if he were given more of a spine, could also perhaps be a good man.
Whether you wrote a genfic about a Harry/Malfoy friendship, or M/M slash, or M/F romance with a Malfoid, I think there's potential there. A dramatically compelling friendship or romance should have something that each partner offers the other. A partnership in which Harry can encourage Malfoy to be braver and more principled, and Malfoy can encourage Harry to show more initiative and ambition, seems like it might bring the best out of both of them.
OliveTapenade
5hr ago
Okay, good catch. I didn't remember that line.
OliveTapenade
14hr ago
That being said, another poster pointed out that in many ways, Harry Potter really is about world building, it's a beautiful world, you just have to squint a bit.
OliveTapenade
14hr ago
You are missing the point.
OliveTapenade
18hr ago
I honestly think the Sanderson approach is overrated. You do not have to write a novel series as if you're writing an RPG sourcebook. Vampire: the Masquerade needs to define exactly how vampire powers work; Interview with the Vampire does not.
I'd agree that Harry Potter as a series would be improved if the magic was less obviously ad hoc, and if there were less in the way of magical powers that appear only once, could obviously solve whatever problems the heroes run into in the future, and yet are rapidly forgotten, but I suppose I think that's more of a plotting issue than a worldbuilding issue. We don't need to know exactly how the magic works for the sake of the story.
OliveTapenade
23hr ago
(Sorry, I've been spamming a lot here.)
This certainly resonated with me and reminded me of my lonely years trying to find someone to love. An old reddit post I revisit now and then sums it up thus: "A man wants to be loved for who he is, not for what he does in order to be loved. [...] When he can finally let go of the crank he continually turns day after day in order to earn love and, even if only for a moment, it turns by itself to nourish him in return, that is when he will know he is loved."
This reminds me a lot of Oliver Traldi on romance tropes. Specifically:
A very different kind of film, Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze's Adaptation, features the thought-provoking line: "You are what you love, not what loves you." And why shouldn't we think of men as characterised by the gentleness they seek, and women by the brutality they demand, rather than vice versa? Over thousands upon thousands of generations we have made each other into what we most value.
The more obvious read of culture and gendered tropes is that men do, and women are. But why shouldn't we reverse that? Men want what is; women want what does. We are all trying to live up to a standard set by the other.
Obviously all human beings are constantly in the process of both doing and being. They are inextricably woven together. But perhaps for men (I can only speak for my own sex) there is something both tender and liberating in knowing that we are valued for what we are, even when all our abilities to do fade away.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Generally a "story and world that hang together" are bad things. The desire for a world where everything makes sense is fundamentally a nerd's preoccupation. The real world itself usually doesn't have a story and rules that hang together.
Ironically, I actually think the strength of Harry Potter as a series is, fundamentally, its worldbuilding. The actual story of Harry Potter is not particularly impressive - the relationships between the core cast are messy and unsatisfying, and Rowling mostly fails to tell a compelling seven book narrative. The first few books are pretty good, but those books are mostly mystery stories, presenting the reader with a series of clues buried in amid exposition and worldbuilding.
Harry Potter has very good worldbuilding, but it's not the kind of worldbuilding that, pardon my language, autistic nerds like. The magic system in the series clearly has no rules, for instance, and things that any RPG player would immediately notice as game-breaking, like the Time Turner, enter and exit the narrative without explanation.
What it does do, however, is brilliantly create a sense of place. The main character of the series is Hogwarts, and Hogwarts is a very evocative setting - the magical castle with its interior constantly shifting, the quirky and colourful professors, the four thematically-aligned houses, and so on. I think readers really engaged with and fell in love with the setting. That's why it provoked so much fan fiction - the setting is a great place to tell stories, and the main characters are thin and archetypal enough that they can easily be shuffled around that setting to tell whatever story you like. The events of the story can be changed, and even the genre can be changed (obviously there's a ton of romance fanfic), but the setting, the world, is what makes it feel like Harry Potter.
Compare also the vast popularity of prequel fanfic - James, Lily, the Marauders, young-Snape, and so on. You can remove the actual story of Harry Potter and swap out all the characters and it's still magic, and people still want to read about it and write about it. Look at relationship tags on AO3 and notice the popularity of Sirius/Lupin, James/Lily, Regulus/James, or even Marlene/Dorcas, the latter being two names casually mentioned as coming from Harry's parents' generation but otherwise never described. The setting is doing all the work.
Or consider Hogwarts Legacy - popular game, used Harry Potter really well, but set in the 19th century. Avalanche Software correctly realised that the important thing about Harry Potter is the school, not any particular students or any particular events in the story.
In this light, the defense I'd make of Malfoid would be - okay, obviously it's boys and young men indulging in a romantic fantasy. There's ultimately nothing wrong with that. The last I checked girls and young women thirsted for Malfoy for decades and no one batted an eyelid. Maybe Malfoid is an Edward Cullen figure, but that's okay. For that matter nerdy guys have been writing fanfic about attractive girls in Potter for just as long.
Anyway, once you accept that this is male romantasy, I think it makes good use of the IP. Hogwarts Castle is a romantic setting, and the premise here - everyman hero plus well-bred, snobby perfectionist - is a perfectly solid one for a romance. I think it works fine.
It doesn't 'fix' anything with Rowling's series, and I think that's a silly way to think about it, but who says it has to? It's just a story idea that some boys like. Good for them.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
Certainly the Death Eater vision is pure-blood wizard supremacy, but they appear to have been flexible enough to recruit other magical races by promising to elevate their status, or give them revenge on their traditional enemies, or something similar. I doubt the Death Eaters ever intended to treat werewolves, giants, vampires, etc., as equals, but useful allies are useful allies, and I could see the werewolves going for that deal. From the werewolf perspective, you know all the wizards look down on you anyway. That's your default. The Death Eaters share the prejudices of their fellows, but they also offer you potential power and a chance to strike back at some, if not all, wizards.
I would not be surprised if Greyback or his fellows intended to betray Voldemort at some point in the future. In the short term, though, they seem to have shared a common enemy.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
In the context of wizards, I think we're meant to read Voldemort as engaging in a kind of fascist politics of purification - unite all the 'true wizards', blame everything bad on a scapegoat minority (muggle-born and muggle-sympathisers), and then pursue a larger project of conquest and expansion. I think populist is a reasonable word to use for that kind of politics.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
As per here, I suspect that in practice it's somewhat inconsistent, and depends on whether it is advantageous in a given context to emphasise one's ancestry.
I think the relevant part here, in narrative terms, is that Malfoy clearly attempted to be friends with Harry. As it happens Harry immediately cottoned on to Malfoy being a jerk, but from Malfoy's perspective, he knew that Harry was a hero, that it would be politically and practically useful to have Harry on-side, and that Harry, though with good wizard ancestry (esp. on his father's side), was raised by muggles and therefore ignorant.
The passage I quoted is the first time Malfoy knows he's talking to Harry, but as it mentions, they had met earlier in the robes shop, though at this point Malfoy didn't know who Harry was.
In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him, slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.
“Hello,” said the boy, “Hogwarts, too?”
“Yes,” said Harry.
“My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,” said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. “Then I’m going to drag them off to took at racing brooms. I don’t see why first years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully father into getting me one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.
“Have you got your own broom?” the boy went on.
“No,” said Harry.
“Play Quidditch at all?”
“No,” Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.
“I do — Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you’ll be in yet?”
“No,” said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been — imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”
“Mmm,” said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.
“I say, look at that man!” said the boy suddenly, nodding toward the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn’t come in.
“That’s Hagrid,” said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn’t. “He works at Hogwarts.”
“Oh,” said the boy, “I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?”
“He’s the gamekeeper,” said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.
“Yes, exactly. I heard he’s a sort of savage — lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”
“I think he’s brilliant,” said Harry coldly.
“Do you?” said the boy, with a slight sneer. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” said Harry shortly. He didn’t feel much like going into the matter with this boy.
“Oh, sorry,” said the other, not sounding sorry at all. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.”
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What’s your surname, anyway?”
But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear,” and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” said the drawling boy.
Malfoy tries to make conversation, and seems to be, from his perspective, trying to be friendly? He throws in that question about ancestry, so blood does matter to him, but hearing that both Harry's parents were wizards is enough for Malfoy to assume that this boy must be a pure-blood like him. However, Harry rapidly gets the impression that Malfoy is a snob and an entitled bully, especially from the way Malfoy talks about 'servants'. I think it's telling that Malfoy asks Harry's surname before he even asks his first name.
The interpretation I took from these two initial meetings is that Harry Potter is pure-blooded enough for Malfoy to potentially accept him as a friend, and both conversations make it clear that Malfoy would be willing to have Harry as a friend. However, the way that Malfoy talks about other people is enough for Harry to immediately realise that Malfoy treats other people with contempt, and is cruel to those he thinks are 'below' him. Harry instinctively sticks up for his friends and defends the little guy (perhaps due to his own past, being bullied at school and picked on by Dudley), and indeed this loyalty will go on to be one of Harry's greatest virtues.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
My impression is that isn't really a formal definition of the term. It's not as if there are laws that label people in one category or the other. In practice I suspect that there are central cases of pure-bloodedness (i.e. both sides of the family are magical nobility going back to generations), and central cases of muggle-ness (just as obvious), and that everywhere in the middle there's some room for negotiation.
Harry has good breeding on his father's side, but his mother's is questionable. James Potter was presumably seen as slumming it or as being a little scandalous, by the standard of the old families, by marrying a muggle-born. However, if Harry behaves well, wins the respect of the old families, and also marries well, that could be overlooked - especially if there is political advantage in having Harry on-side, since he is generally perceived as a hero. His mother's muggle-born status is probably not enough by itself to use against him, if he moves well in pure-blood circles, but if he does not behave well (as he does not canonically), then you start whispering about how that muggle blood on his mother's side is telling.
In practice I suspect a lot about blood purity is post hoc - if your ancestry is mixed (and almost all wizards' ancestry is mixed; 100% pure-bloods are a small, incestuous elite, and muggle-borns are rare), it's up to what you or those judging you choose to emphasise.
This is a tiny nitpick, but, er...
Half-blood?
Is Harry even half-blood, by wizarding standards? His father James was a pure-blood from a good old wizarding family. His mother Lily was muggle-born, but was a wizard herself. Harry is the child of two wizards and therefore is surely pure-blood?
My rough understanding of the terms was that pure-blood means two wizarding parents, half-blood means one wizard parent and one muggle, and muggle-born means two muggle parents. Wiki tells me that the term is more restrictive than that and having any non-magical ancestors in your immediate family background removes you from pure-blood status, but as it notes itself, almost all wizards have at least a few non-wizard ancestors around somewhere. Is the muggle-born Lily too close for Harry to count?
The Malfoys are snobbish and old-fashioned and I'd imagine that, from their perspective, James Potter did something at best scandalous by marrying a muggle-born, so they can still dislike Harry. The Malfoys are, in canon, horrible people prepared to hate even pure-blood families if they think they're too sympathetic to muggles. The Weasley family is pure-blood, but they are poor and they don't act with decorum, so the Malfoys hate them too. One gets the impression sometimes that the Malfoys just hate everyone outside their ingroup, and blood status is just an excuse.
Still, I notice that in Philosopher's Stone, when Malfoy first meets Harry, he is polite at first and tries to invite Harry into his own, 'superior' social circle:
Three boys entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin’s robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he’d shown back in Diagon Alley.
“Is it true?” he said. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”
“Yes,” said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.
“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. “And my name’s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”
Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. Draco Malfoy looked at him.
“Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford.”
He turned back to Harry. “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”
He held out his hand to shake Harry’s, but Harry didn’t take it.
“I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks,” he said coolly.
Draco Malfoy didn’t go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,” he said slowly. “Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.”
Harry then stands up for Ron and this appears to sour their whole relationship, but the point is that Malfoy knew who Harry was, presumably therefore knew of Harry's ancestry, and yet clearly made this invitation for Harry to hang out with him and enter his company. He does this while also verbally attacking the Weasleys, whose blood is impeccably pure, so I think there's more to the Malfoys' mindset than just "pure blood good, muggle blood bad". It's all wrapped up with class, wealth, behaviour and deportment, and so on.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
idk man, it's kinda weird to uphold a magically trans'd 13 year old as a shining example of wholesome trad right wing romance.
As I understand it, Malfoid is not in-character trans. The idea of Malfoid is that the character of Draco(nia?) Malfoy was always female in this universe.
In that context, I mean, Harry Potter is famously kind of conservative if you think about it. Harry Potter is a story about a boy discovering that, unbeknownst to him, he was born into aristocracy, and inheriting a full ride to Eton or Harrow. He is then trained in and formed by these traditional, elite, European institutions, displays exceptional loyalty to them, and fends off and defeats a populist revolt led by a strongman.
Add in the romantic fantasy and is this not a fantasy about a better world, associated with the past? One of benevolent authorities, traditions, and meaningful struggle to defend something good? In some of the fantasies the OP links, the role Malfoy plays is to uplift Harry - to, however sharp-tongued she may be, encourage him to dress well, practice his manners, and generally become a worthier man.
You don't see how any of that could be interpreted as wholesome trad romance?
OliveTapenade
1d ago
If smart people trend towards X and dumb people trend towards Y, and everything else you know about it is equal you should go with X.
All other things being equal, that's a reasonable heuristic. If the only things you know about X and Y is that smarter people go for X, then it makes sense to tentatively go for X.
I would suggest, however, that this is only a loose heuristic. I think most people implicitly do something like that anyway - if we don't know about an issue ourselves, we tend to go with the opinions of people we trust.
That said, if you have come to a conclusion yourself, independently, and it turns out that some dumb people also hold that conclusion, I don't think that should cause you to worry.
The last point I'd suggest would be that 'smart' and 'dumb' are not always easily measurable qualities. Most of the time you don't have the ability to stop a conversation and administer a bunch of IQ tests, and while intelligence is surely real, the cultural construction of intelligence is unreliable. In practice "go with what the smart people think" is a heuristic that will encourage conformity with your society's visible intellectual elite, whether that's scientists or priests or natural philosophers or Marxist bureaucrats. It's too easy to think of scenarios where it would hush up much-needed dissent.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
In the hypothetical A obviously. But reality isn't that hypothetical and in the real world better reasoning skills will tend to result in more accurate answers. This is the literal point of reasoning after all. Smarter people will tend to be more right than dumber people are.
In that case, then what is the point of considering the hypothetical of "right for the wrong reasons" versus "wrong for the right reasons"? The former can only be right by accident, and the latter can only be wrong by some sort of mistake. Wrong reasons will inevitably conduce to wrong answers, and right reasons likewise to right answers.
Don't you just, at this point, reduce to "good and smart things are good and smart"? Well, sure, but that's not much of an insight.
In the post I was responding to, you suggested:
Even if you think homosexuality or people taking cross sex hormones is an immoral act and you have a strong argument for it, it doesn't change that most opposition in the group is from the low IQ reason of "ew that's gross" or "my fantasy religion book said that's bad".They aren't using your supposed better argument, they're using a stupid one.
Okay, so, let's rephrase the hypothetical a bit.
Group A, which is small, holds position X for well-thought-out reasons.
Group B, which is also small, though larger than Group A, holds position anti-X for well-thought-out reasons.
Group C, which is very large, holds position X for poorly-thought-out reasons.
Should Group A therefore recant position X, and switch to anti-X? Why?
From the position of Group A, maybe Group C have accidentally or arbitrarily landed on a correct position. Is that a reason to turn down Group C's support? I can't see any inconsistency in Group A allying with Group C, and perhaps also aiming to better-educate Group C.
Alternatively, Group A might theorise that there's some deeper, hard-to-express wisdom that is being expressed by Group C, even if Group C are incapable of rationalising it or expressing it. This is the argument you get in The Secret of Our Success, or what concepts like the wisdom of repugnance are getting at. In Catholic theology, this is also called the sensus fidei - the people as a whole may not be able to competently express a doctrine, but they have an 'instinct' for its truth. (A famous example of this is that most lay Catholics cannot define the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, but they have an instinctive, inchoate sense that Mary is special, or in some way set apart by God for a holy task.)
Maybe you buy the idea of some sort of pre-rational folk wisdom, like SooS or the sensus fidei, but even if you don't, I do not see how the existence of Group C constitutes a reason for Group A to reconsider their views. Even if Group C picked a position completely at random, from Group A's perspective, they got lucky and picked the right position. It's certainly not evidence that position X is wrong.
You used the example of social conservatism, but I don't think you have to read this in a partisan way like that. Your post, following Hanania, seems to be written assuming that the intelligent elite will always trend liberal (for some unspecified definition of 'liberal') whereas the masses will be conservative, but that doesn't seem to empirically always be the case. Even on the example he used, sexuality, the masses have switched sides and now the opposite seems to be true - in the West nowadays, position X is pro-LGBT, and it's Group B who are anti-gay. (The intellectual gap is visible as well! Group A, the intellectual pro-LGBT camp, are now the ones who've dived into queer theory and trans liberation and family abolition. Group C, the masses, are the ones who say 'sure, let them marry, don't care one way or the other'.)
But generally and more broadly, it is true that there are sometimes liberal or progressive positions embraced by the masses, while smaller intellectual groups are against them. I don't think you can universally generalise. The masses adopt all sorts of positions - maybe sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes through being honestly persuaded, maybe sometimes due to messy, organic cultural revolution - and I do not consider the fact that the masses hold a particular position to be an argument against that position.
On the individual level, of course you should always try to hold your positions for the right reasons. That goes for everyone. But the existence of large numbers of people who hold the same position for the wrong reasons should not invalidate your reasons, nor cause you any kind of intellectual crisis.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
One of the big reasons being that social conservativism even if it has the right answer will do so for the wrong reasons.
I find this an odd argument, particularly if you care about truth or morality?
Suppose we have two groups of people, A and B. Group A generally finds right answers, but for wrong reasons. Group B generally finds wrong answers, but for right reasons. Which group would you rather be in?
I feel like there's a reasonable case that Group A is preferable. The right answers are, well, the whole point. I would rather be in the group that's not eating sharks or getting cyanide poisoning. Even then, I think the Secret of Our Success model is a bit too patronising - the shark and manioc examples are cute but sound too much like "they did something sensible but for bad reasons, whereas we know the good reasons now".
But what makes a reason 'right' or 'wrong'? If a certain type of reasoning generally leads you to right or good answers, doesn't that in itself make that type of reasoning right? The slogan used to be that rationality is winning. The process that gets you to the right answers is the right process, surely?
I do think that good reasoning and bad reasoning exist. A guess that randomly lands on the right answer is not epistemically virtuous; likewise a reasonable hypothesis that nonetheless turns out to be false is not un-virtuous. High school science teaches that Democritus came up with atomic theory, but firstly he didn't really, and secondly Democritus' atoms aren't really any more sensible or reasonable a guess than Thales' water-based theory. Good reasoning ought to reliably, in a manner better than random chance, lead to good results. Likewise we might think that good reasoning ought to, in some way, logically relate premises to conclusions, though even that might just be a result of the observation that logic positively correlates with reasons that lead to good conclusions.
However, in a case like this, if Group A are using some sort of black-box reasoning that regularly leads to good conclusions, and Group B are using a different black-box that regularly leads to bad or wrong conclusions, I would suggest that maybe we should look in Group A's black box. Maybe there's something inside it that works. Good reasoning is reasoning that regularly produces good conclusions.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
You've mis-used the word 'trivial'. All those arguments you've made might be true, but none of them are trivially true. They all depend on contingent claims about the world. Any claim that is meaningfully evidence-based cannot be trivial.
At any rate, I read Scott as clearly concerned about time frame. I do not think he is talking about abstract possibilities. Yes, the word 'forever' is in that passage I quoted, but he is plainly talking about short-term technology policy. His view, as far as I can tell, is that we need to 'solve the alignment problem' while creating 'AI' in the immediate short term, or else not make 'AI' at all, and he views the latter option as some sort of permanent stunting of human potential.
OliveTapenade
2d ago
I don't actually think 1-5 are all obvious, but my point is that you responded to my criticism of my Scott with points that are in the 1-5 area.
Do I think that people are actually going to stop making LLMs? No, I don't. If I had to bet, I'm in the camp that sees LLMs as a 'normal technology'. I think they will exist, more use will be made of them, and that the uses found will be moderate and not that interesting. I think both the doomers and the singularitans will be disappointed.
The point that I made that you took issue with was that it is ludicrous to say that if we don't make LLM-based 'AI', we're '[consigned] to a permanent civilisational childhood or an early grave'. That is absurd. If we don't pursue that technology, we're not even locking ourselves out of artificial intelligence, much less locking ourselves out of civilisational maturity.
The Babel example was meant to be evocative, not an argument as such. You're an atheist, fine, whatever. Scott made a comparison from Judaism so I felt it was within-bounds to reply with another comparison from Judaism.
With 7 you're bringing in 'short term'. Scott is specifically saying 'not right now' and neither am I. Scott wrote about Plan A where he explicitly asks for 15 or so years to make sure it's done right, not racing ahead.
Fifteen years is short term.
This is one of the weird things about the debate to me - the absurdly short timelines everybody seems to be approaching it with. From my perspective, Scott and the 'AI pause' people are basically one subgroup of accelerationist AI-enthusiast arguing with another subgroup of accelerationists. Five, ten, fifteen years, that's all still the short term. That is the immediate future. Medium-term for me means 'within the next hundred years or so', i.e. within the lifetimes of people alive today, and long-term means after that.
Well, you may not care for technical capacity. In some abstract sense, the Zulu empire and the British empire were equal peers. But in all real and significant senses, obviously the British were better and greater and the Maxim Gun settled the question.
I think there is a very good argument to the effect that 'civilisational maturity', if it is a meaningful measure, refers to more than sheer destructive power.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
Bots have a lot of users, but dislike of the technology is steadily increasing, especially among younger generations, the people you would expect to be the most tech-savvy and most open to new tools.
I don't realistically expect a revolution to destroy it all, but I do think people are underestimating how much it is loathed. Bots are mostly being pushed from above - I was irritated this morning to read a story advising 'AI avoiders' to ease themselves into using 'AI', even though an 'AI avoider', by definition, doesn't want to use it! If the best we can do is impose a kind of social stigma around using bots, or at least carve out the idea that it's legitimate for people in the public sphere to refuse this technology, then that's still something worth fighting for.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
You're leaping up a tower of assumptions here. Let's go in order:
1: A greater intelligence than humans is possible.
2: An artificial intelligence greater than human intelligence is possible.
3: Humans are able to create an artificial intelligence greater than our own.
4: Language models are a viable means by which such an intelligence might be created.
5: It is possible that humans might create such an intelligence via language models in the short to medium term future.
6: It is desirable to create such an intelligence.
7: If we fail to create such an intelligence in the short term, human civilisation will be permanently stunted or developmentally limited.
Scott asserted 7, and in return, I asserted that 7 is an insane position. You have responded to me by asserting something in the range of 2-4.
Let me make some other suggestions. It might be possible to choose not to make super-intelligences via LLMs now, but to do it in two hundred years, or five hundred years, or on any other timeline you like. Or it might be possible to make super-intelligences via some other, non-LLM means. There's no reason to think that LLMs specifically need to be used to conjure up super-intelligence right now or else the human race has no future.
I'm also inclined to challenge him just on the grounds of goals and values. He mentions 'civilisational childhood or an early grave'. Well, what would constitute 'civilisational adulthood'? What is civilisational maturity? He's making a value judgement. Suppose I don't think that technical or computational capacity is identical to civilisational maturity. That just seems implausible on the face of it - and certainly I don't believe that the worth of a civilisation or a people should be measured linearly and quantitatively like that. On the contrary, in individual humans I think that maturity involves a capacity for self-control and restraint; if that applies also on the civilisational level, then one might argue that civilisational adulthood would involve the ability to choose not to go down a path that we judge to be unwise.
In Scott's response, he says that thinking of an AI as all-powerful would be shituf, which is a sin. Firstly, that's not what shituf means, and secondly, arguably the whole point of shituf is that it's not sin for a Gentile. Shituf is an ad hoc attempt to be merciful to Gentiles who hold opinions that, in Jewish eyes, are not properly monotheistic. (I consider this to be grounded in a mistaken understanding of the Trinity, but I do appreciate the attempt to extend grace.) But if we're going to invoke the wisdom of the Jewish tradition, Scott and Pinker both being Jewish, I might suggest also considering another story in the Torah.
I cannot help but read that statement about 'civilisational childhood' and picture someone standing in front of a half-built tower reaching into the heavens and explaining, "If we stop building this tower to heaven, we are consigning ourselves to permanent civilisational childhood or an early grave."
Tolkien's reaction to the news of the atomic bombs was, in Letter #102 (9 August 1945):
The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
OliveTapenade
3d ago
I'd say that I lost some respect for both of them through this argument, but to be honest I don't think I ever had much respect for Pinker. The ignorant and strawmannish Enlightenment Now really ended any sympathy I had for him as a thinker. Nonetheless, Pinker's letter to Scott was courteous and concise; I think you can tell that Pinker is a better or at least more professional writer.
Scott's response... to be honest, it reminded me of point six here. The world Scott is in is small and homogenous - there's an awful lot of citing Omohundro and Hinton, and after a while one starts to think that that's because he's only got a handful of people, and is shocked and appalled that anybody disagrees with them. Scott does land some real hits on Pinker - the RAND study mistake is an embarrassing mis-step by Pinker - but also avoids some of Pinker's stronger arguments, and sets up his own straw men.
I'm not particularly interested in nitpicking many of the specific disagreements, especially because plenty of them leave ample room for both to be, in a sense, right. Pinker is correct that 'intelligence' can't be modelled as a single variable; Scott is correct that nonetheless it is reasonable to talk about 'intelligence' in a general sense.
What stood out to me, personally, was the way that the mask came down a bit, and setting aside all disputes about facts, Scott is dedicated to normative commitments that I think are repulsive, or frankly insane. Consider:
My biggest worry about AI right now (aside from the doom, of course) is that, exactly like with global warming, all of this prevaricating will come back to roost. Once it becomes obvious to the average person that AI really is a big deal and really is dangerous - and I am no longer sure this moment is in the future - we will have to choose between two visions. One vision, which I’ve tried to help lay out in Plan A, is to rise to the challenge, give scientists the time and resources they need to solve the alignment problem, and enter the future with confidence. The other vision is to simply ban smarter-than-human AI forever, consigning us to a permanent civilizational childhood or an early grave.
I'm sorry, but this is lunatic. We need to invest in language models or human civilisation will be permanently stunted? What? He's got some sort of science fiction eschatology in mind that seems both absurd on the factual merits and, perhaps more importantly, morally blinkered. While I did always know that Scott had some of those bizarre transhumanist beliefs (and I'm certainly not a convert to Phil-Torres-like conspiracism), it is, at least, a useful reminder that he approaches the whole issue of technology from a bizarre starting point that I cannot sympathise with.
OliveTapenade
17d ago
The first sentence here made me think it was some sort of Latin rite Catholic lesbian bar.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that 'Western Mass' means 'Massachusetts', and I am still disappointed, because this story could only be improved by the inexplicable involvement of the Catholic Church.
OliveTapenade
18d ago
I work in aged care.
The only significant use I have seen for it at work thus far is listening to and transcribing conversations in meetings, like an automated secretary.
Management also set up a policy bot, so you can ask the bot about the existing policies on such-and-such procedure, and it will search through the intranet and tell you, but thus far it does not seem to be widely used.
For the most part I think nobody knows what it is. All the doctors and RNs I talk to make their own judgements, and find the idea of outsourcing patient welfare decisions to a computer terrifying. Personal care workers and lifestyle workers have no use for it. Residents mostly have no idea what it is. I appear to have been identified by a few co-workers as relatively tech-savvy (you help people log in or troubleshoot a computer problem a few times and suddenly you have a reputation...), so there have been a few cases where I have reluctantly explained to people what ChatGPT is and how you use it. In practice I try not to encourage its use, though.
The most visible use of LLMs or bot-generated content I see at work, as I've commented before, is via YouTube slop. We have large televisions that can access YouTube and sometimes use them to play music, classic movies, church services, the news, or anything else residents might be interested in. Search results are increasingly polluted by AI-gen content, and sometimes YouTube automatically rolls over to them. This is a regular if minor frustration for care and lifestyle workers looking for good shows or playlists.
I probably can't generalise from my field, but if I had to guess, I'd say that for most jobs 'on the ground', which require either interacting with people or interacting with real, physical things, AI/LLMs/bots remain a solution looking for a problem. I know my case that the site manager is quite technophilic and is intrigued by the potential for AI, but thus far the use cases just don't exist.
OliveTapenade
19d ago
What people dislike about AI sounding texts is that they are trite, not that they are AI generated.
I don't think this is true. I think people dislike the auto-generation itself. The simple test of this would be that you can show somebody a text, ask if they enjoy it, get a result, and then reveal to them that it was bot-written and watch them get angry.
I'm willing to bet that if you ran a study where you gave the same text to three groups, where you tell the first group nothing, tell the second group that the text is written by a bot, and tell the third group that the text is written by a human, and then ask them all to rate the text, the second group would rate it the lowest.
Maybe that's irrational, in the same way that people will prefer hand-made or artisanal objects to machined objects, but if so it's still a highly predictable irrationality.
In that case, thank you for the compliment!
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