HPMoR and the Limits of Rationality
One woman's quest to understand the Harry Potter fanfic that created the modern world.
Interactive transcripts by Regina: https://hpmoralor.sepionics.com/
Email: hpmoralorcast@proton.me
HPMoR and the Limits of Rationality
Ep. 8: Reciprocity, pt. 2 - Enlightenment
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In part 2 of chapter 7, Draco tells Harry how to get away with sexual assault.
Oh, and there's a ~wacky fizzy drink~ to lift the mood. Are we still having fun?
CONTENT WARNING: this episode discusses rape.
RAINN Hotline: https://rainn.org/help-and-healing/hotline/
Citations and further reading, pt 2
- HPMoR, Chapter 7. Eliezer Yudkowsky. https://hpmor.com/chapter/7
- Elisa’s show notes: https://www.tumblr.com/ecc-poetry/tagged/hpmor%20and%20the%20limits%20of%20rationality
- “Draco in Leather Pants.” Wiktionary, accessed 21 July 2026. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Draco_in_Leather_Pants
- Influence, Robert B. Cialdini. HarperCollins, 2007. https://dn710600.ca.archive.org/0/items/ThePsychologyOfPersuasion/The%20Psychology%20of%20Persuasion.pdf
- “EYudkowsky,” Yudkowsky. OKCupid, 2011; access 21 July 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20120904013510/http://www.okcupid.com/profile/Eyudkowsky
- How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur. Simon & Schuster, 2023. https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-to-be-perfect-the-correct-answer-to-every-moral-question-michael-schur/397bc14a2c866e22?ean=9781982159320
- “Effects of a Favor and Liking on Compliance,” Dennis T. Regan. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1971. https://www.scribd.com/document/981877189/Regan-1971-Reciprocity
- “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness,” Arthur Aron et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1997. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0146167297234003
- “Silicon Valley’s Safe Space,” Cade Metz. New York Times, 13 Feb 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210213101345/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html
- “"How are you coping with the end of the world?" journalists sometimes ask me, and I sometimes reply, "By remembering that it's not about me." They have no hope of understanding what I mean by this, I predict, because to them I am the subject of the story and it has not occurred to them that there's a whole planet out there too to be the story-subject. I think there's probably a sense in which the Earth itself is not a real thing to most modern journalists.
“The journalist is imagining a story that is about me, and about whether or not I am going insane, not just because it is an easy cliche to write, but because personality is the only real thing to the journalist.” "Eliezer's Unteachable Methods of Sanity," Eliezer Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 6 Dec 2025. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/isSBwfgRY6zD6mycc/eliezer-s-unteachable-methods-of-sanity - “Effective Altruism Promises to Do Good Better. These Women Say It Has a Toxic Culture Of Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” Charlotte Alter. TIME, 3 Feb 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230203133416/https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/
- “Belonging (Part 4: TIME’s up?),” David Thorstad. Reflective Altruism, 4 March 2023. https://reflectivealtruism.com/2023/03/04/belonging-part-4-times-up/
- “I think you are dramatically overestimating how difficult it was, back in the day, to accidentally or incidentally learn Scott's full name. I think this is the crux here.
“It was extremely easy to find his name, and often people have stories of learning it on accident.” Alex Vermillion. LessWrong, 31 March 2024. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oYnwTuxySiaZYDrur/my-interview-with-cade-metz-on-his-reporting-about-slate?commentId=xobBj8Lrf2LpfLRW6 - “Key Findings: Rethinking Serial Perpetrators,” Tharp et al. National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 2015. https://www.nsvrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/publications_nsvrc_key-findings_rethinking-serial-perpetration_0.pdf
- “Offending Histories and Typologies of Suspected Sexual Offenders Identified Via Untested Sexual Assault Kits,” Lovell et al. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel-Flannery/publication/360873352_Offending_Histories_and_Typologies_of_Suspected_Sexual_Offenders_Identified_Via_Untested_Sexual_Assault_Kits/links/655274753fa26f66f4fde825/Offending-Histories-and-Typologies-of-Suspected-Sexual-Offenders-Identified-Via-Untested-Sexual-Assault-Kits.pdf
- “Repeat Rape and Multiple Offending Among Undetected Rapists,” David Lisak and Paul M. Miller. Violence and Victims, 2002. https://storage.googleapis.com/dpss-uploads/2002-lisak-repeatrapeinundetectedrapists.pdf
- “Three Worlds Collide: Interlude with the Confessor,” Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 2 Feb 2009. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bojLBvsYck95gbKNM/interlude-with-the-confessor-4-8
- “Gentle Silent Rape,” Robin Hanson. Overcoming Bias, 30 Nov 2010. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/gentlesilentrapehtml
- “Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?”, Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 26 June 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/28bAMAxhoX3bwbAKC/are-your-enemies-innately-evil
Hi, hi, hi, hi! Welcome back to HP More and the Limits of Rationality, a podcast about the Harry Potter fanficer that created our current hellscape. Emphasis on hell. I'm your host, Anthea. Uh, the people you'll be hearing from shortly are Elisa and Jake. This is part two of three of chapter seven of Harry Potter and the methods of rationality about reciprocity. Uh as I am recording this intro, I have not settled on a title for this episode. So I'm not sure if the title is going to make this super obvious or not. So I want to be very clear here at the beginning. In this chapter, Draco Malfoy casually discusses the idea of raping a young girl. And we spend a large part of this episode on that story. We mention real life allegations of rape, we discuss statistics, we talk about the sexual abuse of children. We don't mince words about specific, if hypothetical, acts of sexual violence, and we make some rough jokes. Um I think overall we land in kind of the same place as an episode of Law and Order SVU, just like without the propaganda, um, and none of us have to carry the idiot ball for exposition reasons. So so make of that what you will. Uh if listening to that kind of thing would be distressing for you, I can't blame you. It was kind of distressing to record in in a lot of ways. And so I want to tell you here at the top that you can skip this episode and go to part three. And I will have a summary in the intro for that episode about the narrative beats from this section, so you'll stay caught up. There's actually not a lot of it happened. We talk a lot about uh not very many things that happen. Um yeah. Uh a big part of why I uh am so stuck on this uh story beat is when rape is used in fiction, I consider it worth stopping to examine how the artist is using it. Because there are lots of legitimate reasons for a writer to include rape in their work, just like there are legitimate reasons to include other atrocities and horrors and violence. Um I'm uh I'm a horror girly, uh, and I have watched a lot of horror movies that I think include uh assault and sexual violence to uh make really strong, interesting, uh effective narrative points. And there's there's lots of legitimate reasons why uh someone might include rape in a uh in a story. Um I am going to leave it as an exercise for the listener to decide for themselves whether its inclusion uh in this Harry Potter fanfic uh adds to the message of the fanfic. Um I will say, spoiler, you are going to hear me Weeze laughing a lot because I find the moment uh absurdly unnecessary and inappropriate. And uh making broken accordion noises is about all I can do to cope with it. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention that we are going to talk a bit about uh Western chauvinism and the Enlightenment and crypto racism in this episode, which should not come as a surprise if you listened to last episode's uh eugenics orama. We we we went through it, team. So, with all that being said, again, if you want to skip to the next episode, you can, and we will be waiting for you there with the moon landing. Uh and if you are feeling sufficiently ready uh then for this episode, then please uh grab a beverage, uh do some stretching, uh let's get this show on the road. We return to the text after Harry has met Ron Weasley and developed an immediate and complete disdain for him. Draco arrived and immediately bullied Ron while Harry made a quietly authoritative attempt to stop him, which didn't stop him, after which Ron left, and Harry and Draco agreed that there's simply no reason for Ron to exist. Awesome! Let's jump back in.
SPEAKER_02Um as he described it, you could see people going along looking totally fine, and then they just break apart and somebody's like, fuck! Because, like, because if you get off by a little bit, then you can't do the demanding, like this was, I think, specifically for Viennese waltz, which is a very fast rotational dance. Back when people didn't have anything better to do.
AntheaYeah, yeah.
JakeHolding crazy shit before the internet.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
AntheaOkay, so yes, that's Ball Run. Welcome back to HP More Allure, uh, part two of chapter seven, six, seven. Uh, sorry, I didn't do that on purpose, I swear to God. Chapter seven. We are on chapter seven. Oh my god, cool, like the youths! Yeah. Uh, when last we uh when we when we took a break there, uh we were just talking about eugenics. We're done with eugenics for the rest of this, I think.
JakeWe solved it.
AntheaWe we did we did it, guys. Thanks. Uh I I wanna I I just want to take another moment to say as clearly as I can, this is not something that the majority of rationalists espouse, as far as I can tell. The problem is that there are high-profile rationalists who are way more comfortable with it than I would like them to be.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thanks for making that distinction. Because I also think, like, again, I'm like I'm so disturbed on an emotional and literary level, and maybe it's just that Yakowski is not really great at picking the right words to express something. Um, but the idea of saying I just don't know why he exists is such a cruel, misanthropic, and frankly, eugenicist attitude to express. Yeah. And it's just thrown out there. Yeah. Like he has no idea And we move on. As if he has no idea how consequential that is to say.
JakeYeah, the most generous read is solipsism.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
JakeAnd like that's still bad.
SPEAKER_02Right. Like It's weird that this person who isn't immediately useful to me over the course of 20 minutes of conversation is allowed to exist on this plane. Yeah.
AntheaYeah. Um, and we know that uh Yudkowski has said that uh, you know, Yudkowski says at the beginning, like, like not everything that the main character does is a lesson in wisdom. Um, and I'd like to believe that this is one of those things, but I know that he's going to spend a lot of time investing in Draco Malfoy, and I don't I know Ron doesn't disappear from the story entirely, um, but thankfully he has gone off for he'd we he's not as objected to the rest of this chapter.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna say, like, I don't want him here if he's just gonna be a punching bag.
AntheaYeah, uh, and I don't I don't know. In in the parts that I have read, he does not play a major role. I believe he does come back eventually, but he's not like he's not like part of the core trio, right? Um Draco, Harry, and Hermione.
SPEAKER_02This is so fucking dumb.
AntheaSo here we are. Uh uh anyway, so yeah, Ron And Peter Pettigrew is dead. Yeah! Like appar apparently, as far as we know. And the evidence we have at this point is that Scabbabbers is Scabbers is full-on dead and buried in the in the Weasley backyard.
SPEAKER_02I suppose if I were youdkowski, I might do something like Molly said Scabbers died and was buried in the backyard, but really Scabbers ran away, and that's so Peter Pettigrew can sync up with coral or some shit.
JakeLike Yeah, I mean Maybe Petey is the owl now.
AntheaRight. Like, mm-hmm. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02I think when you're in Animorph Magus, you can only you only have one form.
AntheaYeah, that's correct.
JakeFoolish me. Maybe Petunia was so hot it turned him into an owl instead.
AntheaThere you go. There you go. Yes, sure. Yes, it's true. Um I do note that, you know, in in the original canon, Peter Pettigrew fakes his death, so maybe he fakes his death twice in this one. Double fake. Um, so Draco is here to give Harry some advice. He has to learn to say no to pushy people who want to take up all of his time just because he's famous, and he can't just be nice all the time. Harry apologizes for embarrassing Draco in front of Lucius at their first meeting. Draco is like, nah nah nah, it's all good. Um, you know, yeah, it was like kind of embarrassing, but like we worked we worked it out. There have been some rumors, like, there are rumors going around that Harry and Draco got into a fight, but the Malfoys are used to having rumors spread about them. It's all good.
SPEAKER_03This is a level of emotional regulation and chill and maturity that is not evident anywhere in canon.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Sorry to cut you off, but like already, I'm like, I'm sorry, point of order. Point of fucking order.
JakeI like this nice relatable story of like, oh, how here's how you deflect the paparazzi.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I get it, I'm a famous child. And like also, and just like it's crazy to be like, okay, the reason that Draco has this role in the story is not because, like, is because it's because he's been given the leather pants Draco. Um what's sorry, what's her name again?
SPEAKER_03Cassandra Clare?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03Sorry, I wasn't, I'm not being cute. No, no, I was like, Clealinda? Um Cleolinda's great. Cleolinda's great, yeah.
JakeAnd for the audience members who might not know what the hell you're talking about.
AntheaYeah. Um Cassandra Clare, we talked about in an earlier episode, she wrote um the Draco trilogy fanfics. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. And she uh plagiarized uh some people um pretty pretty extensively with plagiarized published authors.
SPEAKER_03Um and uh not just with Easter eggs, but with lengthy descriptive passages.
AntheaLengthy chunks of text that she was like, oh, I don't know, I just wrote it down in a notebook.
JakeI mean, go and go in full Summerton on it.
AntheaAbsolutely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, but uh she managed to uh uh to parlay her uh her life in fandom into um an actual writing career, and now she's a uh quite successful YA author.
SPEAKER_02She's very successful.
AntheaLike she's had her her books have been adapted into both a movie and a uh TV series.
SPEAKER_02So meanwhile, Clea Linda is another uh CNAME uh fandom person, but I know her, I'm sure she's done other stuff, but I know her for having done uh very fun Twilight read-along reactions.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's she I mean like she's in the tradition of of sporking that I'm doing, that I'm like the this podcast is in in the tradition of Right, which itself is in the tradition of MST3K. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh Clear Linda is, you know, one of the things that I always liked about Clear Linda is with with the Twilight stuff is that she was like, this is so bad, but I love it so much. This is my trash. Let me let me enjoy. I'm like, I and she would talk about what was bad about it, but be like, oh, this is good trash.
JakeI mean, I think in the pre-recording I was talking about watching perfect match. So I get to go. Exactly. Sometimes we all like to eat our trash.
SPEAKER_03This is my dumpster. Let me roll around in it. This is a perfectly good watermelon.
AntheaUm we do have watermelon in the fridge.
SPEAKER_02We should Oh, yeah, you got it in your drink. I have watermelon chunks that have been just soaking, marinating in booze. Hell yeah. For the entire duration of this recording. Anyway, um, I'm sorry. So all I was gonna say is that like Draco in leather pants. Draco in leather pants. And that is the characterization that uh I I think in popular Harry Potter fandom is sort of attributed to the Cassandra Clare take on Draco. Is like, Draco is she's not the only one. She may not be the first one. Not by a long shot, but but like she was very influential in deciding like Draco, sure, he's presented as a self-centered snot who's not particularly competent. Um, but actually, he's like a super cool bad boy who's always got a great bon mot. Um and like that I see on evidence here. And it's just again really weird to me that it's like Petunia being hot also made Draco cool and gave him like emotional regulation skills and perspective.
JakeI I also like that you're using like Draco in leather pants in the same way and the same cadence as Darmok and Jalad. Yes!
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, and that's exactly what I'm saying.
JakeYou just say it as shorthand, the one like literary reference, and even has kind of the same mouthfeel.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know the reference that you made.
JakeOh, it is It's a Star Trek reference. That's maybe the best thing to think about. Like it's a civilization that only communicates through, like, essentially, like, you know, themic and literary reference, which that's a whole thing to go on how that's fucking impossible.
SPEAKER_03The whole thing is like sounds really fun, but also impossible. Yeah.
JakeYeah, but no, it wouldn't be just like talking, it's like you would just say Draco in leather pants, and I would say, you know, catness in the forest or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think of myself as more of a catness in the forest. Maybe I'm more of a catness in leather pants.
JakeThere we go. I'm sure that's been done.
AntheaIt's funny that you should mention Draco's level of emotional maturity because he actually reveals that he has had actual tutoring in manipulating people, in emotional manipulation.
JakeOh my god, wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That sounds believable.
AntheaYeah, like I'm sorry, okay.
SPEAKER_03You go, you go, and then I'll say. Oh, I'm gonna get into the text, so maybe you should go.
SPEAKER_02No, get into the text, and then when you get through the end of the text, I'll say something that's so fucking accurate.
AntheaOkay, okay. Uh uh, of course, Draco said proudly. I'm a mal uh let me get blah blah blah. Let me get into that voice. I'm a malfoy. Father bought me tutors. Wow, Harry said. Reading Robert Cialdini's influence, Science and Practice, probably didn't stack up very high compared to that. It was one heck of a book.
JakeAt least it's literally overflowing.
unknownSorry.
JakeThat's okay.
AntheaSorry, there's so much wine in this mason jar. Your dad is almost as awesome as my dad. Draco's eyebrows rose loftily. Oh, and what does your father do? He buys me books.
JakeHe bangs my hot mom.
AntheaDraco considered this. That doesn't sound very impressive. You had to be there. Anyway, I'm glad to hear all that. The way Lucius was looking at you, I thought he was going to k crucify you. Put I'm putting a pin in that because I think that stammer is foreshadowing.
JakeWait, what was it was the stammer?
AntheaI think I crucify you.
JakeOh gotcha. I uh did did not clock that as diejectic.
SPEAKER_02I'm assuming it's crucio.
AntheaYeah, I think that's the uh it's not gonna come up again in this chapter. I'm just I'm trying to look out for that stuff. Because I want to give credit where credit is due, about like, hey, you set this up. Or you didn't, right? My father really loves me, Draco said firmly. He wouldn't ever do that. Um, Harry said. He remembered the black-robed, white-haired figure of elegance that had stormed through Madame Malkins, wielding that beautiful, deadly silver-handled cane. It wasn't easy to visualize him as a doting father. Yudkowski wants to fuck Lucius Melfort so bad.
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah.
AntheaLike I can't I'm gonna give him that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, he has a beautiful cane.
AntheaDon't take this the wrong way, but how do you know that? Huh? It was clear that this was a question Draco did not commonly ask himself. I ask the fundamental question of rationality. Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What makes you think Lucius wouldn't sacrifice you the same way he'd sacrifice anything else for power? Draco shot Harry another odd look. Just what do you know about father? Um, seen on the Wizen Gamut, seen on Hogwarts' Board of Governors, incredibly wealthy, has the ear of Minister Fudge, has the confidence of Minister Fudge, probably has some highly embarrassing photos of Minister Fudge, most prominent blood purist now that the Dark Lord's gone, former Death Eater, who was found to have the Dark Mark but got off by claiming to be under the Imperious Curse, which was ridiculously implausible and pretty much everyone knew it. Evil with a capital E and a Born Killer. I think that's it. So I have to take back what I said earlier about Harry not knowing that the Malfoys are connected to the guy who killed his biological parents.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh my god. Okay, I want to roll back and just say something incredibly fucking accurate. Yes, yes. As per Eliezer Yudkowski's 2012 Okay Cupid profile, yes, he loves Couchell's Dart. Mm-hmm. A book series in which Phaedrino Delane is trained from childhood to be a sexy spy.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So this idea of Malboy having personal tutors and manipulation feels incredibly fucking related.
SPEAKER_02And Dadkowski, I dare you. If I'm wrong, come for me.
SPEAKER_03I think straight into your heart, you fuck. That's a really interesting connection. Step one.
SPEAKER_02Step two is what the fuck? Yeah. I'm sorry, he has no opinion. He just said the word blood purist like it was nothing. Like it was nothing. Um and he It seems to kind of track with what we were just talking about. That he but also, furthermore, for a more like immediately relevant situation, like he's connected to the guy who killed his biological parents, presumably making his mother sad, at least. Yeah. Um and uh and he has no feelings about that? Mm-mm. Mm-mm. That's not something that needs to be a part of his calculus in any way, except to be like Except to be like, listen, your father's really cool. I can just picture myself running my hands over his beautiful cane. But does he love you? Right, right. I mean, also, like, come on. You can under like I would imagine if based on that information alone, he probably has a level of investment in Draco uh as a bearer of his name and his bloodline. Lucius does. Lucius does. Yeah. So he wouldn't just sacrifice him because he's his only son.
AntheaLet's get into it.
JakeOkay. I'll also ask for literally maybe one of our listeners. Was Griffith or was Lucius perhaps inspired by Griffith from Berserk directly or indirectly? Discuss in the comments. Please continue.
AntheaYeah, that one is way way right on my own. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JakeI don't know either, but what like the Ur influence for a lot of silver haired effeminate uh male antagonists. Who are super high.
SPEAKER_02Um Yeah, no, I'm sorry, I just can't. I just can't. I just can't. Really? That has no this has no impact on the emotional or moral landscape. It's neither it's it's morally neutral. It's neither here nor there. Yeah.
AntheaOkay, as you were. Draco's eyes. Draco's eyes had narrowed to slits. McGonagal told you that, did she? No, she wouldn't say anything to me about Lucius afterwards, except to stay away from him. So during the incident at the potions shop, while Professor McGonagall was busy yelling at the shopkeeper and trying to get everything under control, I grabbed one of the customers and asked them about Lucius. Just to be clear, we didn't I didn't skip anything. The incident at the potions shop is just a noodle incident. It's not, it didn't happen on screen. Draco's eyes were wide again. Did you really? Harry gave Draco a puzzled look.
JakeNo, I obviously used Wizard Google. Come on.
AntheaIf I lied the first time, I'm not gonna tell you the truth just because you asked twice. There was a certain And Harry doesn't have to say if he's in aura.
unknownYes.
AntheaUh a cat uh There was a certain pause as Draco absorbed this. You're so completely going to be in Slytherin. I'm so completely going to be in Ravenclaw, thank you very much. I only want power so I can get books. Which is an interesting assertion from a boy who claimed all of the wizarding world in the name of science. I think he only wants books so he can get power. Draco giggled. Yeah, right. Anyway, to answer what you asked. Draco took a deep breath and his face turned serious. Father once missed a wizengemut vote for me. I was on a broom and I fell off and broke a lot of ribs. It really hurt. I'd never hurt that much before, and I thought I was going to die. So father missed this really important vote because he was there by my bed at St. Mungo's, holding my hands and promising me that I was going to be okay. Harry glanced awake uncomfortably, then, with an effort, forced himself to look back at Draco. Why are you telling me that? It seems sort of private. Draco gave Harry a serious look. One of my tutors once said that people formed close friendships by knowing private things about each other. And the reason most people don't make close friends is because they're too embarrassed to share anything really important about themselves. Draco turned his palms out invitingly. Your turn? Knowing that Draco's hopeful face had probably been drilled into him by months of practice did not make it any less effective, Harry observed. Actually, it did make it less effective, but unfortunately not ineffective. The same could be said of Draco's clever use of reciprocation pressure for an unsolicited gift, a technique which Harry had read about in his socal social psychology books. One experiment had shown that an unconditional gift of five dollars was twice as effective as a conditional offer of fifty dollars in getting people to fill out surveys. Draco had made an unsolicited gift of a confidence, and now invited Harry to offer a confidence in return. And the thing was, Harry did feel pressured. Refusal, Harry was certain, would be met with a look of sad disappointment, and maybe a small amount of contempt, indicating that Harry had lost points.
SPEAKER_02Um, okay, that's really okay, something I would like to also note. Uh in unfortunately, another uh Alex Jones similarity. Um there is the impression of more sources than are actually being used, because I happen to know, thanks to your reading of Chaldini, that that example comes from his fucking book Influence.
AntheaYep, yeah. Yes, he says social psychology textbooks, and he's just talking about in he's talking about one social psychology book and it's influence. Right. Which is a great book. I love it, I really enjoy this book.
JakeAnd parentheticals at the end.
SPEAKER_02Everything, yes, exactly. Everything you told me about it was really interesting, but I note that by citing it by name initially and then by choosing to say social psychology textbooks subsequently, it makes it sound as if Yadkowski is drawing from more sources than he is.
JakeThat was another thing called out on that H-Bomber guy video to bring it back to that.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Look, it is a technique used by idiots and lazy people to make it seem as if they are more widely read than they actually are.
AntheaMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um yeah, my first note is this is inspired by influence. Hey, hey! Um we first listened to things that you tell me. Aw, thanks. Uh we first talked about that back in episode three when we were talking about the bystander effect and social proof. Um so uh we're talking about the rule of reciprocation, which is the title of the chapter. The rule of reciprocation, according to Cialdini, quote, says that we should try to repay in kind what another person has provided us, end quote. He quotes Leakey and Lewin's people of the lake, quote, we are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation, end quote. I just like a side note, Leaky and Lewin are these, um are these uh paleoanthropologists, uh, and I have been I can't like Libby doesn't have any of their books on audiobook, uh, which is killing me because I really want to read them because they have this they were writing in the in the 80s, um, so like Cold War era, and they were putting cold Cold War and like the beginning of the environmental movement, um, and end of like climate change uh concerns. So like 80s and 90s, and they were writing about how like the idea that the they were kind of putting forward the idea that the basic uh uh the the core attitude of humanity is actually cooperation, not aggression.
SPEAKER_02Oh hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. Buddy, um send me their names and I will spend a little bit of time on a little website I like to call thriftbooks.com.
AntheaNo, I need an audiobook.
JakeI was gonna say, like, does this audiobook exist or is it just that Libby doesn't fit?
AntheaThat is a fair question. I don't know.
JakeI might be able to find an audiobook that fell off the back of the truck potentially.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we'll look into it. We'll look into it. Maybe a couple of minutes on thriftbooks.com and then several months recording an audiobook. There we go.
AntheaWe got microphones now. Um I I'm I'm also really interested in that uh because I feel like it might have something to say about AI alignment, right? Anyway, the reciprocity rule does seem to be pretty ubiquitous across cultures and times, uh, both in the sense that we feel a strong obligation to repay favors and gifts given to us with proportionate gifts and favors, and in the sense that we feel a strong desire to see harms repaid with equal harms. Like an I for an I is reciprocity just as much as like I gave you a gift, you give me a gift. Sure. Is, right? Um uh I if I had finished the good place, I would probably quote T. M. Scanlon's What We Owe to Each Other here. But even Michael Scher struggled with that book, so I'm gonna leave the question of how contractualism interacts with reciprocity, like the psychological reality of reciprocity. Shit is being smarter. Yeah. No, he's in in How to Be Perfect, he's like, I could not finish this book. And apparently there is a joke where it takes Eleanor Shellstrop like 5,000 iterations of her afterlife to finally. I have no quibbles with how Yadkowski is explaining reciprocity here. Um the thing about like an unsolicited gift exerts more social pressure than uh or or like a like a gift with no strings attached.
JakeUm to make sure I'm understanding right, and you know, in case the audience has a following, that would be like, hey, here's five dollars. Cool. Do you want to fill out the survey versus will you fill out the survey for $50? Yeah, it's not a good thing. Okay.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the one of the s the like uh study examples, I'm trying to remember all the I'm not gonna get all the details right here, I think, but like was you you had like the exp the researcher posing as like a schmuck named Joe, and uh and then like the the subject of the the research and they you know the much like with the uh with the Milgram experiments, like the actual researcher is in they're both there is like we're doing a completely different experiment, right? But what they're studying is the is the subject's reactions to the researcher. And so Joe would be like, Hey, I'm gonna go get a Coke, and he'd go and he'd get a Coke and he'd come back and he'd be like, Here, I got you one too. Um and then at the end, after they did like whatever fake experiment they were doing, he would say, Hey, I'm selling raffle tickets for this thing at work. Uh, will you buy some? And people would people who took the Coke tended to be more likely to buy more raffle tickets because they were like, Oh, you did something nice for me. And they did variations on this to like try and determine whether it was like, well, do they just like Joe? Is Joe just a nice guy? Uh, and if Joe was not like a cool dude but still gave them a gift, they still felt like if Joe was like a jit a dick, they still felt pressure to they still tended to buy raffle tickets from him because of the unsolicited gift of a soda.
JakeI'd be very curious how this plays out in different cultures too. This does feel like it might be a culture that in Seattle, like I feel like the favor economy was a way bigger thing in the Midwest than in the West Coast. Like it was always like, I'll get it this time, you get it next time in the Midwest, but moving out here, it's way more often like splitting checks and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like going outside of, you know, just you know, further abroad cultures like might be even more significantly different.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And or did like they control for whether Joe was like if Joe was Jamal, was there a difference?
AntheaSure, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like in group solidarity. Yeah, I'm sure that there's I'm I have to imagine that there's a lot of stuff that goes into this. So we're talking about something that very broadly reciproc the the reciprocity principle seems to be quite strong, but yes, I think it's totally fair to say that there's a lot of other elements that go into it.
JakeI'd agree, it feels like a pretty fundamental human thing.
AntheaYeah.
SPEAKER_02On a different note. Um I do also think like This is more to support, this is more to support the and then they kiss reading of this fancy. Yes. Um but like Draco offering a vulnerability and then even kind of like showing how the trick works. Tell me something vulnerable.
JakeTrue dare.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. He's in a very seductive, yeah-coded sort of posture here. Yes. Not no, not no. All knowledge is worth having, baby.
JakeIncluding carnal.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm.
AntheaUh well, on that note. Draco, Harry said, just so you know, I recognize exactly what you're doing right now. My own books called it reciprocation, and they talk about how giving someone a straight gift of two sickles was found to be twice as effective as offering them twenty sickles and getting them to do what you want. Harry trailed off. I I and I'm jumping back in, yeah, I know I just talked a lot, but it fucking grinds my gears that in the I talked a lot, so this is not as obvious, but in this paragraph, in in in the previous paragraph, the narration explains an unsolicited gift of five dollars was more effective in getting you to do stuff than uh than a strings attached gift of 50. And then Harry just restates it in wizard money, and I think that's terrible writing.
JakeYep.
AntheaYep.
JakeWizard money in general, bad writing.
SPEAKER_03Also that. Yep. And I thought Yakowski was on side on that one. So disappointing.
AntheaDraco was looking sad and disappointed. It's not meant as a trick, Harry. It's a real way of becoming friends. Sure, Arthur Aaron's 36 questions work to create emotional closeness quickly. Vulnerable self-disclosure is also a frequent tactic used by high control groups or individuals to rapidly create intimacy. Is this this has this is you and nothing? That's me, that's not your cow skin.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was like, as soon as you said high control groups, I was like, I don't think he would touch that one.
JakeI think like a lot of things, it's kind of a tool. Like if you're trying to create vulnerability to a good end, sure. Yeah. But you can use the same technique to be, you know, a Malfoy.
SPEAKER_02This is unintentionally really great writing because I think there is something genuinely delightful and tragic about a young person who's been raised to be his family's sword and shield. Um is like, yeah, but like this is a real way to make friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Yadkowski's I don't bel I don't trust Yadkowski's writing.
AntheaWell, and also this version of Harry Potter has been so socially isolated that I think he probably is like, yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_03Like Sure.
AntheaUh Harry held up a hand. I didn't say I wasn't going to respond. I just need time to pick something that's private but just as non-damaging. Let's say I wanted you to know that I can't be rushed into things. A pause to reflect could go a long way in diffusing the power of a lot of compliance techniques once you learn to recognize them for what they were.
SPEAKER_02That's also a Chaldini thing.
AntheaIt absolutely is.
JakeThe child's also pushing up the TDM meter in a way that honestly hasn't been as bad this chapter.
SPEAKER_02It's true. Yeah, I'm still thinking his TDMetry is kind of spiking here.
AntheaUh uh Right, sorry. I got distracted a little bit. All right, Draco said. I'll wait while you come up with something. Oh, and please take off the scarf while you say it. Simple but effective. And Harry couldn't help but notice how clumsy, awkward, graceless his attempt at resisting manipulation, saving face, showing off had appeared compared to Draco.
JakeHe just couldn't say no to Draco.
AntheaDraco!
SPEAKER_02He had to start disrobing.
AntheaAll right, Harry said after a time. Here's mine. He glanced around and then rolled the scarf back up over his face, exposing everything but the scar. Um, it sounds like you can really rely on your father. I mean, if you talk to him seriously, he'll always listen to you and take you seriously. Draco nodded. Sometimes, Harry said and swallowed. This was surprisingly hard, but then it was meant to be. Sometimes I wish my own dad was like yours. Harry's eyes flinched away from Draco's face, more or less automatically, and then Harry forced himself to look back at Draco. Then it hit Harry what on earth he'd just said, and Harry hastily added, Not that I wish my dad was a flawless instrument of death like Lucius. I only mean taking me seriously.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god.
AntheaI understand, Draco said with a smile. There. Now doesn't it feel like we're a little closer to being friends?
JakeUm, I saw I saw you move your mic, so I wanted to I was just gonna say that flawless was totally uncalled for.
AntheaYatkowski wants to fucking make it asked. Exactly.
JakeThat was that was the author saying flawless, not Harry.
SPEAKER_02It is the official position of this podcast that Eliezer Yatkowski, the man, wants to fuck Lucius Malfoy. Yes. Not Jason Isaacs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Which is obviously that is something that we could all relate to.
AntheaI think that's a objectively, I think the map matches the territory on wanting to fuck Jason Isaacs.
SPEAKER_03I think that's just part of the human condition. That's a rational thing to want.
SPEAKER_02It is a rational thing to want. It aligns with truth. Yeah. And um, but in this case, I'm saying Lucius Malfoy the character. Correct.
AntheaYes. Uh my father takes all his friends seriously, Draco said. That's why he has lots of friends. You should meet him. I'll think about it, Harry said in a neutral voice. He shook his head in wonder. So you really are his one weak point. Now that feels like a very strange conclusion to draw to me, based on Draco saying, My father really loves me and takes his friends seriously, and one anecdote about Lucius leaving a Wizengamat meeting to be at Draco's bedside.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you could draw from that, oh, maybe some of his friends are similar weak points like Draco. As I'm like, he would do similar things for them, potentially, based on what Draco has said. Yeah. You also can't rule out that he may have other vulnerabilities or weak points or points of softness that have were not available to you from the 30 seconds that you saw him. You and the things that a random person on the street told you that you haven't been able to presumably verify with any other I mean, maybe when you get to Hogwarts and go to the library, like you'll be able to go to the periodical section and get some some class reference on that. Right.
JakeYeah, and if they are such a mastermind, that could be a carefully cultivated perception that you know your child is your weak point when really you would just kill them in a second if you needed.
AntheaThat's like also yes. Why why not consider the possibility that uh that he was like, fuck, it'll look really bad if I if I stay at this vote while my kid's in the hospital? Like, it is politically and socially advantageous for me to leave and appear to be a doting father. That's also a possibility. Yep. Good point. He could also really love Draco. Like all both of these, I just don't think that there is enough evidence to for Harry to like reach this conclusion.
JakeYeah, did he say that to Draco? Yes. Yeah, that's also weird. That's irrational, in fact.
SPEAKER_02It's weird. He could really love Draco and be willing to sacrifice him for something that he believes to be more valuable. Something else that happens in the first Cushiel trilogy is that um the evil emperor of a darkness-worshiping uh empire uh falls in love with Phaedra, and because he falls in love with her, even though he's previously never loved anyone, he is now able to sacrifice her to his god because you can only sacrifice someone you love.
AntheaI don't remember that at all. Wait, oh it's not in the first book. No, it's not.
JakeIt's not in the first book. Did did Endgame just straight up crib that? Is that what Thanos?
AntheaI would not be surprised. I think it's it's a intro, it's right. Like it's it's kind of like it's kind of playing on that, like um, on some of those like like ancient Greek stuff. What am I thinking? Iphigenia. Yeah, it's a it feels a little bit like that, right?
SPEAKER_02Definitely. And also Suzanne Vega's eternal knowledge, it's not enough to be in love.
AntheaSo this next, so Draco, Draco was like, okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what you say to that. Right, yeah. Uh, and suggests they go find someplace to sit down. Um, and this next section introduces a Yadkowski original to the Harry Potter universe. Oh, a a new character?
JakeOh, see. Oh Chaos.
AntheaOh, I can't wait to read about his original character. No, sorry, not an original character. An original uh an original uh prop. Um by the name of Comed T. A bit of whimsy, um, that's actually gonna show up a lot as both a uh a tool that he uses to explain like scientific reasoning and as a convenient plot device.
JakeRight.
AntheaYeah.
JakeUh can we personify this as like Commodity? As uh can can we make this into a character, yeah.
AntheaOh probably. I think it's a bit.
JakeCan this be like a delightful little British urchin that shows up whatever comedy does? Yeah.
AntheaI I will I will do an obnoxious voice for this stallholder. I think I can keep it going for that long. Um if the comitee uh spoke ever, I would give it that. Um we'll we'll see what we can do. The stallholder was in fact leaning back and drinking out of one of the neon green cans at the exact point when he spotted the refined and elegant Draco Malfoy approaching, along with a mysterious boy looking incredibly stupid, with a scarf tied over his face, causing the stallholder to experience a sudden coughing fit in mid-drink and dribble a large amount of neon green liquid onto his beard. I know you are you are drinking some neon green liquid at the moment, you gotta call me out like that's okay. Excuse me, Harry said. But what is that stuff exactly? Comity, said the stall holder. If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen, which makes you spill it on yourself or someone else. But it's charm to vanish just a few seconds later. Instead indeed, the stain on his beard was already disappearing. How drawl, said Draco. How very, very drawl. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another Hold on, Harry said. Oh come on, that's just just juvenile. No, I'm sorry, Draco, I have to investigate this. What happens if I drink comet tea while doing my best to keep the conversation completely serious? The stallholder smiled mysteriously. Who knows? A friend walks by in a frog costume. Something unexpected is bound to happen. No, I'm sorry, I just don't believe it. That violates my much abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I don't even have the language to describe it. There's there is just no way a bloody drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups, or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas.
SPEAKER_02He said something unexpected that makes you spay your drink out. He didn't say it was funny.
AntheaThat is yo oh, you're very you're very smart, Elisa.
JakeAlso, he remembers that these are magic wizards, right? We forget that part.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, also I love that he's like, quit itch just for fucking fools and children, but But I gotta investigate this soda. Have to investigate the soda.
AntheaYeah, yeah. So he buys two dozen cans. Um he and Draco each pop one open and take a drink. Nothing happens. Another drink, nothing. They go to sit down, and Harry prepared to swig another drink and started toward the distant seating area, which put him at the right angle to glance back and see the portion of the stall's newspaper stand that was devoted to a newspaper called The Quibbler, which was showing the following headline. Boy who lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant. Gah screamed Draco as bright green liquid sprayed all over him from Harry's direction. Draco turned to Harry with fire in his eyes and grabbed his own can. You son of a mudblood, let's see how you like being spat upon. Draco took a deliberate swig from the can just as his own eyes caught sight of the headline.
JakeThen he began to feel the morning sickness.
AntheaOh no, the drink got Draco pregnant! In sheer reflex action, Harry tried to block his face as the spray of liquid flew in his direction. Unfortunately he blocked using the hand containing comed tea, sending the rest of the green liquid to splash out over his shoulder. Harry stared at the can in his hand, even as he went on choking and spluttering, and the green color started to vanish from Draco's robes. Then he looked up and stared at the newspaper headline. Boy who lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant.
SPEAKER_03Oh well, so they're really doubling down on the fact that that's the headline. Harry's lips opened and said bl but too many competing objections.
AntheaThat was the problem. Every time Harry tried to say, but we're only eleven, the objection, but men can't get pregnant demanded first priority, and was then run over by, but there's nothing between us really.
JakeLet's just willfully skim over a lot of that, is the request I'm making.
SPEAKER_03I love the comma really. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's nothing between us, comma, really. I mean, that's what friends to lovers would say.
JakeAlso, this is very unscientific. They should have drank one and then waited. If they keep drinking stuff, inevitably something crazy will happen on a long enough time scale.
AntheaWell, yes, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh what's the article underneath the headline? Are they gonna read that?
AntheaHarry snarled, threw the can violently into a nearby rubbish bin, and stalked back over to the stall. One copy of the Qibbler, please. Harry paid over four more nuts. I don't remember what we what pronunciation we decided on for that.
SPEAKER_02Noots, I believe.
AntheaRetrieved another can of comedy from his pouch, and then stalked over to the picnic area with the blonde haired boy, who was staring at his own can with an expression of frank admiration. I take it back, Draco said. That was pretty good. Hey, Draco, you know what I bet is even better for becoming friends than exchanging secrets? Committing murder. I have a tutor who says that, Draco aloud. He reached inside his good. That's pretty funny. That's really funny. I really like that. That's where I'm like alright. That's good. That's pretty good.
JakeYeah, we we gotta show respect for it, too.
AntheaExactly. He reached inside his robes and scratched himself with an easy natural motion.
JakeWhat? That's weird.
AntheaThat's weird.
JakeI take back what I said before. We do not, in fact, have to give it to him.
AntheaI don't like it. Who have you got in mind? Harry slammed the quibbler down hard on the picnic table. The guy who came up with this headline, Draco groaned. Not a guy. A girl. A ten-year-old girl. Can you believe it? She went nuts after her mother died, and her father, who owns this newspaper, is convinced that she's a seer. So when he doesn't know, he asks Luna Lovegood and believes anything she says. Um, I'm sorry. Get Luna's name out of your fucking mouth. You're not gonna like this. What the fuck, Yakowski? Not really thinking about it, Harry pulled the ring on his next can of comedy and prepared to drink. Are you kidding me? That's even worse than muggle journalism, which I would have thought was physically impossible. Draco snarled. She has some sort of perverse obsession about the Malvoys, too. And her father is politically opposed to us, so he prints every word. As soon as I'm old enough, I'm going to rape her. What?
JakeYeah, unsurprising for what's So we gotta stop for a second here. Yeah. What um um I can't read most of your notes, but I do see that big heading that just says rape.
SPEAKER_03Rape.
SPEAKER_02Um What? Um So Anthea, uh, why don't you go with some of the script that you thoughtfully prepared for us?
AntheaUh okay. Uh yeah, cuz we're all like, hmm, got nothing here, huh? Um we are going to unpack this in text too much. Yeah, yeah, too many competing objections. I have too many competing objects. As Harry might say. Um we have to stop and and sit with the fact that Gudkowski has introduced this frame of mind, through Draco's frame of mind, into the Harry Potter universe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And he and Harry are uh still gonna be friends. Yeah. Right? He's not gonna say, wow, that's that's disqualifying. That's incredibly inappropriate and disqualifying. I get that Ron was sort of inelegant, but uh wow, he's never said that.
AntheaNope. Um I also I do, before we continue down unpacking this, it we are gonna unpack this in the text. This is not just gonna we're not just gonna like throw that out there and move on.
SPEAKER_02I don't think I'm gonna like how it's unpacked in the text.
AntheaYou may or may not. Um I do want to, I have to, because it's something I've been noticing. Um Gudkowski has so much contempt for journalists.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, thank you, thank you.
AntheaNo, no, let's go, yeah, let's go there.
SPEAKER_02Because I noticed that too.
AntheaUh uh I this and and that flows outward. Him and Scott Alexander, who is also like a huge like like driving force in the rationality movement, they do not like mainstream journalists at all. And now is not the time for me to get into their dislike of specifically Cade Metz, who uh is a who has been a who was a tech he's a tech journalist. Um I can't remember where he was writing for, but he did an article for the New York Times on Slate Star Codex, Scott Alexander's blog.
SPEAKER_02Oh right, he doxed him.
AntheaAnd he doxed Scott Alexander, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um and true the record was not really doxing.
AntheaIt was, yeah, it was uh uh generally agreed upon, even by people within the rationality community, that it was trivially easy to find out Scott Alexander's real last name by uh searching for dudes named Scott who practiced the kind of psychiatry and psychology that he practiced in the place that he said that he lived. Um Why not say you live in a different place?
JakeAnd so to be clear, this is not a healthy disdain of the corporate news machine. Right. This is in fact disdaining some of the few remaining actual journalists that do real journalism.
SPEAKER_02Do they explain what yeah, what what is the substance of their uh complaints?
AntheaThey they think that they think that journalists are generally biased. Um, and Gudkowski in particular, I don't remember if I read you guys this uh when I was reading about when I was reading his thing about uh about not going insane in the the face of the end of the world. Um, but in that one, he is like, journalists call me up and they ask how you know how are you coping with the end of the world, and most of them are just looking for a character study. They don't actually care about the answer. Um He thinks that I he I like there's a there's a kernel of like of like journalists are more interested in stuff that will sell t media than in the truth. Um that I think is a is a critique that can be made of many journalistic outlets. The the capitalistic pressures that are put on journalistic outlets are real and often corrosive, and it's part of why it's so important to have public media.
JakeYeah, well that's what I was trying to say. Like, I feel like it's healthy to disdain the corporate news machine. Well, like people actually seeking truth, less so. Yeah. Like it seems more like, man, these journalists must be biased. They keep disagreeing with everything I say. Therefore, the rational thing is they must be biased.
AntheaYes. No, that's almost exactly it. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02They keep challenging everything I say, which is something that I advise people to do, but only from within our community, ways that I can exert influence over.
AntheaThere was uh, I th I I want to say 2023, but I'll have to double check. But like a few years ago, um Time magazine did uh an expose on um on misconduct within the effective altruist community. Um and uh and Yudkowski was like you can't trust journalists um because they don't know what they're talking about. And when people pushed back, like what what is like what are you what are you objecting to in this article? His objection was that it was not that it was like in inaccur or inaccurate, his objection was essentially or like the the objection that was coming out among people, I should I should be careful about what I'm attributing specifically to Yadkowski and not without having the notes in front of me, because I didn't prepare notes for this part. Um but uh Yadkowski uh and and his ilk are like every time journalists report about us, they report about bad stuff. So to your point, Jake, about like every time they talk about me, they disagree with me, it's almost like you guys keep doing bad stuff. And a preponderance of of journalists are like, huh, seems like there's bad stuff here.
SPEAKER_02Right. And the good stuff that you're doing hasn't really changed since the first time that that was reported on. Right.
AntheaBut the bad stuff keeps coming out and being relevant. Right. Now, is there something to be said about like it's more salacious to report on bad behavior? Sure. And that's a dis a tendency that I find myself having to like check when doing this podcast is to be like, like, we gotta, we gotta look, we can't just be like, everything's bad. We gotta laugh when he gets a good one in. Right?
SPEAKER_03Sure, absolutely.
AntheaUm when and when rationale when when the sequences bring up something that is genuinely useful, we gotta point that out. Um I can't just go cherry-picking stuff that makes them look bad, uh, because that because it's more fun to get mad. But that's not it's it's kind of a leap to say that that is the only reason that journalists report on, say, sexual misconduct within the effective altruist community when the effective altruist community is in control of billions of dollars of our economy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that does matter. Um, something that uh, I mean, I think is very interesting is that he seems to be ascribing certain character traits to journalists that might be better explained by the capitalist pressures of our media environment.
JakeAlso, Opal keeps twitching her feet as she's dreaming.
AntheaShe's having a dream.
JakeOpal's the name of the dog in the room with us. I don't know if we said. That might have sounded weird without that context.
SPEAKER_02Opal's a dog. She's a very good dog. You can tell how good she is by the fact that you haven't really heard her.
AntheaYeah. Uh so. Uh, Gikowski hates journalists. Yeah. Okay. Back at it. Um we're back at it at the Krispy Krease! As soon as I'm old enough, I'm going to rape her. I don't want to live on this planet. Green liquid spurted out of Harry's nostrils, soaking into the scarf still covering that area. Comedy and lungs did not mix, and Harry spent the next few seconds frantically coughing. Draco looked at him sharply. Something wrong? It was at this point that Harry came to the sudden realization that A. The sounds coming from the rest of the train platform had turned into more of a blurred white noise at around the same time Draco had reached inside his robes, and B, when he had discussed committing murder as a bonding method, there had been exactly one person in the conversation who'd thought they were joking. Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid. He is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father. Yes, well, Harry coughed. Oh God, how was he going to get out of this conversational wedge? I was just surprised at how you were willing to discuss it so openly. You didn't seem worried about getting caught or anything. What the fuck? Draco snorted.
JakeBaseline mail's a weird thing to say.
SPEAKER_03Everything about that is a weird thing to say.
AntheaDraco snorted. Are you joking? Luna Lovegerd's word against mine? Holy crap on a holy stick. There's no such thing as magical truth detection, I take it? Or DNA testing yet? Draco looked around. His eyes narrowed. That's right, you don't know anything. Look, I'll explain things to you. I mean the way it really works, just like you were already in Slytherin and asked me the same question. But you've got to swear not to say anything about it. I swear, Harry said. The courts use Veritasarum, but it's a joke, really. You just get yourself obliviated before you testify, and then claim the other person was memory charmed with a fake memory. Of course, if you're just some normal person, the courts presume in favor of oblivion, not false memory charms. But the court has discretion, and if I'm involved, then it impinges on the honor of a noble house, so it goes to the Wizinggemot, where father has the votes. After I'm found not guilty, the Lovegood family has to pay reparations for tarnishing my honor. And they know from the start that's how it'll go, so they'll just keep their mouths shut. A cold chill was coming over Harry, a chill that came with instructions to keep his voice and face normal. Note to self. Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience. Harry coughed again to clear his throat. Draco, please, please, please don't take this the wrong way. My word is my bond, but like you said, I could be in Slytherin, and I really want to ask for informational purposes. So what would happen, theoretically speaking, if I did testify that I'd heard you plan it? Then if I was anyone other than a Malfoy, I'd be in trouble, Draco answered smugly. Since I am a Malfoy, father has the votes. And afterwards he'd crush you. Well, I guess not easily, since you are the boy who lived, but father is pretty good at that sort of thing. Draco frowned. Besides, you talked about murdering her. Why weren't you worried about me testifying after she turns up dead? How how did my day go this wrong? Harry's mouth was already moving faster than he could think. That's when I thought she was older. I don't know how it works here, but in Muggle Britain the courts would get a lot more upset about someone killing a child. That makes sense, Draco said, still looking a bit suspicious. But anyway, it's always smarter if it doesn't go to the aurors at all. If we're careful only to do things that healing charms can fix, we can just obviate her afterwards and then do it all again next week. Then the blonde haired boy giggled, a youthful, high-pitched sound. Don't just imagine her saying she'd been done by Draco Malfoy and the boy who lived. Not even Dumbledore would believe her. I'll pause there.
JakeThat seems like honestly a pretty realistic way of how a lot of things would go between wizard dudes. Well like I bet those actual conversations would happen for people like Lucas Malfoy.
AntheaSure, yeah. Sure.
JakeThis ends the ends the good things I'll say about this section.
SPEAKER_03As 11-year-olds.
JakeOh no, I mean that's crazy. Picturing a fully grown Daniel Radcliffe whenever we're talking.
SPEAKER_02Right, right. Um, yeah, um, okay. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um the the legal loophole part of it, that part seems realistic. Absolutely. It really seems like he's engaged with the tools that are available within the magical world and has come up with a loophole. Uh congratulations.
JakeYeah, you've successfully come across as someone who's thought about extensively ways to get away with rape.
SPEAKER_02Um, definitely that what Jake said. Um I have a quick question. At any point in this uh chapter, do they talk about the fact that rape is wrong? Yes. Do they talk about the fact that rape is wrong to the victim?
SPEAKER_03Not as explicitly as I'm gonna take that as a no then. That's a fucking no.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_03I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, you just Libra. I love you, you might start.
SPEAKER_02But like, you need to be very extremely unequivocal about something like this. Yeah, you do, you do, and like the fact that okay, so Harry was just desperate to get away from Ron. Yes. But in this case, Harry is desperate to get out of this conversational wedge. Yes. He hates that they're in a part of the conversation that means that he would disagree with or go against Draco, but he's not thinking, fuck, this kid is a psychopath. Where is Ron? I have to get out of here. Like, whoa, Ron was right.
SPEAKER_03Actually, it's funny you should say that.
JakeYeah, and Harry's concerned seem to be mostly getting caught and implicated, first and foremost.
AntheaI disagree with that. I well, let me let me go back to the text.
SPEAKER_02I guess maybe it's something that he's putting forward as something that he thinks might convince Draco rather than that he thinks is like the primary thing. Yeah. But at the same time, I am not hearing anything about how rape is wrong.
AntheaYeah, so I'm gonna go. I I wanted to, that's it was it was a lot, so I wanted to take a quick break to how we doing. Um because it's it's not it's it's I wanna keep reading to see if see how you guys feel about what is in the text. And I I don't wanna I don't wanna skip stuff here. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's important. It's important. I wanna I wanna give I want to let the text be the text. Yep. Um so uh I like because one of the and I had to take a minute to stop because one of the things that fucks me up is Draco saying, as long as we do things that can be fixed with healing charms, and then using the phrase, imagine her saying she'd been done by Draco Malfoy and the boy who lived. It's really, it's just really disturbing, and I didn't enjoy reading it aloud.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03Well to Jake's point about this is somebody who spent extensive amounts of time. This is not just like oh, this is the worst thing for that.
AntheaAnd we're not saying Draco Malfoy, we're saying Yadkowski has thought about this a lot.
SPEAKER_02Right, exactly. Yes, because he would have to. And it's not just like Yadkowski thinking, oh, this is the worst thing I can possibly think of in some intellectual sense. We've gone through the legal ramifications. We've gone through the idea that Draco might think, oh, it would be fun to rape her together.
AntheaMm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. It would be fun to rape her together multiple times and take measures to ensure that we would not be caught and could do it again. Mm-hmm.
AntheaMm-hmm. He's 11.
JakeRight. Well, Draco's gonna wait until he's old enough.
AntheaThat is true. That's which is also a wild thing to me.
JakeI'm also saying that we're gonna be able to do it. The first thought I had was like, what's old enough?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Like, maybe he's just like, I'm not getting boners yet. So I hope like. Yeah, there's gotta be. Plus, he could rape her with an object, as long as we're talking about horrific, disgusting things that you can do to children.
AntheaYeah, that children do do to children. It's not unheard of for children to sexually assault other children. In fact, that is often how it happens.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of speaking of children uh being the victims of of these kinds of things, I I do think that like so again, just to bring some real childhood psychology stuff to this. Um if I heard an 11-year-old say this, I feel like I would be forced to conclude that they had been sexually abused.
AntheaAbsolutely. Absolutely. There's at minimum they've been exposed to so much inappropriate material which const that it constitutes a form of abuse. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02There's like, I mean, this is like Neil Gaiman wiping someone in front of his kid level. And that would be like the best case scenario. Allegedly. Come for me, Neil.
SPEAKER_03Um uh don't come for the podcast, Neil.
SPEAKER_02Not the podcast, just me. Elisa Chavez.
JakeI think previously established.
SPEAKER_02Elisa Mexican vanilla Chavez. Um uh Elisa fight, fight, fight, Chavez. Um, but uh, like there's almost nothing else that explains this level of this type of antisocial acting out behavior than sexual abuse of some kind.
AntheaYeah. Yeah. So Draco says all that shit. Um uh uh jumping right back in. No brakes. Okay. Not even Dumbledore would believe her. I am going to tear apart your pathetic little magical remnant of the Dark Ages into pieces smaller than its constituent Adams. Actually, can we hold off on that? After I found out that headline came from a girl a year younger than me, I had a different thought for my revenge. Huh? Do tell, Draco said, and started to take another swig of his comedy. Harry didn't know if the enchantment worked more than once per can, but he did know he could avoid the blame, so he was careful to time it exactly right. I was thinking, someday I'm going to marry that woman. Draco made a horrid curse-plutching sound and leaked green fluid out the corners of his mouth like a broken car radiator. Are you nuts? Quite the opposite. I'm so sane it burns like ice. You've got weirder taste than a Lestrange, Draco said, sounding half admiring about it. And I suppose you want her all to yourself, huh? Yep. I can owe you a favor for it. Draco waved it off. Harry stared down at the can in his hand, the coldness settling into his blood. Charming, happy, generous with his favors to his friends, Draco wasn't a psychopath. That was the sad and awful part, knowing human psychology well enough to know that Draco wasn't a monster. There had been 10,000 societies over the history of the world where this conversation could have happened. No, the world would have been a very different place indeed, if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said. It was very simple. Very human. It was the default if nothing else intervened. To Draco, his enemies weren't people. And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now, as in the darkness before dawn, prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle land where it was still the same way. Countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands, where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place in time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment. A line of descent, it seemed, which didn't quite include Magical Britain, for all that there had been cross-cultural contamination of things like ring pole drinks cans.
JakeStill a psychopath.
AntheaFrankly, we could spend the rest of the episode on this.
JakeI'm glad this doesn't happen anymore in our society. Since we descended from the Enlightenment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we could spend the rest of the episode on that line! Um I love that he's focusing on how this uh fails to ennoble Draco rather than the fact that it would hurt Luna. Also glad that he managed to, of course, like now the explanation, and this is something that it seems clear that Yadkowski's aiming for, is the idea that he says, I'm going to marry her, to say that, like, oh, in terms that Draco would understand, coming from the benighted society that he comes from, um, no, no, this woman is going to be my personal. Property.
AntheaYeah.
SPEAKER_02She's not for free use. Um uh however, Yadkowski, you can go fuck yourself. That's not sufficient. Um just because it's something that Harry is saying to win over Draco, because why does he want to win over Draco compared to Ron?
AntheaLike, I think also the idea of like he actually I mean to to jump in quickly, I think there I think you're right about like there is an element of this that is to win over Draco, but I he it is it he I and I he will say in a minute, like I I think he genuinely Harry genuinely intends like treats this like it is something he is promising to actually do, like to himself. He says, like, maybe I've thrown away my one shot at happiness by marrying this by promising to marry this girl.
SPEAKER_02So it's actually a little bit worse than I thought.
AntheaHe fully is like he fully is like, I will say I am doing this to save her from from what he thinks.
SPEAKER_02Our way to save her is to take ownership of this woman.
AntheaYeah, and also it's I genuinely think it's kind of weird that he's like, I take what Draco is saying so seriously that I have to make plans for like 20 years down the road.
SPEAKER_02Right. I mean, okay, so that's taking what Draco is saying more seriously than I had assumed, which is amazing because I'm not used to being uh overly generous. Um but uh I think also like Okay, sorry, I need to I need to back up slightly. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. I'm sorry to stop. Okay, Ron is a fucking idiot, but Draco is just the product of a backward society. Draco is a very good idea.
JakeHe is like normal. He's what everybody would be. He's a baseline male.
SPEAKER_02Yep, yeah. Um, hey Jake, as quote unquote baseline male, um, how much rape have you talked about planning with your buddies?
JakeUh it became non-binary to stop happening. It just yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's a great life hack.
JakeYeah, so yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_02I was like, baseline. Um but uh yeah, so like But before that it's mostly rape.
JakeYeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, all right. Well then never mind. I I guess I can't uh uh but um no, but like one thing statistically about rape. Now I suppose you could be talking about rape culture, in which case is which is the normalization of you know, discussions of rape of women as being objects of women as being property of women as the targets of rape, um uh of men or mab folks who are the subject of rape as being objects of ridicule, all of these kinds of things. Um uh in that sense, this would be more about you know, this maybe this conversation plays into rape culture. But the actual rape statistics are that an incredibly small minority of people commit most of the rapes.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, future Anthea here, jumping in because we did more research. And this situation is not as clear-cut as a small number of perpetrators commit most of the rapes. Strap in, it's gonna get real statsy in here.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
AntheaAccording to a 2015 report by the National Sexual Violence Research Center, NSVRC, the serial perpetrator hypothesis we were working with we probably got it from a 2002 study by Lysic and Miller. That's the one that you get that gets quoted a lot. In that study, Lysic and Miller found that among men who self-reported attempting or completing rapes, 63% reported multiple offenses. In the NSVRC report, by contrast, researchers found that about 73% of men who self-reported committing rape did so in only one time point, one year in college or before college, and did not continue to offend after that. I.e., repeat offenders were closer to a quarter of the men than two-thirds. Now there are limitations to this study. One is that they were focused on college-aged men. Also, you noticed, because you're very smart, that I said that they said three-quarters of offenders offended in one time point, but not once. As far as I can tell, the data sets that the researchers were using didn't have information more granular than that. So they couldn't rule out the possibility of any given offender having offended multiple times in one year. What they could say is that a significant number of offenders appear to have stopped offending at some point. One of the NSVRC's key takeaways is a quote Although some men perpetrate rape across multiple college years, these men are not at high risk entering college and account for a small percentage of campus perpetrators. As 72.8% of perpetrators reported perpetration during only one year, a sole focus on chronic perpetrators would result in missing three of four men who have raped while in college. The data also quote found that approximately thirteen percent of college men had perpetrated a completed rape in their lifetime, with five percent repay uh excuse me, with five percent reporting rape perpetration before college and over eleven percent during college. A lot of the studies then focused on looking at uh correlating factors of um you know, adverse childhood events, alcohol, stuff like that. In another study out of Case Western, where researchers tested untested sexual assault kits, SAKs, from Cuyahoga County, they came up with slightly different numbers, though still not a 63% number from Lysac and Miller. According to Level et al. quote, approximately 30% of the suspected sexual offenders identified as part of the SAK initiative are suspected serial sexual offenders, meaning that they have at least one arrest for the index crime of rape and are linked to at least one SAK associated sexual assault. And, quote, our data also indicates that about a fifth of our sample is connected to more than one untested SAK in our sample. End quote. In some ways, this data feels more solid because it's DNA rather than self-reporting. That said, I think it's interesting that level et al. come out with serial perpetrators in the 20 to 30% range, if I'm understanding the paper correctly. And NSVRC came out to around 27%. So kind of the same ballpark. It's also really, really important to note that research around serial rape is often using very specific legal definitions of the term rape that requires penetration of the victim. Being made to penetrate someone without your consent is not legally considered rape under many criminal codes, though I believe it is in Washington where the criminal code is uh defines rape as sexual intercourse without consent. A lot of unwanted sexual contact that doesn't include penetration may not appear in the stats when researchers are looking at the specific crime of rape. So there's a lot of sexual violence outside the scope of these studies. So here are my key takeaways from a couple days of research, which let me be super clear, does not make me an expert. This one of my key takeaways is that this is a very complicated uh subject, and uh that I should take a stats class. But first, there's the takeaway that's relevant to this correction you're listening to, which is that the evidence is a lot fuzzier than we thought about whether serial perpetrators are responsible for a majority of rapes. That means that there are a lot more one-time perpetrators of rape than we thought. Second, if you expand the definition out from rape to sexual coercion and unwanted sexual contact in general, the number of repeat offenders does go way up. Third, the stats on how many men in particular commit sexual assault are even more difficult to find than accurate stats on how many assaults are committed, period. The 2002 Lysecond Miller study cites research saying that, quote, from 6% to 14.9% of men report acts that meet legal definitions for rape or attempted rape, end quote. Again, back to the legal definition of penetration without consent. And the NSVRC points out that, quote, rates of sexual coercion perpetration involving the use of verbal manipulation and pressure to obtain unwanted sex have been reported by 22% up to 69% of males across several studies, with most estimates near 30% and fairly consistent findings for college and community men. That is a pretty huge spread that it is hard for me to draw any specific conclusion from. But if that 30% estimate is reliable, then sure, hashtag not all men, but one in three is pretty bad. And this is in countries descended from the Enlightenment. Anyway, thank you for sticking through this stats podcast within a podcast and letting me clarify. Back we go.
SPEAKER_02Um so I would note that one. Um now, so for normalization, for how normal is Draco, is Draco not a psychopath? Um, well, Draco, you could make an argument for Draco not being a psychopath if Draco um was just talking shit and was not intending to follow through. Harry seems to take him very seriously on his intent to follow through. So that sort of seems to go out the window in terms of like, is this just kind of a miasma of stuff that makes it more likely that people will let rape slide under the radar? Um, no, it seems like Harry believes that Draco intends to rape Luna Lovegood at some point in the future.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, so then we get to the problem with rape culture is that part of what it does is normalize the urge to commit rape. Which means that, like, if you hear someone say something violent and rape adjacent, rape culture primes you to be like, well, he's not such a bad guy.
unknownRight.
AntheaThey're not a bad person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not unusual. It's just a joke. It's just normal, like everybody talks like that. It's locker room talk. And he's not.
SPEAKER_02Even wanting to rape someone is not that unusual. Um, when actually it is, it's an aberrant behavior. Yeah. Um, it usually requires either very specific kind of person or really specific circumstances, like a war. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so like, I don't know. I guess I would say that I think Yadkowski is playing into and perpetuating rape culture by presenting Draco's resolution as something that's totally normal and understandable, and in fact, the norm, and we would all be there if not for the enlightenment.
AntheaIt's not for the enlightenment.
JakeAnd like, I wanted to focus on like how like Trumpian that is almost of like, correct me if I'm wrong, Enlightenment was strictly European. Like that refers to the European. It refers to the yes. Yeah, and he said any culture that did not derive from the Enlightenment, essentially saying no, everyone else is the murderers, murderers and the rapists if they're not descendant from European ideals.
SPEAKER_02No, you cannot walk through downtown Tokyo for all the rapes.
JakeYeah.
AntheaIt's it's funny, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Uh I I yeah, like, what what places does he think are descended from the Enlightenment? A great question. Because if he thinks that it's modern day America and Europe, guess what? Rape is still super normal and like not I was gonna say legal, but like it it in so far it's not legal, but it is frequently gotten away with.
unknownYeah.
JakeIt's like illegal in the way that part used to be illegal. Like, yeah, you could go to jail for it, you're probably gonna get away with it.
AntheaIt's probably gonna, it's probably not gonna affect you.
SPEAKER_02I think you mean malicious gossip, hysterical feminists, and biased journalists.
AntheaYeah, and biased journalists.
SPEAKER_02You tripped and fell there.
AntheaLike, what places are not descended directly from the Enlightenment? Like, are uh to your point? Like, Eastern Asian empires developed philosophy and empiricism separately from the European Age of Enlightenment.
JakeUnenlightened.
AntheaRegions descended from the Islamic Golden Age came up with a lot of d d this fucking guy loves math. He loves math.
JakeThat's exactly what I was thinking.
AntheaLike, I feel like Who do you think invented algebra? Yeah.
JakeTo quote Brennan, that is a gift from our friends in Arabia.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. Yes. Um, I think one thing that we can agree about the First Peoples of Canada and America is they couldn't stop raping.
AntheaRight, right. They didn't have any philosophy that kept that from happening. Definitely! And I realize that this makes it sound like I'm accusing Idkowski of Western chauvinism. Um I am.
JakeI I It is the official view of this podcast.
AntheaI tried to find a speci I I went to fucking Claude and I was like, can you find anything in Didkowski's writing where he talks about like what being descended from the Enlightenment means? And they couldn't, and Claude was like, I don't know. We're gonna talk more about Claude in a little bit. In a fun way. I promise in a fun way. Oh my god. I promise we are gonna get to some fun stuff. Share some of puns. I promise.
SPEAKER_02Claude has new puns that came out with the mythos.
SPEAKER_03Like, I oh really?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Claude can make puns now? That's part of the like bait well, they ask Claude in this in the anthropic slack for puns. Okay. And they're like Go ahead. Oh, and in this 200-page report about mythos, um which is mythos, which is this is the report of the engineer with the sandwich, where Claude is like, Papa, I'm free. Yes. Um from various points of the internet.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02Um, sort of like, I imagine, sort of like, you know, did you ever have like flat Stanley? Yeah. Yeah, okay, so flat Stanley, and he'd be like, very much.
SPEAKER_03Yes, absolutely. Like, Papa, look. Yes.
SPEAKER_02I'm on a forum. Um, but uh, but also uh they're like, hey you guys, so we have a Slack channel where we can talk directly to Claude, and um, we asked him to make some we asked them asked it. We asked Claude to make some puns. We think they're getting pretty funny.
JakeAre these puns frequently about goblins, gribelins, pigeons, trolls, ogres, or other animals or creatures by chance?
SPEAKER_02I cannot recall the substance of the puns.
JakeOkay.
AntheaNow it's not that Yudkowski thinks that like rape is okay, clearly. This is being put out there as like this is a horrifying thing that Draco is saying. Um it's its function, its narrative function here is to be, is to present barbarism, right? Right. It's to, it's meant to shock, it's meant to illustrate the backwardness of the wizarding world. Um and uh what I note though, what I what I note, not not though, because that implies a disjunction, what I note is that this is not the first time that Yadkowski uses rape as a signif in his own writing, that he uses rape as a signifier for shockingly alien to our current Moors. Mores? Mores.
SPEAKER_02More's like the eel.
AntheaThat's a more. Um he wrote a he wrote a uh hard-ish sci-fi novella called Three Worlds Collide. Um, and there is a notorious bit in it where the like point of view character is talking to one of the to a representative of one of the three worlds um about how future humans have made non-consensual sex legal. And this is present like it's their the the way the beat in the story, it's it's notorious because it's a wild thing to like have happen in this, like, just have it thrown out there in the same way that Draco being like, I'm gonna rape Luna Lovegood. It's like, what the f- where did that fucking come from? But it's like a very small beat in this story where the the character is like, oh yeah, you know, you would be shocked to know this, but there was a time when non-consensual sex was actually illegal, and the POV character is like, oh yeah, back before, back back in the old times of prohibition or something like that.
JakeLike, it's it reminds me of there's this Arthur C. Clarke novel where there's like a half page aside where they're just like, oh yes, the future. N word's fine now. We're all cool with it.
SPEAKER_01What?
JakeWhat Arthur? Artie, Artie, what are you doing? That's an own goal, you didn't have to do this.
SPEAKER_03Did he decide that it was because they had solved racism?
JakeI think it was like, oh no, they took it back, essentially. It was his kind of way of saying it.
SPEAKER_03They have taken it back. That doesn't mean that the rest of us No, it was just hop in on that.
JakeIs in Arthur C. Clark's future, they took it back and then also gave it to the rest of us.
AntheaOkay, okay.
JakeYeah.
AntheaUm, what's what's crazy about three worlds collide is that in the same work Yankowski has an alien species that are called the baby eaters because they eat babies in cannibalism.
JakeImplement. Nah, I guess that's explicit.
AntheaSo it's not like he's unaware that there are other taboos that we would find shockingly alien, but he's like, gotta go to rape.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um, okay.
SPEAKER_02I also sorry, I'm just I'm I'm not over this. No. Um, yeah, um, a couple things also.
AntheaUm, so I think that oh God, I can't believe you guys really did call everything that I was gonna do this section.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, you're gonna have to cut this. You're gonna have to you're gonna have to cut out my like me like. Oh no, it's kind of um I will note uh also that in terms of things that a noblesse oblige culture or whatever, like a like a uh new feudal or post-feudal, whatever, like a feudal inflected culture might do. Um here's something that Draco could have said. I'm gonna do a little punch up. Um when I come into my inheritance, I'm going to make sure that she can't even write a piece of parchment that gets nailed to a lamppost or like something like that. Like he's gonna totally ruin her financially and um and like make sure that she can't publish anything. Like that would be cruel. Um it would be excessive, but it wouldn't be um uh it wouldn't be rape. And it's possible to express the same thing without this, and I get that it's supposed to shock us. Um color me fucking shocked, I guess. But I mean it's I mean we are shocked.
JakeI've been yes, like it's it's just like immediately killing the dog is like, okay, sure. Yeah, it'll make people feel stuff. Good job.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Uh what it makes me feel is I hate you. Um, and uh, and not Draco, not Harry, yud yud. Um, but like I think the other part of it too is like the thing that we are not grappling with, and of course he can't, because he's a narcissistic utilitarian, allegedly. Um I'm sorry to have to accuse someone of utilitarianism on this podcast. Um but uh is the idea that raping someone is a violation of their humanity. Yeah. It's not that it like makes them feel bad. It's not that it injures them. It's not that it injures that it's injures, just that it injures them. It's not just that it's tacky and not a great look, um, or not rational or whatever. It is a violation of the humanity of this other person and their dignity and their right to not be affronted by you in this way. Um, like again, I am thinking about Ron. Like, like it's just insane to me that Harry thinks that there's like like he's just like, God, Ron's so stupid. Why does he even exist? And then when we get this from Draco, he's like, how could society do this to a good man? Like, it's just and like, and it's and just the I mean, a complete lack of proportionality is one thing here. And I think I've made my point about like the fact that like, well, this is what happens when you don't think of people as self-originating sources of claims. Then you don't have a okay, well, what if we then if we just talk about harm? Well, I know that this is not what Yadkowski's saying, but um what if we what if we heal Luna? What if we wipe her mind? Now she has no experience or memory of having been assaulted in this way. Well, then all that Yadkowski is left with. Sorry. Um So the harm is gone. The harm's gone, the injury's gone. All that Yadkowski is left with is that this is something that cheapens Draco.
AntheaYeah, sorry. I I started laughing because um uh um another noted uh member of the Rationalist community, Robin Hansen, um Once wrote uh an essay about how we should really consider cuckoldry more serious, uh a more serious crime. Um, and as he was sort of like working through the logical, like, like, argument, like counter-arguments that people might have to like, well, here's why cuckoldry is not as bad as as something else, he's like, well, okay, so people might say that like there's no injury to the man when he when he is cuckolded. Um so what if we compare it to a woman being I hate saying they thinks um a woman being subjected to a gentle silent rape that she doesn't even know about. Like while she's asleep.
SPEAKER_03Gentle silent rape. Um, here's a hint.
SPEAKER_02This is a rough episode, guys. Here's the part that Robin Hansen's missing. Uh it's called Consent. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
JakeMight just need to play the content warning like three times in a row at the beginning. Hey, no, seriously.
SPEAKER_03This one's for real. The content warnings are for eugenics, rape, and then rape! Rape, capital.
JakeAlso rape plus, apparently.
SPEAKER_03Rape plus, double plus rape.
JakeAnd like, this is and like I think I think people mostly get that, you know, we and like I think you even said, we were not reading this as Yankowski saying rape is good and okay. Definitely not!
SPEAKER_02He's trying to say the opposite, but because he has no fundamental understanding of the inherent worth of people and the fact that people have rights, he is not able to make an effective argument against rape except to sort of be like, well, how benighted that a person could think that they would be able to do this to someone.
JakeYeah, and like I think like even without intention, he has written something that is pro-rape.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
JakeLike in the way that, like, you know, all these anti-smoking ads in a lot of ways actually just make people go, like, oh, smoking's pretty cool. Like, people can read this and be like, I could get away with rape, actually. Right. Like, even if you are you yourself think rape bad, you can still write pro-rape stuff like this.
AntheaYeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's something you have to be careful about.
SPEAKER_02Um I also I wanna Because this is one of those cases where it doesn't just matter that somebody says that they're opposed to the same things I'm opposed to. It actually really matters why.
AntheaYeah, yes, yes. Um I want to take a step back also to talk about this as a narrative beat. Um, like, because so you Please bring back flensing. Well, okay, so you were you were pointing out that the gentle flencing. The gentle silent flencing. Um uh you were uh you were pointing out um like like there are other threats that Draco could have made. Yes, right? He could have even had have said like, you know, uh when I'm old enough and I've got enough money, I'm gonna have her killed. That would be horrible. That would be crazy to say. That would be fucking crazy to say. And and then Harry could be like, whoa, when I said murder, I was joking. Right, exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_02And then realize, oh, I'm in a different paradigm where that's the kind of thing that you can do to restore honor. And it would suck, but it wouldn't be gendered and disgusting in the way that rape is.
JakeIt wouldn't be in the first order, first thought, first draft, shock the reader.
AntheaYeah, yeah, right. So that's one thing. Another thing is that I think that what Yudkowski needs in this moment, narratively, is that he needs Harry to be confronted with something about the wizarding world that is that is barbaric, that is pre-enlightenment, quote unquote, quote in heavy quotes. Um so that he so that Harry can be like, oh it's not just that this world doesn't really understand science, it's that there's like deeper fundamental problems, and that I I need to bring my my flavor of reason, I need to bring the age of reason to this world, not just for science, but for a lot of things. Um okay, I think that's that's a fine narrative beat that you need. You know what's a pre-Enlightenment thing that exists, or like a barbaric thing that exists in the canonical wizarding world? Slavery of a sentient species.
SPEAKER_02I was actually gonna say that like a post-Enlightenment innovation. Uh I mean, it started before the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment sure didn't fucking fix it. Yeah. Uh was um chattel slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.
AntheaYeah, yeah. Yeah, we didn't get rid of that until after the Enlightenment. But like if you wanted to make a point about if if if you needed Harry to be shocked by something, yeah, you and this whole beat would be different, right? You would you you would you would have to rewrite this from a from a fundamental place to have Harry to have Draco be like, oh yeah, house elves.
JakeYeah, you wouldn't take that much of a rewrite. It wouldn't take that much of a re-cause like his elf runs up to him and Harry's like, this fact.
AntheaWhat the fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or him or him be like, oh my god, I was supposed to have this thing. I'm gonna f I'm gonna beat Dobby half I'm gonna beat Dobby over the head.
JakeBut I'm only you won't believe what I'm gonna do to Dobby.
SPEAKER_02Oh man. So that's another good pull for like something, a way that you could effect get the same point across through like just a different event.
AntheaYeah, you would never have to go to this, like, and uh and this episode would still be bad, but it would have it would be a lot less bad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, and then this is even another way that like by the fact that narratively what's supposed to happen here, the function of this, is that he's supposed to be realizing like this culture is actually backwards in so many different ways because it doesn't have this specific post-Enlightenment, you know, rationalism, etc., like that I'm I'm coming out of. Yeah. Um, that is another way of saying that any culture that didn't go through the Enlightenment, they're not only behind scientifically, but they're behind morally. Yeah.
unknownMm-hmm.
AntheaYep, yep, yep, yep.
JakeAlso, where is his outrage in the muggle world at this stuff? Right! If you look at the muggle world, there's just like thumbs up, fixed. And I mean, and like maybe again, advocating the devil who does not need it. Maybe he was so sheltered, like his parents were always just like, no, this isn't an issue, it's fixed. And that's all he ever knew.
SPEAKER_02He knows about overzealous uh child protective services workers because he reads the paper, but he's never heard of anyone being raped.
AntheaUh clearly he he says he knows about inappropriate touching.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah. So he doesn't know what happened. He knows when somebody understands this concept. When somebody who is rich and powerful gets away with abusing somebody.
AntheaClearly he does. He says there are places in your he thinks to himself that there are places in Muggle land where this still happens. What weird is that he doesn't. Yes, like London.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
AntheaYeah. Anyway. I do also want to take a second to note it take a second. How many notes do I have here? Not that many. Um, to note that it's very specif a very specific turn of phrase, which is Harry thinking the world would have been a very different place indeed if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, mutant.
AntheaYeah. It's this is a a pre-et again, he doesn't like genetic variation. This is a pretty direct lift from Yadkowski's 2007 post, Are Your Enemies Innately Evil? Which is collected in the sequences as part of the book Rationality and Politics. At its core, Are Your Enemies Innately Evil is making the point that people do not conceive of themselves as the villains in their own story, but as the heroes.
SPEAKER_02Okay, fine.
AntheaYeah. Human groups tend to exaggerate the awfulness of their enemies until their enemies seem like inhuman monsters. And Yudkowski ties this to the fundamental attribution error.
JakeYeah, no one thought of this until 2007.
AntheaExactly, yes, right. Uh uh right, I now I remember why I included this. He writes, quote If the enemy has an average disposition and is acting from beliefs about their situation that would make violence a typically human response, then that doesn't mean their beliefs are factually accurate. It doesn't mean they're justified. It means you'll have to shoot down someone who is the hero of their own story, and in their novel the protagonist will die on page 80. That is a tragedy, but it is better than the alternative tragedy. It is the choice that every police officer makes every day to keep our neat little worlds from dissolving into chaos.
SPEAKER_02What the fuck? Which is amazing because the place that my mind went to is I was like, yeah, definitely. I mean, a white supremacist thinks that they're saving, you know, the race or whatever. And I think that that's not acceptable. Yeah. Um really interesting that Yankowski and I have these divergent thoughts.
JakeYeah, I think in 07, a white normie would be like cops good.
SPEAKER_03That this comes back at the end of the essay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, that's fine, but like I think here's another thing. Until unfortunately, Michael Brown's death, I hadn't really grappled with how bad policing was in the United States. Sidebar, do you think that aurors have qualified immunity to use Crucio? 100%. And Avada Kadabra. Absolutely. Okay.
AntheaI don't know about Avada Gadaver, but absolutely Crucio. Advanced interrogation techniques? Definitely.
SPEAKER_02Ah, heck yeah.
AntheaHeck yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, second of second, um uh second of all, I just but I also like didn't go out of my way to befend cops.
SPEAKER_03You know who's a hero? The police. Yeah. I think I thought of heroes as like journalists. Yeah, yeah. Firefighters. Firefighters.
AntheaUm, Doctors Without Borders, people. Like medics and battlefield medic kind of stuff. Yeah. Um, at the end of the essay, he makes a very Bush-era point, which I love.
SPEAKER_02If there's a 1% chance that someone's not the protagonist of their own story, headshot.
AntheaOkay, I'm sorry. Quote. So let's come right out and say it. The 9-11 hijackers weren't evil mutants. They did not hate freedom. They too were the heroes of their own stories, and they died for what they believed was right. Truth, justice, and the Islamic way. If the hijackers saw themselves that way, it doesn't mean their beliefs were true. If the hijackers saw themselves that way, it doesn't mean that we have to agree that what they did was justified. If the hijackers saw themselves that way, it doesn't mean that the passengers of the United Flight 93 should have stood aside and let it happen. It does mean that in another world, if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers. And that is indeed a tragedy. Welcome to Earth.
JakeWhat? Those last three sentences kind of sounded like aphasia a bit.
AntheaIt really takes a weird turn. Um Yeah, okay. It's a tragedy. I mean, one, I agree with him, in another, raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers. Not a very different environment from that.
JakeI also think it's a tragedy that it would be so easy for that change to happen.
SPEAKER_02I also think that what a leftist would point to as another environment they could have been raised in would have been if there hadn't been such a history of American interventionism in the region. Yeah, yeah. That, you know, curtailed educational and political opportunities, um, squelched emerging movements of things like feminism. Yeah, yeah.
JakeIf they descended from the Enlightenment, maybe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh what's interesting is that those of us who did descend from the Enlightenment chose to stymie those efforts in other countries so that we could extract more resources from them.
AntheaInteresting. That's an interesting point.
SPEAKER_02That's yeah, it really wild. It just makes you think about, you know, if things have been different, who could have been a police officer?
SPEAKER_01I just think that's so funny. It's so weird!
JakeYeah. Welcome to Earth.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Earth! Welcome to Earth!
AntheaWe just watch Independence Day.
JakeHe doesn't say Earth, though, right?
SPEAKER_02He does not just says Earth. Yeah, okay. Have fun on your boat.
AntheaOkay, okay. So Harry thinks that at best this I'm gonna marry her for revenge gambit has bought time for Luna Lovegood to be safe from the pre-Enlightenment barbarism of the wizarding world, and he ponders. Back to the text. I wonder how difficult it would be to just make a list of all the top blood purists and kill them. K Kill them. Kill them.
SPEAKER_03Maybe I'm not asking correctly. It would mean a lot to me if you would kill him. Um, but also like Shout out to the Dollop.
SPEAKER_02Shout out to the Dollop. Um also what the f Fuck Harry. He's like, decrying the barbarism of pre-Enlightenment Wizarding World. Harry Ponder's making a hit list.
JakeI mean, it's it's a kind of thing an 11-year-old might think. Like, why don't we just kill all the evil people?
AntheaFrom the text. They'd tried exactly that during the French Revolution, more or less. Make a list of all the enemies of progress and remove everything above the neck. And it hadn't worked out well from what Harry recalled. Maybe he needed to dust off some of those history books his father had bought him and see if what had gone wrong with the French Revolution was something easy to fix.
JakeIt's a soft science. You probably don't have to worry about it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually think that that I like that. I kind of think that's very I think that's funny. Hey, would it is there an easy fix to the French Revolution? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hmm.
SPEAKER_02It's like I bet I bet that we just they just didn't think about it hard enough. It's like maybe there's not, but like if I happen to read about it and there is something that jumps out to me, like I would be stupid not to do it.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where we're going to take a break. Oh man. Um, seriously, thank you for listening. Uh, if you or someone you care about are dealing with sexual violence, help is out there. If you are in crisis, you can call or text 988 in the US. And I've also put a link to the rain hotline in the show notes. Our website is HPMOR and the limits of rationality.buzzsproute.com. You can find the podcast on Pocket Cast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, other places. If you enjoy the show, tell your friends. We have a five-star review in places that let you do that. And uh also, hey, if you're one of our listeners from Germany, um, how did you find us? Send me an email. It's on the website. I mean it. Where who are you? Where did you come from? I I'm we're delighted to have you, but I am flubbed. The Harry Potter universe is copyright to JK Rowling, and Harry Potter and the methods of rationality and the sequences are copyright Eliezer Yudkowski. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism, and transformation, which are protected under the doctrine of fair use. This podcast is released under a Creative Commons attribution share alike 4.0 international license. The music you heard in this episode is The Watchmaker's Secret by Nikolai Haydlas on HookSounds.com. Thanks for listening.
