Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

It was Saturday morning, February [-]st, and at the long table in Ravenclaw, a boy looked nervously at the breakfast plate piled high with vegetables to see if there was any meat in it.

Maybe it's an overreaction.After the initial shock, Harry's common sense is awakened, and he hypothesizes that "Snakespeak" might just be a user language interface for controlling snakes...

... Anyway, snakes can't really have human-level intelligence, or someone would have figured it out.The smallest creature Harry has ever heard of with a language-like brain is an African gray parrot trained by Irene Pepperberg[1].Even this species, which plays a complex game of adultery requiring imitation of other parrots, can only master a primitive language with no structure.And from what Draco could remember, snakes spoke to Parseltongue a language that resembled normal human speech - in other words, well-developed, recursive syntax and grammar.Even with huge brains and strong social selection pressure, it took hominids a long time to evolve such a language.From what Harry had heard, snakes had no social structure at all.And there are thousands of species of snakes all over the world, how could their so-called language be the same version, "snake language"?

Of course, this was just common sense, and Harry was beginning to lose all faith in common sense.

But Harry was pretty sure he'd heard snakes "hiss" on TV before - anyway, he knew somewhere what that sounded like - and to him it sounded Doesn't look like a language at all, which seems a lot more reassuring...

...just the beginning.The problem is that Draco asserts that Parseltongue can instruct snakes to perform long and complex actions.If that's true, then Parseltongues would have to talk to snakes to keep them wise.At its worst, talking can make the snake self-aware, like Harry accidentally did with the Sorting Hat.

When Harry came up with this hypothesis, Draco claimed he could remember a story - that Harry prayed to Cthulhu[2], the story was just a myth, it sounded like it, but there was such a story —Salazar Slytherin gave a brave young adder a mission to scout other snakes for information.

If a snake that talks to a Parseltongue can talk to other snakes to make them self-aware, then...

So……

Harry didn't even know why his head was spinning "so...then...", he knew exactly what exponential growth was all about, he was just petrified by the sheer sense of moral horror.

What would happen if someone invented a language to talk to cows?

What if there were "bird whisperers"?

in this case……

Before putting a fork full of carrots into his mouth, Harry suddenly realized something, and his whole body froze.

No, no, of course no wizard would be stupid enough to do something like that...

And Harry realized with a bad, dismayed mood that of course they would be that stupid.Salazar Slytherin probably never took a second to think about the moral implications of snake intelligence, just as Salazar didn't realize that Muggle-born wizards were intelligent enough to deserve human rights.Most people don't even realize there's a moral issue unless someone points it out to them...

"Harry?" asked Terry, who was next to Harry, sounding worried that he would regret asking the question. "Why are you looking at your fork like that?"

"I started thinking that magic should be illegal," said Harry. "By the way, have you heard of wizards who can talk to plants?"

--------

Terry hadn't heard of any of that.

None of the seventh-year Ravenclaws Harry asked had heard of either.

Now Harry was back in his seat, looking at his plate of vegetables with a wistful expression, without sitting down again.He was even hungrier, and later in the day, he would go to Mary's, and face the extremely delicious meal there...Harry found that he was very eager to return to yesterday's eating habits, and let this matter go.

"You've got to eat something," said the Slytherin in him. "It's not much more likely that someone will make a bird conscious than a plant, since you're going to eat something that might There would be self-aware food, so why not eat that delicious fried ball and bird slices?"

"I don't think that's valid utilitarian logic, so—"

"Oh, you want utilitarian logic? Here's your utilitarian logic: Some idiot did make chickens self-aware, even in the remotest probability, and your research is the most likely to find this Facts and do something about it. Counterintuitive as it may seem, if you can get your work done a little faster by not messing with your eating habits, the way you can save the most self-awareness of anything that is possible, Just don't think too much about what might be intelligent. Anyway, no matter what you put on your plate, the house-elves have the food ready."

Harry thought for a while.This is really a very tempting speculation——

"Very well!" said Slytherin, "I'm glad you found out that the most moral thing to do is to sacrifice a self-conscious life for your own convenience, to satisfy your terrible appetite, to tear them open with your teeth." That nauseating pleasure—"

"What?" said Harry's mind indignantly. "Which faction are you on?"

His inner Slytherin voice was rather grim. "One day, you will also embrace this creed... as long as the purpose is right, you can eat meat as you like [3]." Then, there was a chuckle in my mind.

Ever since Harry started to wonder if plants had self-awareness, it was hard for the non-Ravenclaw part of him to take his moral vigilance seriously.Every time Harry tried to think of any food, Hufflepuff would yell "Cannibal!", and Gryffindor would imagine the food screaming as he ate, even sandwiches— —

"Cannibalism!"

"Aww, ah, ah, don't eat me—"

"Ignore the screaming and eat! It's safe to sacrifice your morals for a higher purpose here, everyone else agrees that eating a sandwich is acceptable, so you can't use your usual rationalizations to deal with 'if caught to a small probability event that will cause great side effects'—”

Harry sighed mentally, thinking, "If you think it's acceptable for giant monsters to eat us without studying whether we're self-aware."

"I can take it," said Slytherin, "can everyone?" (Nods in the head.) "Fine, can we go back to fried balls now?"

"Until I've worked out what's self-aware and what's not, no. Shut up now." Harry turned firmly from his plate full of very tempting vegetables and headed for the library—

"Eat the students," said Hufflepuff, "there's no doubt about their self-awareness."

"You know you want it," said Gryffindor, "I bet the younger ones are the tastiest."

Harry began to wonder if the Dementors had somehow damaged his imaginary personality.

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"Honestly," said Hermione.The young girl's voice sounded harsh as she scanned the shelves of herbalism in the Hogwarts library.Harry had left her a note asking her to come to the library after breakfast, Harry hadn't eaten breakfast himself; but she looked a bit speechless when Harry introduced the topic of the day. "Harry, do you know your problem? You have no understanding of priorities. You get an idea in your head and you're completely obsessed with it."

"I understand priorities pretty well," Harry said.He reached out and took a copy of Casey McNamara's "Plants' Wisdom", flipping through from the beginning page, looking for the table of contents. "That's why I had to find out if plants could talk before eating carrots."

"Don't you think the two of us might have more important things to worry about?"

"You sound like Draco," Harry thought, but of course he didn't say it out loud.What he said out loud was, "What could possibly be more important than that plants have self-awareness?"

As Harry's eyes scanned the catalogue, there was a meaningful silence around him.There was indeed a chapter on the language of plants, and that made Harry's heart skip a beat, and his hands began to flip the pages rapidly, looking for the relevant page numbers.

"Sometimes," said Hermione Granger, "I really, really, have no idea what's going on in your head."

"You see, it's a multiplication problem, okay? There are a lot of plants in the world, and if they don't have self-awareness, they don't matter; but if the plants are humans, then their moral worth is greater than all the people in the world put together." Big. Now, of course your brain doesn't intuitively recognize that, but that's only because the brain can't do multiplication. It's like if you asked three groups of Canadian families if they were going to save 20, 78, or 88 How much would they pay for 80 dying birds in an oil-contaminated pond? The three groups each claimed they would pay $4, $5, and $[-]. In other words, there is no difference. This is called scale blunt[ [-]]. Your brain imagines a bird struggling in a pool of oil, and this image triggers a certain amount of emotion that determines the amount you are willing to pay. But no one can imagine just two thousand of any things, so the question of quantity is thrown straight out the window. Now try to correct that bias by imagining hundreds of trillions of self-aware blades of grass, and you'll realize that this could be a whole lot bigger than we usually think. Humans are a thousand times more important... oh thanks Azathoth[[-]] it is written here that only mandrakes can talk and they speak loudly in normal human language there is no such thing as man can talk to any plant The curse-"

"Ron came to see me at breakfast yesterday," said Hermione.Now her voice sounded low, sad, maybe a little scared. "He said he was shocked to see me kissing you. He said that what you said when you were under the influence of a dementor proved how much evil was hidden in your heart. If I was going to be a follower of a dark wizard , then he's not sure he wants to remain in my army."

Harry's hands stopped turning the pages.It seems that, despite all the abstract knowledge Harry's brain possesses, he still can't get the scale right on a true emotional level, because it just forcibly shifts his attention away from trillions of potentially self-aware, Grass, who may be suffering or dying as they speak, turns to the life of someone who happens to be closer and valued.

"Ron's the biggest bastard in the world," said Harry, "and they won't be putting it in the papers anytime soon because it's not news. So after you fired him, you interrupted a few of his An arm and a leg?"

"I tried to tell him it wasn't like that," Hermione went on quietly, "I tried to tell him it wasn't like that with you, and it wasn't like that between the two of us, but it seemed like it just made him more... ...more like he was before."

"Oh yes," said Harry.He was surprised he wasn't getting angrier at Captain Weasley, but right now, his concern for Hermione overwhelmed that. “The more you try to clarify yourself with that kind of person, the more you admit that they have the power to question you. It shows that you think they can be your interrogators, and once you give someone that power, they will only go further.” Harry thinks this is actually a very clever part of Draco Malfoy's lessons: people who try to defend themselves get tortured over and over at every little point, and can never satisfy their interrogators; But if you make it clear from the start that you're a celebrity and that social conventions don't apply to you, people's brains will ignore most offenses. "That's why when I was sitting at the Ravenclaw table and Ron came to me to get me away from you, I put my hand on the floor and said, 'You saw my hand High? You have to have at least this high IQ to talk to me.' Then he accuses me, asks me to quote, lead you into darkness, end of quote, so I purse my lips and hiss The crackling noises, and the talking noises were still coming out of his mouth after that, so I cast the Silencing Charm. I don't think he'll try to preach to me again."

"I understand why you did that," said Hermione in a strained voice, "I wanted to let him go too, but I really wish you hadn't, it would have made things harder for me, ha profit!"

Harry looked up again from Plant Wisdom, which he couldn't continue reading under the circumstances; and he saw that Hermione was still reading the book she had just been reading, not looking up at him.While he was observing, her hand turned another page.

"I think you're doing it all the wrong way in trying to defend yourself," Harry said, "I really do. You are who you are. You make friends with whoever you choose. Let those who doubt you go away open."

Hermione just shook her head, and turned the page again.

"Option two," said Harry, "go to Fred and George and have them have a small talk with their wayward brother, those two are really good guys—"

"It's not just Ron," Hermione whispered, "a lot of people are saying that, Harry. Even Mandy, when she thinks I'm not paying attention, looks at me worriedly. Isn't that funny? I've been worrying that Professor Quirrell is leading you to the dark side, and now people are warning me like I warned you."

"Oh, yes," said Harry, "doesn't that make you feel a little more comfortable with me and Professor Quirrell?"

"In short," said Hermione, "no."

The ensuing silence lasted long enough for Hermione to turn the next page, and then, she actually whispered this time, "And, Padma's going around telling everyone because I can't cast ward-patronus Curse, I must be fake-pretending to be kind-kind..."

"Padma didn't even try it herself!" said Harry angrily. "If you were indeed a bumbling Dark Witch, you wouldn't try it in front of everyone. Do they think you're stupid?"

Hermione smiled slightly and blinked a few times.

"Hey, I have to worry about being really evil. The worst thing right now is people think you're more evil than you really are. Would that kill you? I mean, is it really that bad? "

The young girl nodded, her face tensed.

"Look, Hermione... if you care so much about what other people think, if you're sad because the image of you in other people's minds is different from the image you see in yourself, you're doomed never to be happy. No one uses The way we see ourselves sees us."

"I don't know how to explain it to you," said Hermione in a mournful whisper, "I don't think you'll ever understand this sort of thing, Harry. All I can think of to say is that if I think you're evil, How would you feel?"

"Well..." Harry imagined, "yes, that does hurt. Very. But you're a good guy who thinks wisely about that kind of thing, and you've earned that power for me, and if you think I do If something's wrong, it does mean something to me. I can't think of any student other than you who thinks I'd take that seriously—"

"You can live like this," whispered Hermione, "I can't."

The girl turned three pages in silence, and Harry turned his eyes back to his own book, trying to refocus, when Hermione finally whispered, "Are you sure, I never know how to cast the Patronus Charm ?"

"I..." Harry choked up.He suddenly imagined himself not knowing why he couldn't cast the Patronus Charm, couldn't demonstrate it to Draco, only being told there was one reason and nothing more. "Hermione, your Patronus will have the same glow, but it won't be normal, it will look different than what people usually think of as a Patronus, and anyone who sees it will know that something weird is going on. Even if I told you the secret, you couldn't show it to anyone unless you had people face the other way so they could only see the light and... and the most important part of any secret is the secret existence, you can only demonstrate it to a friend or two sworn to secrecy..." Harry's voice dropped helplessly.

"I accept." Her voice was still small.

It's really hard not to blurt out secrets in this library.

"I, I shouldn't, I really shouldn't, it's dangerous, Hermione, a secret can do a lot of harm if it gets out! Have you ever heard the saying that three die and two keep the secret? ...just telling your best friend is the same as telling everyone because you're not just trusting them, you're trusting everyone they trust. It's too important, too risky, and it's not the kind of thing that should be done to improve A decision based on someone's reputation at school!"

"Okay," said Hermione.She closed the book and put it back on the shelf. "I can't concentrate right now, Harry, sorry."

"If there's anything else I can do—"

"Be nicer to everyone."

It was probably a good thing that the girl didn't look back as she left the bookshelf, because the boy froze in place, motionless.

After a while, the boy continued to turn the pages.

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1. Irene Pepperberg and her African gray parrots: Irene Pepperberg is a comparative psychologist known for her research on non-primate language.She trained Alex, an African gray parrot that is said to be the smartest bird in the world, able to communicate in two ways in the original language, with a vocabulary of about 500 words, simple addition and subtraction, and the ability to distinguish shapes and colors. It is said to have the IQ of a 5-year-old and the EQ of a 2-year-old.See: en.wikipedia/wiki/Irene_Pepperberg and en.wikipedia/wiki/Alex_%28parrot%29

2. Cthulhu: Cthulhu (Cthulhu) is an evil existence in the Cthulhu myth created by the American novelist Howard Philip Lovecraft, see: baike.baidu/view/921209.htm

3. The author used a pun here.There is a saying in English that "as long as the purpose is correct, you can use whatever means": the ends justifies them; and the author here changed the means (means) to meats (the plural of meat).

4. Scope insensitivity (scope insensitivity): Scope insensitivity is a cognitive bias that does not apply the multiplication rule due to the different scales of the problem when dealing with problems, see: en.wikipedia/wiki/Scope_neglect

5.阿撒托斯：阿撒托斯（Azathoth）是美国小说家霍华德·菲利普·洛夫克拉夫特所创造的克苏鲁神话中的一个邪恶存在，见：baike.baidu/link?url=asu9HdrvwCa-ZDsMJ＿yeunQVRHW1ezR9rAPKXtKDNrsBRf6Dns4oT9MxzHZigwJ9