Hominem Revelio!

[avram]

So, the most recent chapter of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality went up, and it has this bit in it:

Harry was wiping sweat from his forehead. “Because things have changed between then and now! Listen, Draco, three hundred years ago you could find great scientists, as great as Salazar in their own way, who would have told you that some other Muggles were inferior because of their skin color—”

“Skin color?” said Draco.

“I know, skin color instead of anything important like blood purity, isn’t it ridiculous? But then something in the world changed, and now you can’t find any great scientists who still think skin color should matter, only loser people like the ones I described to you.

…and I can’t help but wonder if he’s just lost Eric Raymond’s endorsement.

Comments

[redbird]

I think I would have been happier for not following the link and rereading that comment thread about Eric Raymond. But that is not your fault.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

WHY WOULD YOU LINK HIM? WHY DID YOU RUIN MY PERFECTLY GOOD DAY?

WHHHYYYYYYYYY?

(highlight to inflict: "One advantage I had going in was reading Robert Heinlein as a child. This meant I soaked up some basic tactical doctrine through my pores."

[avram]

I must have missed all that stuff, just reading Heinlein with my eyes.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

Any discussion of blood purity needs to be informed by the Spanish Limpieza de sangre. Sadly Rowling wasn't up to the task.

While it's certainly portrayed as an evil in Rowling's book, she never makes a case that there is no substantive difference between old-family "blood pure" wizards and "mudbloods". The argument just ends up being a post-victorian class war imposed on a pseudo-victorian pseudo-culture.

[avram]

Does she need to make that case? I'd argue that the Death Eaters' attitudes toward "mudbloods" is evil regardless of whether there's a difference in magical ability. There's certainly a difference between muggles and wizards, yet I'd argue that the Death Eater attitude towards muggles is likewise evil.

I don't know if you've been reading Methods, but Yudkowsky included a chapter where Harry teaches Draco about Mendelian genetics and shows that wizardy is probably a recessive trait.

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

Haven't read it, but I'll take a look!

Wizardry cannot be an expression of a single allele trait, because otherwise you'd only get squibs via mutation (or adultery). It also raises the interesting question: "does expression of the wizardry gene increase or decrease the survival rate of the members with the gene?" Given the extreme rarity of wizards in Britain (based on a 40-50 member age cohort in their only school), the gene(s) either express themselves in 0.01% of the population or else it is a survival disadvantage.

I'm not so much worried about Death Eater attitudes because they're so bad as to be clownishly evil for the sake of evil, but the more subtle case of old wizarding families that are not murderously discriminatory. If they don't want their child to marry a mudblood because there's a 50/50 chance their grandchildren will be squibs, is that wrong? Why is it wrong? If they don't want the leader of the wizarding world to be someone who has one foot in the muggle world, are they being prejudiced? yes, but is it an irrational prejudice?

If Wizards are eugenicists, is that a necessary evil when they are attempting to preserve and spread their particular trait? How different is that from the effort of any animal to disseminate genetic material?

[avram]

Oh, man, has anyone written any fic crossing the Harry Potter books over with Heinlein's Future History (specifically the Howard families)?

[mcroft.livejournal.com]

Not that I know of, but it's sorta perfect, for values of perfect that are horrifying and allow a critique of both sets of source material...

Makin' Time (Enough) with Mom
Voldemort's Children
The Kneazle who Walked Through Walls

I'd be likely to make the main character a two-thousand year old Draco, who travels back in time to bang Narcissa and Bella, but that's too straight for most HP fanfic...