Harry Potter is Anti-technology, here's why

3 points by GMWANG ↗ HN
I submitted a post citing something a little bit controversial. Seeing how well you guys handled the topic, I'm gonna pull out some real offensive stuff. Let's tear down Harry Potter for a try, here we go:

1. The philosopher's stone should not destroyed.

If we rank technology like scientific theories, on the scale of impact, then I argue, the inventions that changed the way human live on a more fundamental scale makes the greater impact. Under this evaluation, the CURE for cancer, the smallpox vaccine, should all rank at least 10x fold lesser than the invention of the philosophers' stone. For the extension of human life beyond a nature threshold is a great VIOLATION, yet also a great re-invention of human hardware.

The fault here is at the politics and limitations of the ethics in the wizarding society at the time, which was primitive and unable to provide a legal/political structure that handles this invention properly.

The fault is not at science. It's the people.

Can you imagine, if one day we found a cure to cancer, and because the government says it will lead to the inequality of people, therefore let's destroy it? It would be so absurd, but remember, it's only because we have surpassed that era in thinking and ethics, that we were able to handle those inventions at a psychological ease.

So same with the philosopher's stone, no one should live further than natural limitation, therefore, for the sake of equality, let's destroy it?

2. Voldemort is right.(and wrong)

I'm sad announce this too, but once I thought his potential argument through, I had admit he had lots of foresight that might not be totally wrong.

But of course, the killing of innocent people, torture, shall always be wrong and subject to legal punishment. But I'm only going to weigh the more controversial stuff here:

For one, following logic of my last argument, you will see Voldemort is actually one of the greatest inventor of his time. He is the only one whom attempted and succeeded in a human existential level invention, the Horcrux.

I didn't realize the value of the Horcrux until one day I was writing a scenario where human existence might be threatened by aliens, and then you know what my first reaction was? We have to back up ourselves and scatter our coding info. into the space, and see if there's opportunity that we will land on a habitable planet and decode, resuscitate.

So, there is great value in the Horcrux technology, even the potential to save humankind against extinction. Even on a lesser extent, what if we preserved Prof. Hawkin?

Destroy, destroy, destroy, the solution to everything that we can't control, destroy. What is it we are fighting against, evil or our own fear?

My second point, I really don't think people deserve to be hated because they don't understand love. I'd say in a court case, this is what made them victim, being unloved is just like being born in poverty. Being unable to love is just like being asexual, it's not an illness.

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Third, this is the tough one. In the whole story, it was never made clear why is Voldemort, a half blood supports blood purism? And why would the old families support him, a half blood? In the original story, we never heard Voldemort's side of argument, and here, I will try to piece together his view from the little we know and evaluate his position.

This is what I think the crux of problem is, what Voldemort was questioning is this: (I love it how the facts are just embedded in the story itself, you can pull in all the fact and just reason in a different way, you'd see a new line of thinking)

Remember Harry found Marauder's Map, there's something ingenious about that map, that almost make it a magical artefact on par with the invisibility cloak. But as we know, the Marauder's Map is invented by Harry's father's group of 4 friends WHILE attending Hogwarts. So here's question, in their times, a group of high school kids can perform the world-class complex Animagus, invent artefacts, and by Harry's time, the smartest person in school is just Hermione?

Something went wrong here.

People went from being inventive to just being book smart.

Hermione did invent the coin for DA, but my point is, have you heard of anyone in the school being a great inventor or having had invented anything throughout the years? The Weasley twins? It's all just hand me downs, the instability cloak and the resurrection stone came from a farfetched myth. The Requirement Room is just something the school is equipped with. How it's built? Who built it? We are so far removed from the creation side of things.

And this observation, I believe, is what propels Voldemort to commit genocide on non-pure bloods. The flaw in Voldemort's reasoning is that, on the surface, it does look like blood is the reason behind this decline. But in reality, it could be many reasons which has nothing to do with blood.

For one, the education system could be pulling in the wrong person. Because the person with inventive skill does not necessarily look good on paper.

Second, it could be just natural fluctuation. Most successful football players' sons cannot play at their dads' level, that's a fact.

................

anyhow, TBC

somehow it feels sad to think thru those arguments, it's like the book itself is a social experiment, once again imbedded the ideals of destruction, and once again we didn't notice. We didn't defend them.

Last Post: As a sci-fi writer just starting out, what suggestions do you have for me? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27965182#27965620

Those are some interesting points. Its true, Dumbledore could do things with a wand that the examiner couldn't even dream possible. By Harry's time, students are lacklustre. But at the same time, they did not have even one normal school year. I wonder what they could have done if they had a normal year.
You would probably enjoy Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality; see hpmor.com.