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I have mentioned before Eliezer S. Yudkowsky’s mind-expanding Harry Potter fanfic, The Methods of Rationality.

I’ll note first of all that I recently tried to read Prisoner of Azkaban, and could not get past the first few pages.

Part of it was that I just completed rereading some of Terry Pratchett’s best work recently. Pratchett is not only one of the twentieth century’s best writers in any genre, but he understands myth, fantasy, and SF inside and out, so it’s not surprising that J.K. Rowling, who is essentially telling an extended joke for children, does not measure up.

But a good deal of my problem is that nearly every sentence that Rowling wrote referred to something that Yudkowsky had done much better. What is to Rowling a children’s joke is to Yudkowsky a tool for understanding how to think. Methods is nowhere near as well written as PTerry’s work, being more than a little preachy and educational, but Yudkowsky is far the better thinker.

Yudkowsky has just completed a long sequence set in the Azkaban Prison. Harry and his mentor, Quirinus Quirrell, instructor in defense against the Dark Arts, wanted to rescue…well, a prisoner from the magical prison of Azkaban. Harry is appalled at the, literally, soul-destroying punishment of Azkaban, which is not merely a place of incarceration, but deliberately causes extreme emotional distress in its inmates.

On his return, Harry awakes from an exhausted sleep:

Twelve terrible voids floating down a metal corridor, tarnishing the metal around them, light dimmed and temperature falling as the emptiness tried to suck all life out of the world -

Chalk-white skin, stretched just above the bone that had remained after fat and muscle faded -

A metal door -

A woman’s voice -

No, I didn’t mean it, please don’t die -

I can’t remember my children’s names any more -

Don’t go, don’t take it away, don’t don’t don’t -

“What was that place?” Harry said hoarsely, in a voice pushed out of his throat like water forced through a too-thin pipe, in the darkness it sounded almost as shattered as Bellatrix Black’s voice had been. “What was that place? That wasn’t a prison, that was HELL!”

“Hell?” said the calm voice of the Defense Professor. “You mean the Christian punishment fantasy? I suppose there is a similarity.”

“How -” Harry’s voice was blocking, there was something huge lodged in his throat. “How – how could they -” People had built that place, someone had made Azkaban, they’d made it on purpose, they’d done it deliberately, that woman, she’d had children, children she wouldn’t remember, some judge had decided for that to happen to her, someone had needed to drag her into that cell and lock its door while she screamed, someone fed her every day and walked away without letting her out -

“HOW COULD PEOPLE DO THAT?”

“Why shouldn’t they?” said the Defense Professor. A pale blue light lit the warehouse, then, showing a high, cavernous concrete ceiling, and a dusty concrete floor; and Professor Quirrell sitting some distance away from Harry, leaning his back against a painted wall; the pale blue light turned the walls to glacier surfaces, the dust on the floor to speckled snow, and the man himself had become an ice sculpture, shrouded in darkness where his black robes lay over him. “What use are the prisoners of Azkaban to them?”

Harry’s mouth opened in a croak. No words exited.

A faint smile twitched on the Defense Professor’s lips. “You know, Mr. Potter, if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had come to rule over magical Britain, and built such a place as Azkaban, he would have built it because he enjoyed seeing his enemies suffer. And if instead he began to find their suffering distasteful, why, he would order Azkaban torn down the next day. As for those who did make Azkaban, and those who do not tear it down, while preaching lofty sermons and imagining themselves not to be villains… well, Mr. Potter, I think if I had my choice of taking tea with them, or taking tea with You-Know-Who, I should find my sensibilities less offended by the Dark Lord.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry said, his voice was shaking, he’d read about the classic experiment on the psychology of prisons, the ordinary college students who had turned sadistic as soon as they were assigned the role of prison guards; only now he realized that the experiment hadn’t examined the right question, the one most important question, they hadn’t looked at the key people, not the prison guards but everyone else, “I really don’t understand, Professor Quirrell, how can people just stand by and let this happen, why is the country of magical Britain doing this -” Harry’s voice stopped.

The Defense Professor’s eyes appeared to be the same color as always, in the pale blue light, for that light was the same color as Quirinus Quirrell’s irises, those never-thawing chips of ice. “Welcome, Mr. Potter, to your first encounter with the realities of politics. What do the wretched creatures in Azkaban have to offer any faction? Who would benefit from aiding them? A politician who openly sided with them would associate themselves with criminals, with weakness, with distasteful things that people would rather not think about. Alternatively, the politician could demonstrate their might and cruelty by calling for longer sentences; to make a display of strength requires a victim to crush beneath you, after all. And the populace applauds, for it is their instinct to back the winner.” A coldly amused laugh. “You see, Mr. Potter, no one ever quite believes that they will go to Azkaban, so they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others… I suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a lie, Mr. Potter, people don’t care in the slightest, and if you had not led a vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. I admit, Mr. Potter, that I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.”

Harry’s recently cohered self was threatening to shatter into fragments again, the words falling like hammerstrikes on his consciousness, driving him back, step by step, over the precipice where lurked some vast abyss; and he was trying to find something to save himself, some clever retort that would refute the words, but it did not come.

The Defense Professor watched Harry, the gaze reflecting more curiosity than command. “It is very simple, Mr. Potter, to understand how Azkaban was built, and how it continues to be. Men care for what they, themselves, expect to suffer or gain; and so long as they do not expect it to redound upon themselves, their cruelty and carelessness is without limit. All the other wizards of this country are no different within than he who sought to rule over them, You-Know-Who; they only lack his power and his… frankness.”

The boy’s hands were clenched into fists so tightly that the nails cut into his palm, if his fingers were white or his face was pale you couldn’t have seen that, for the dim blue light cast all into ice or shadow. “You once offered to support me if my ambition were to be the next Dark Lord. Is that why, Professor?”

The Defense Professor inclined his head, a thin smile on his lips. “Learn all that I have to teach you, Mr. Potter, and you will rule this country in time. Then you may tear down the prison that democracy made, if you find that Azkaban still offends your sensibilities. Like it or not, Mr. Potter, you have seen this day that your own will conflicts with the will of this country’s populace, and that you do not bow your head and submit to their decision when that occurs. So to them, whether or not they know it, and whether or not you acknowledge it, you are their next Dark Lord.”

And that bold is exactly, precisely, why folks such as tea-partiers, libertarians, Three-Percenters, and Billy Beck are so hated and reviled — despite the fact that they do not desire to be anyone’s Lord. It is enough that they will not bow to democracy, but insist on living to their own consciences, and demand only to be left alone.