Eliezer Yudkowsky - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Oh,” Harry said, his own voice now high-pitched. “That’s a good use of a major trauma, I guess?”

“Only, see, I was still wondering about it, Harry, because for me it hasn’t been very long at all since our last conversation, and we didn’t finish talking which was admittedly all my own fault for losing control of my emotions and then being eaten by a troll which I am definitely not going to do again. I’ve been thinking I ought to reassure you that’s not going to happen every time you say the wrong thing to a girl.” Hermione was fidgeting, leaning from one side to the other where she sat, slightly back and forth. “But, well, even most people who are in love don’t do literally one hundredth of what you’ve done for me. So, Mr. Harry James PotterEvans-Verres, if it’s not love, I want to know exactly what I am to you. You never said.”

“That’s a good question,” Harry said, controlling the rising panic. “Do you mind if I think about it?”

Bit by bit, more of the searingly brilliant circle became visible beyond the hills.

“Hermione,” Harry said when the Sun was halfway above the horizon,

“did you ever invent any hypotheses to explain my mysterious dark side?”

“Just the obvious one,” Hermione said, kicking her legs slightly over the rooftop’s edge. “I thought maybe when You-Know-Who died right next to you, he happened to give off the burst of magic that makes a ghost, and some of it imprinted on your brain instead of the floor. But that never felt right to me, like it was just a clever explanation that wasn’t actually true, and it makes even less sense if You-Know-Who didn’t really die that night.”

“Good enough,” Harry said. “Let’s imagine that scenario for now.” His inner rationalist was looking back and facepalming again at how he’d managed to not-think-about hypotheses like that one. It wasn’t true but it was reasonable and Harry had never thought of any causal model that concrete, just vaguely suspected a connection.

Hermione nodded. “You probably know this already, but I just thought I’d say it to be sure: You’re not Voldemort, Harry.”

“I know. And that’s what you mean to me.” Harry took a breath, finding it still painful to say aloud. “Voldemort… he wasn’t a happy person. I don’t know if he was ever happy, a single day in his life.” He never could cast the Patronus Charm. “That’s one reason his cognitive patterns didn’t take me over, my dark side didn’t feel like a good place to be, it didn’t get positively reinforced. Being friends with you means that my life doesn’t have to go the way Voldemort’s did. And I was pretty lonely before Hogwarts, although I didn’t realise it then, so… yeah. I might’ve been slightly more desperate to bring you back from the dead than the average boy my age would’ve been. Though I also maintain that my decision was strictly nor-

mative moral reasoning, and if other people care less about their friends, that’s their problem, not mine.”

“I see,” Hermione said softly. She hesitated. “Harry, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not one hundred percent comfortable with that. It’s a big responsibility that I didn’t choose, and I don’t think it’s healthy for you to lay it on just one person.”

Harry nodded. “I know. But there’s more to the point I’m trying to make. There was a prophecy about my vanquishing Voldemort—”

“A prophecy? There was a prophecy about you? Seriously, Harry?”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, part of it went, ‘And the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal, but he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not.’ What would you guess that meant?”

“Hmmm,” Hermione said. Her fingers tapped thoughtfully on the roof’s stone. “Your mysterious dark side is You-Know-Who’s mark on you that made you his equal. The power he knew not… was the scientific method, right?”

Harry shook his head. “That’s what I thought too at first—that it was going to be Muggle science, or the methods of rationality. But…” Harry exhaled. The Sun had now fully risen above the hills. This felt embarrassing to say, but he was going to say it anyway. “Professor Snape, who originally heard the prophecy—yes, that’s also a thing that happened—Professor

Snape said he didn’t think it could just be science, that the ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’ needed to be something more alien to Voldemort than just that. Even if I think of it in terms of rationality, well, it turns out that the person Voldemort really was,” why, Professor Quirrell, why, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry’s heart, “he’d have been able to learn the methods of rationality too, if he read the same science papers I did. Except, maybe, for one last thing…” Harry drew a breath. “At the end of all of it, during my final showdown with Voldemort, he threatened to put my parents, and my friends, into Azkaban. Unless I came up with interesting secrets to tell him, one person saved per secret. But I knew I couldn’t find enough secrets to save everyone. And in the moment that I saw no way at all left to save everyone… that’s when I actually started thinking. Maybe for the first time in my life, I started thinking. I thought faster than Voldemort, even though he was older than me and smarter, because… because I had a reason to think . Voldemort had a drive to be immortal, he strongly preferred not to die, but that wasn’t a positive desire, it was fear, and Voldemort made mistakes because of that fear. I think the power that Voldemort knew not… was that I had something to protect.”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said gently. She hesitated. “Is that what I am to you, then? The thing that you protect?”

“No, I mean, the whole reason I’m telling you this, is that Voldemort wasn’t threatening to put you in Azkaban. Even if he’d taken over the whole world, you’d have been fine. He’d already made a binding promise not to harm you, because of, um, because of reasons. So in my moment of ultimate crisis, when I reached deep down and found the power Voldemort knew not, I did it to protect everyone except you.”

Hermione considered this, a slow smile spreading over her face.

“Why, Harry,” she said. “That’s the least romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, really, it does help,” Hermione said. “I mean, it makes the whole thing much less stalker-y.”

“I know, right?”

The two of them shared a companionable nod, both of them looking more relaxed now, and watched the sunrise together.

“I’ve been thinking,” Harry said, his own voice going soft, “about the alternate Harry Potter, the person I might have been if Voldemort hadn’t attacked my parents.” If Tom Riddle hadn’t tried to copy himself onto me. “That other Harry Potter wouldn’t have been as smart, I guess. He probably wouldn’t have studied much Muggle science, even if his mother was a Muggleborn. But that other Harry Potter would’ve had… the capacity for warmth, that he inherited from James Potter and Lily Evans, he would’ve cared about other people and tried to save his friends, I know that would have been true, because that’s something that Lord Voldemort never did, you see…” Harry’s eyes were watering. “So that part must be, the remnant.”

The Sun was well above the horizon now, the golden light illuminating both of them, casting long shadows off the other side of the rooftop platform.

“I think you’re just fine the way you are,” Hermione said. “I mean, that other Harry Potter might’ve been a nice boy, maybe, but it sounds like I would’ve had to do all his thinking for him.”