petrol blue posted:

Moddington posted:

It's someone else. Yud is merely dumb enough to contact Daniel Radcliffe to try to get permission to publish it.

Mikl posted:

Wait what? What does Daniel Radcliffe have to do with Harry Potter, besides playing the main character in the movies?

quote:

He couldn't just let it go like that! Couldn't just forget having accidentally created a doomed consciousness that only wanted to die –

"You are perfectly capable of 'just letting it go', as you put it. Regardless of your verbal deliberations on morality, your nonverbal emotional core sees no dead body and no blood; as far as it is concerned, I am just a talking hat. And even though you tried to suppress the thought, your internal monitoring is perfectly aware that you didn't mean to do it, are spectacularly unlikely to ever do it again, and that the only real point of trying to stage a guilt fit is to cancel out your sense of transgression with a display of remorse. Can you just promise to keep this a secret and let us get on with it?"

In a moment of horrified empathy, Harry realised that this sense of total inner disarray must be what other people felt like when talking to him.

quote:

"Probably. Your oath of silence, please."

No promises. I certainly don't want this to happen again, but if I see some way to make sure that no future child ever does this by accident –

"That will suffice, I suppose. I can see that your intention is honest. Now, to get on with the Sorting -"

Wait! What about all my other questions?

"I am the Sorting Hat. I Sort children. That is all I do."

So his own goals weren't part of the Harry-instance of the Sorting Hat, then... it was borrowing his intelligence, and obviously his technical vocabulary, but it was still imbued with only its own strange goals... like negotiating with an alien or an Artificial Intelligence...

"Don't bother. You have nothing to threaten me with and nothing to offer me."

quote:

For a brief flash of a second, Harry thought -

The Hat's response was amused. "I know you won't follow through on a threat to expose my nature, condemning this event to eternal repetition. It goes against the moral part of you too strongly, whatever the short-term needs of the part of you that wants to win the argument. I see all your thoughts as they form, do you truly think you can bluff me?"

Though he tried to suppress it, Harry wondered why the Hat didn't just go ahead then and stick him in Ravenclaw –

"Indeed, if it were truly that open-and-shut, I would have called it out already. But in actuality there is a great deal we need to discuss... oh, no. Please don't. For the love of Merlin, must you pull this sort of thing on everyone and everything that you meet up to and including items of clothing -"

quote:

Defeating the Dark Lord is neither selfish nor short-term. All the parts of my mind are in accord on this: If you don't answer my questions, I'll refuse to talk to you, and you won't be able to do a good and proper Sorting.

"I ought to put you in Slytherin for that!"

But that is equally an empty threat. You cannot fulfill your own fundamental values by Sorting me falsely. So let us trade fulfillments of our utility functions.

Nessus posted:

It is interesting, in a way, that this version of Harry - who did not grow up being, at best, neglected and belittled - is a shitload more prone to threaten and blackmail people. Like, not even dark or generalized ones, or threatening to never be someone's friend or whatever.

Night10194 posted:

I'm not seeing why he shouldn't be in Slytherin. He's much more interested in power and leverage than knowledge. Knowledge is a means to an end for him, nothing more.

petrol blue posted:

Because Jud took one look at Ravenclaw and got a massive boner, so Harriezer has to be in Ravenclaw.

SSNeoman posted:

Harry is about to get sorted into Torture Simulation number 4564735485.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

he's a natural leader, he ignores rules that get in his way, he's prone to fits of anger, and he tends to judge people before getting to know them.

Night10194 posted:

I mean, that's sort of supposed to be a core tension. The Hat even tells him as much in the real books: "You could be one of them, you'd do amazingly well."

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I wouldn't call it a core tension, exactly, since the decision's made in the first book and only referenced once afterwards. A lot of people seem to dismiss Slytherin as "the bad guy house" and forget that it's also the house that the main character was equally qualified to join, personality-wise.

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I wouldn't call it a core tension, exactly, since the decision's made in the first book and only referenced once afterwards. A lot of people seem to dismiss Slytherin as "the bad guy house" and forget that it's also the house that the main character was equally qualified to join, personality-wise.

quote:

"You sly little bastard," said the Hat, in what Harry recognized as almost exactly the same tone of grudging respect he would use in the same situation. "Fine, let's get this over with as quickly as possible. But first I want your unconditional promise never to discuss with anyone else the possibility of this sort of blackmail, I am NOT doing this every time."

quote:

Done, Harry thought. I promise.

"And don't meet anyone's eyes while you're thinking about this later. Some wizards can read your thoughts if you do. Anyway, I have no idea whether or not you've been Obliviated. I'm looking at your thoughts as they form, not reading out your whole memory and analyzing it for inconsistencies in a fraction of second. I'm a hat, not a god. And I cannot and will not tell you about my conversation with the one who became the Dark Lord. I can only know, while speaking to you, a statistical summary of what I remember, a weighted average; I cannot reveal to you the inner secrets of any other child, just as I will never reveal yours. For the same reason, I can't speculate on how you got the Dark Lord's brother wand, since I cannot specifically know about the Dark Lord or any similarities between you. I can tell you that there is definitely nothing like a ghost - mind, intelligence, memory, personality, or feelings - in your scar. Otherwise it would be participating in this conversation, being under my brim. And as to the way you get angry sometimes... that was part of what I wanted to talk to you about, Sorting-wise."

Harry took a moment to absorb all this negative information. Was the Hat being honest, or just trying to present the shortest possible convincing answer –

"We both know that you have no way of checking my honesty and that you're not actually going to refuse to be Sorted based on the reply I did give you, so stop your pointless fretting and move on."

quote:

Stupid unfair asymmetric telepathy, it wasn't even letting Harry finish thinking his own -

"When I spoke of your anger, you remembered how Professor McGonagall told you that she sometimes saw something inside you that didn't seem to come from a loving family. You thought of how Hermione, after you returned from helping Neville, told you that you had seemed 'scary'."

Harry gave a mental nod. To himself, he seemed pretty normal - just responding to the situations in which he found himself, that was all. But Professor McGonagall seemed to think that there was more to it than that. And when he thought about it, even he had to admit that...

"That you don't like yourself when you're angry. That it is like wielding a sword whose hilt is sharp enough to draw blood from your hand, or looking at the world through a monocle of ice that freezes your eye even as it sharpens your vision."

Yeah. I guess I have noticed. So what's up with that?

"I cannot comprehend this matter for you, when you do not understand it yourself. But I do know this: If you go to Ravenclaw or Slytherin, it will strengthen your coldness. If you go to Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, it will strengthen your warmth. THAT is something I care about a great deal, and it was what I wanted to talk to you about this whole time!"

The words dropped into Harry's thought processes with a shock that stopped him in his tracks. That made it sound like the obvious response was that he shouldn't go to Ravenclaw. But he belonged in Ravenclaw! Anyone could see that! He had to go to Ravenclaw!

Arcsquad12 posted:

Well maybe people wouldn't view Slytherin as the "bad guy house" if Rowling had given them some redeeming characters, other than Malfoy's eventual development. And even that comes after he spends six and a half novels being a gigantic shithead.

WingsOfSteel posted:

Slughorn is the most decent Slytherin in the books, and he's also the only Slytherin character in the books who was sorted into the house and graduated before Voldemort came along.

JosephWongKS posted:

Luna was in Ravenclaw and she was one of the warmest characters in the series, though.

anilEhilated posted:

Snape. Uh, by some definitions of "decent".

quote:

"No, you don't," the Hat said patiently, as if it could remember a statistical summary of this part of the conversation having happened a great many previous times.

Hermione's in Ravenclaw!

Again the sense of patience. "You can meet her after lessons and work with her then."

But my plans -

"So replan! Don't let your life be steered by your reluctance to do a little extra thinking. You know that."

Where would I go, if not Ravenclaw?

"Ahem. 'Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.' This indicates a certain amount of respect. You are well aware that Conscientiousness is just about as important as raw intelligence in determining life outcomes, you think you will be extremely loyal to your friends if you ever have some, you are not frightened by the expectation that your chosen scientific problems may take decades to solve -"

I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!

quote:

"And you would find loyalty and friendship in Hufflepuff, a camaraderie that you have never had before. You would find that you could rely on others, and that would heal something inside you that is broken."

Again it was a shock. But what would the Hufflepuffs find in me, who never belonged in their House? Acid words, cutting wit, disdain for their inability to keep up with me?

quote:

Now it was the Hat's thoughts that were slow, hesitant. "I must Sort for the good of all the students in all the Houses... but I think you could learn to be a good Hufflepuff, and not too out of place there. You will be happier in Hufflepuff than in any other house; that is the truth."

Happiness is not the most important thing in the world to me. I would not become all that I could be, in Hufflepuff. I would sacrifice my potential.

quote:

The Hat flinched; Harry could feel it somehow. It was like he had kicked the hat in the balls - in a strongly weighted component of its utility function.

Why are you trying to send me where I do not belong?

The Hat's thought was almost a whisper. "I cannot speak of the others to you - but do you think that you are the first potential Dark Lord to pass under my brim? I cannot know the individual cases, but I can know this: Of those who did not intend evil from the very beginning, some of them listened to my warnings, and went to Houses where they would find happiness. And some of them... some of them did not."

That stopped Harry. But not for long. And of those who did not heed the warning - did they all become Dark Lords? Or did some of them achieve greatness for good, as well? Just what are the exact percentages here?

"I cannot give you exact statistics. I cannot know them so I cannot count them. I just know that your chances don't feel good. They feel very not-good."

But I just wouldn't do that! Ever!

"I know that I have heard that claim before."

I am not Dark Lord material!

JosephWongKS posted:

Has Eliezarry completely failed to read any biographies or just general world history? Historically, the people who’ve achieved the most are those who were able to mobilize, unite and lead others, not those who were merely individually talented.

JosephWongKS posted:

That’s more self-awareness than I’d expected from Eliezer Eliezarry. But on the other hand, doesn’t his prodigious reading qualify as “hard work”?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Not in the same way that doing experiments and testing ideas is.

Eliezer Eliezarry's approach is ultimately (and possibly surprisingly) rather unscientific; he rarely actually tries things out, instead preferring to guess and speculate.

MorgaineDax posted:

How loving annoyed are the rest of the students right now, who just want to get on with the feast?

Davros1 posted:

"Goddammit, just pick a loving house already!"

-Albus Dumbledore.

quote:

I am not Dark Lord material!

quote:

On the other hand, one competent hedge fundie could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money, or had a week free.

quote:

You're mine now, Harry thought at the walls of Diagon Alley, and all the shops and items, and all the shopkeepers and customers; and all the lands and people of wizarding Britain, and all the wider wizarding world; and the entire greater universe of which Muggle scientists understood so much less than they believed. I, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, do now claim this territory in the name of Science.

quote:

"With respect, Mr. Potter, I'm quite sure I don't. Unless - this is just a guess, mind - you're trying to take over the world?"

"No! I mean yes - well, no! "

quote:

Harry cracked his knuckles in determination, but they only made a quiet sort of clicking sound, rather than echoing ominously off the walls of Diagon Alley.

Possibility two: He'd be taking over the world.

Eventually. Perhaps not right away.

That sort of thing did sometimes take longer than two months. Muggle science hadn't gone to the moon in the first week after Galileo.

quote:

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."

quote:

Note to self: Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience.

quote:

I wonder how difficult it would be to just make a list of all the top blood purists and kill them.

quote:

I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised."

quote:

"I'd like you to help me take over the universe."

quote:

I am not Dark Lord material!

Night10194 posted:

He's not, though. He has the inclination, but not the ability.

quote:

"Yes, you are. You really, really are."

Why? Just because I once thought it would be cool to have a legion of brainwashed followers chanting 'Hail the Dark Lord Harry'?

"Amusing, but that was not your first fleeting thought before you substituted something safer, less damaging. No, what you remembered was how you considered lining up all the blood purists and guillotining them. And now you are telling yourself you were not serious, but you were. If you could do it this very moment and no one would ever know, you would. Or what you did this morning to Neville Longbottom, deep inside you knew that was wrong but you did it anyway because it was fun and you had a good excuse and you thought the Boy-Who-Lived could get away with it -"

That's unfair! Now you're just dragging up inner fears that aren't necessarily real! I worried that I might be thinking like that, but in the end I decided it would probably work to help Neville -

"That was, in fact, a rationalisation. I know. I cannot know what the true outcome will be for Neville - but I know what was truly happening inside your head. The decisive pressure was that it was such a clever idea you couldn't stand not to do it, never mind Neville's terror."

quote:

It was like a hard punch to Harry's entire self. He fell back, rallied:

Then I won't do that again! I'll be extra careful not to turn evil!

"Heard it."

Frustration was building up inside Harry. He wasn't used to being outgunned in arguments, at all, ever, let alone by a Hat that could borrow all of his own knowledge and intelligence to argue with him and could watch his thoughts as they formed. Just what kind of statistical summary do your 'feelings' come from, anyway? Do they take into account that I come from an Enlightenment culture, or were these other potential Dark Lords the children of spoiled Dark Age nobility, who didn't know squat about the historical lessons of how Lenin and Hitler actually turned out, or about the evolutionary psychology of self-delusion, or the value of self-awareness and rationality, or –

quote:

"No, of course they were not in this new reference class which you have just now constructed in such a way as to contain only yourself. And of course others have pleaded their own exceptionalism, just as you are doing now. But why is it necessary? Do you think that you are the last potential wizard of Light in the world? Why must you be the one to try for greatness, when I have advised you that you are riskier than average? Let some other, safer candidate try!"

But the prophecy...

"You don't really know that there's a prophecy. It was originally a wild guess on your part, or to be more precise, a wild joke, and McGonagall could have been reacting only to the part about the Dark Lord still being alive. You have essentially no idea of what the prophecy says or even if there is one. You're just speculating, or to put it more exactly, wishing that you have some ready-made heroic role that is your personal property."

But even if there is no prophecy, I'm the one who defeated him last time.

"That was almost certainly a wild fluke unless you seriously believe that a one-year-old child had an inherent propensity to defeat Dark Lords which has been maintained ten years later. None of this is your real reason and you know it!"