As a point of curiosity, do you always need a fictional protagonist to be sympathetic to enjoy the fiction, or is it only this particular flaw of Harry's that prevents your enjoyment? Or perhaps I misunderstood; did you read the whole thing, or did you stop at chapter 11? I note in passing that Harry comes to regret his actions in that chapter, demonstrating, presumably, personal growth.
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quote:However, to the extent that I fail at this, I am unlikeable and recognize it as a fault.
Again, Harry DOES recognize this and strives to change, which is one of the things about him I like the most.
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The Ron issue is a symptom of a larger quality of Harry's that I find unlikable. I can't just separate that out; it is a big chuck of who he is.
I might want to be his friend so that he wouldn't hurt me when he became the new Dark Lord. I may find him interesting or even want to befriend him because I feel sorry for him. He wouldn't be someone that I felt I could count on or trust and I wouldn't like him much. ETA: I am enjoying reading it. (I wrote that early on.) Not having a sympathetic main character is problematic but not always fatal. And Harry could grow out of it. That would be interesting.
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As a side note, I've had (he name-dropped casually) some forum interactions with the author, who shows some of the same traits you're disliking in Harry. He is so convinced that cryonics will work (or more accurately, that the chance it will work is good enough that signing up is way cheap for what you get) that he has no hesitation in labeling those who haven't signed up as crazy nutjobs. But there's a limit to the gains to be had from showing the respect that neurotypicals demand, so I have some sympathy for his position.
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quote:If you aren't choosing between textbooks and food, then you can afford to sign up your kids for cryonics. I don't know if it's more important than a home without lead paint, or omega-3 fish oil supplements while their brains are maturing, but it's certainly more important than you going to the movies or eating at nice restaurants. That's part of the bargain you signed up for when you became a parent. If you can afford kids at all, you can afford to sign up your kids for cryonics, and if you don't, you are a lousy parent. I'm just back from an event where the normal parents signed their normal kids up for cryonics, and that is the way things are supposed to be and should be, and whatever excuses you're using or thinking of right now, I don't believe in them any more, you're just a lousy parent.
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I do note that you are not actually engaging with the arguments, here. I suggest that you probably do not have a strong understanding of why you think cryonics won't work; you are merely applying the good old "sounds weird" heuristic, as in, "I never heered of that, so dere ain't no sich animule". If cryonics does work, if it in fact saves lives at even a 50% rate of success, then wouldn't you consider that rather important? But you're not going to engage in that discussion on a serious level, oh no. Then you might have to admit that people who sound weird actually know what they're talking about. So you point and laugh.
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My main issue is that regardless of whether cryonics works or not, there's large swaths of things you could be doing with your money that would benefit the lives of children here, now.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I do note that you are not actually engaging with the arguments, here. I suggest that you probably do not have a strong understanding of why you think cryonics won't work; you are merely applying the good old "sounds weird" heuristic, as in, "I never heered of that, so dere ain't no sich animule". If cryonics does work, if it in fact saves lives at even a 50% rate of success, then wouldn't you consider that rather important? But you're not going to engage in that discussion on a serious level, oh no. Then you might have to admit that people who sound weird actually know what they're talking about. So you point and laugh.
You're assuming that I care to engage with whether or not cryopreservation will ever bear fruit. Given that he does not actually possess magical knowledge that it will, he sounds like a dolt by dismissing any notion that any parent who doesn't bother with the cryopreservation gamble could ever possibly be anything other than a lousy parent.
Guy's a fanatic. It's hilarious.
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Eh...perhaps not a fanatic. Maybe just someone who is taking some comfort in a new kind of Pascal's Wager.
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quote:You're assuming that I care to engage with whether or not cryopreservation will ever bear fruit.
No, I'm saying that your reason for not caring to do so are bad ones.
I'll re-emphasize that whether I care or not, it has nothing to do with why I'm laughing at that paragraph. Sorry!
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I observe that cryonics are not vulnerable to the well-known rebuttals of Pascal's Wager; you cannot very well argue that it is equally likely that going for cryonics will shorten your lifetime by as much as it might extend it. That said, I do believe he is a bit too emotionally committed to his current solution to the problem of death, probably due to the death of his brother, which affected him deeply. Speaking of caring.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Eh...perhaps not a fanatic. Maybe just someone who is taking some comfort in a new kind of Pascal's Wager.
The analogue: "No parent who does not force their child to pray to god just in case is a lousy parent."
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That is not analogous. There are rational reasons for believing cryonics might work. Having carefully weighed the evidence, I come down on the other side of it from Mr Yudkowsky, but it is a point on which rational men can differ.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I observe that cryonics are not vulnerable to the well-known rebuttals of Pascal's Wager; you cannot very well argue that it is equally likely that going for cryonics will shorten your lifetime by as much as it might extend it. That said, I do believe he is a bit too emotionally committed to his current solution to the problem of death, probably due to the death of his brother, which affected him deeply. Speaking of caring.
You might note that I am not the one who thinks it is funny or fanatical. Perhaps a little sad.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I observe that cryonics are not vulnerable to the well-known rebuttals of Pascal's Wager ...
Indeed.
Cryonics as an issue seems much more similar to the problem of whether one should pay for insurance premiums when one is forced to deal with a highly unreliable insurer (counterparty risk, I suppose).
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I would just like to note that the first google result for "neurotypical" indicates it is used to describe people without autism. So "King of Men"'s use of it to make a distinction between himself and others indicates he is autistic. This is very humorous to me.
Yeah, the author of this fic is a transhumanist fanatic, and therefore, in my view, not rational at all. But it doesn't stop me loving the fiction.
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I carefully noted, when I first used the term, that I was using it in a nonstandard way. Of course, I should have known better than to expect a neurotypical to pay attention to what I actually said, when there was an opportunity for mockery and othering.
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Using "neurotypical" the way you did makes it an epithet. That comes across as both pompous and pathetic, and so mockery is to be expected.
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Ah well, looks like I ran into the euphemism treadmill. I was trying to avoid calling anyone the dreaded 'average'. Possibly a record for the speed with which the euphemism came to be perceived as an insult!
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quote:Possibly a record for the speed with which the euphemism came to be perceived as an insult!
Dude. It is an insult, or at least clearly to you. If you dispute that...well, you've done a pretty bad job of communicating in this thread.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Not only are dumb people boring, but they offend easily.
And yet, the non-neuro-typicals sacrifice themselves for us again and again. Interacting with us at great cost to themselves, thinking only of our own good.
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Let us not forget, either, that though there are surface similarities between those who talk about how difficult 'neurotypicals' can be and people who brag about their fighting skill and ability to whip anyone's tail, they're not actually similar at all.
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quote:Originally posted by MightyCow: Not only are dumb people boring, but they offend easily.
And yet, the non-neuro-typicals sacrifice themselves for us again and again. Interacting with us at great cost to themselves, thinking only of our own good.
Not at all! That's all part of my master plan to subtly manipulate you into eradicating yourself and making the world safe for thought. I'm sacrificing myself for other non-typicals, which is not at all the same thing!
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Oooohh. Very impressive. A neurotypical like me would never have been able to plan to eradicate whole masses of people! Wow. Killing people off for the good of the world is often an activity engaged in by non-neurotypicals.
I wonder if that is why I find them unlikeable?
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Well, we could go with that option. Or we could go with the much more ego-pleasing option that you don't like such people because you are a seething cauldron of bitterness and envy, or possibly because you are just easily offended.
And that's it in a nutshell, really. Being 'non-neurotypical' doesn't confer any really useful benefits. All it really does is empower other useful traits, such as discipline, imagination, compassion, and motivation. Being 'non-neurotypical' doesn't even protect against some very risky drawbacks, either, such as laziness, hubris, and hypocrisy.
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The best part about discussing neurotypical plebes is that they don't know what a neurotypical plebe is Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Back to the original topic: Ch. 25 was awful -- the first half, anyway. But 26 made up for it.
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Yeah, 26 was pretty rad, definitely. I like that Harry is aware, on some level, of what's going on. When the big reveals happen later, and Harry realizes whatever Quirrel has been planning to manipulate him into doing, he definitely won't be able to say, "I didn't know!" no matter how far down the rabbit hole he's gone.
And was there ever really any other end possible for the beetle once it crossed Voldemort, particularly when it did so alone, and in private?
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Awful how? I mean, it wasn't my favorite chapter ever but I didn't see anything wrong with it.
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Harry's shockingly poor grasp of genetics is exceeded only by the author's. And his notion of a genetic key (oddly like the ATA gene in Stargate, as was pointed out to me) simply makes no sense at all.
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Doesn't the author point out that Harry IS wrong? Or is the author's explanation of why he's wrong really that terrible?
I think Harry's getting a little ahead of himself in terms of theorizing, but he also seemed aware that he only barely understands the problem.
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