Phantomeo

The Life and Lies of Dumbledore chapter from DH lives rent free in my head, and I would love to get on my soapbox about why. It's no secret that DH is an allegorical tale with Harry as Christ figure and Dumbledore positioned as God figure - often represented by the symbolism of the all-seeing eye. The eye in the mirror (which turns out to Aberforth, who sends Dobby to the rescue), the symbol of Deathly Hallows in Dumbledore's signature.

Social choice theory is the field of study devoted to the question of what society as a whole should have as its goals.

A way to start thinking about this problem is from the point of view of individual preferences. If an individual prefers the world to be in state A over state B, then it can be said that an individual is "better off" in state A over state B. This isn't entirely uncontroversial, we can imagine scenarios where it's at least questionable that an individuals preferences being satisfied doesn't make them better off, (think of alcoholics or other addicts for example. They might prefer to have a drink today, but it's reasonable to question whether that actually makes them better off (economists call phenomena like this discontinuous preferences)), but for the moment we're going to ignore other sources of information aside from individual preferences to determine societal goals. As a way to start to solve the problem of social choice: finding and achieving the state of the world that society most prefers, starting from individual preferences is reasonable. What are a society's preferences but a combination of individual preferences, after all?

To do start doing this we'll first place two basic restrictions on individual preferences. First, when presented between two options, A and B, the individual must prefer one or the other, or be indifferent (call that completeness). Second, if an individual prefers A to B, and B to C, then she will also prefer A to C (call that transitivity). The problem of social choice is about finding the combination of these types of preferences that society most prefers.

The economist Kenneth Arrow in the 1950's had as an objective the discovery of a social choice function, or rule. Something you could feed a specific set of societal preferences into that would produce a ranking of the states of the world for society as a whole. Of course, there's an infinity of possible rules, so what he tried to do first was set up some reasonable conditions that such a rule should have, so as to narrow things down. They are as follows:

universal domain: as long as they're transitive and complete, we don't want to put any other restrictions on the preferences individuals are allowed to have.

non-dictatorship: the rule shouldn't let a single individual impose their preferences on everyone else (you could rephrase the previous condition to include this one, but it's worth separate them for salience)

Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA): If I prefer A to B, the inclusion or removal of another preference C shouldn't change that preference. An example of why this matters: say there's an election and there's 3 candidates, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Jill Stein, and I prefer Biden over Trump. If IIA holds, then Jill Stein suddenly dying and no longer being an option shouldn't change that preference. If it doesn't, then it can.

Pareto Principle: If at least one individual prefers state A over state B, and no one prefers state B to state A, then the rule should respect that preference. This is about making the rule respect decisions over which society is unanimous.

Finally, the final ranking of societal preference over states of the world that the rule spits out should also be transitive and complete, so as to give a total ordering over all feasible states of the world

Read over each of these conditions individually. They're all pretty reasonable no? None of them are too crazy, and seem to be a good thing for a decision making procedure to have. Sadly, Arrow didn't find a rule that satisfies all those conditions. Couldn't have in fact, due to what he actually ended up finding:

Arrow proved, mathematically, that as long as a society has at least 3 individuals, it is logically impossible to construct a rule that satisfies all five conditions. Can't be done. This result is now known as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Any social choice rule you happen to design, must either: A) violate one of the conditions or B) incorporate more information than individual preference rankings.

Are there non controversial ways around this problem?

One possible social choice rule would be to just use the Pareto principle described above: state A is preferred to state B if and only if at least one person prefers state A to state B, and no-one prefers state B to state A. If that's the case, moving to state A makes at least one person better off and no-one worse off; this is called a Pareto improvement. If there are no states that are Pareto improvements on state A, then state A is Pareto efficient. This is based on the unanimous judgement of society, and so is a pretty non-controversial way to try and make social choices. So what's the problem? the pareto principle violates 5) total ordering. There are many possible pareto efficient social outcomes, and this gives us no way to decide which is better. Additionally, some of these possible pareto efficient states clearly aren't desirable. Suppose society can only produce 1 million dollars and that's its limit. If only one person has those million dollars then there's no way to change that outcome without making that individual worse off. The state is pareto efficient sure, but it's dogshit. The pareto principle is thus non controversial and useful, but also very limited and won't take us all that far. There are problems it cannot solve

What about if we make the Pareto principle less strict? This is known as the Kaldor-Hicks criterion: it states that state A is a K-H improvement over state B, if it's to be possible to redistribute goods in state A in such a way that no-one is worse off than in state B. Some people may be worse off in state A than state B, but as long as it would be possible for the people who are better off to give some of their resources to the people who are made worse off and fully compensate them for their loss, A is a Kaldor-Hicks improvement over B. The redistribution of resources from the winners to the losers is called Kaldor-Hicks transfers. We can compare many more social states using the Kaldor-Hicks principle than the Pareto principle, but Kaldor-Hicks still doesn't give us a complete social ordering. Additionally, it has problems when considering non monetary costs, since it makes it so that it's not really possible to truly compensate the losers since they care about different things than the winners "win".

How does voting fare?

Stuff like majority rule, where everyone choses their favorite over a set of preferences, and whoever gets the most votes wins, is in many ways very attractive, but fails transitivity (you can get situations where society prefers A>B>C>A). Plurality rule violates IIA. And so on. Every system has cost. Additionally, voting is not easy in practice to apply, and has limited applicability. While it can occasionally be used, society is faced with too many decisions to have individuals vote over each one.

What if we used more info?

Arrow's theorem relies on the only information available to an individual for use in their social choice rule are individual preference orderings. What if a government relaxes that assumption? We've been assuming so far that a government knows if you prefer A to B, but nothing about the magnitude of such preferences. It can know that I prefer A to B, and that you prefer B to A, but it can't say anything about the strength of such a preference.

If we relax the assumption, if instead we assume that the government knows how much each individual likes each possible state - that they know the "utility" each person gets from each state, as a number (for the more math inclined, this is going from ordinal comparisons to cardinal ones), and can compare that number between people - then it's possible to produce a social choice rule that satisfies all of Arrow's other conditions. There are lots of possible social choice rules of this kind; probably the most commonly used one is a utilitarian rule, where A is preferred to B if the total utility in state A is higher than in state B. But there's no need for the government to only maximize total utility, and it can use any function of the utilities of all the different individuals that it likes. It could instead rank states based on average utility, or a weighted average that puts more weight on worse-off individuals than better-off ones, or more.

This is the approach that economists tend to use, but be aware that it has its problems. For one, the assumption that we can know magnitudes can be quite strong. I know that I prefer strawberries to bananas, but by how much? I don't know if I could put a strict number on it. If it can be hard for me to discern the magnitude of my own preferences, it's even harder to discern the magnitudes of others. How the fuck would I know if my preference for strawberries is stronger than someone else's preference for bananas? Are we really justified in saying the government can do that? Often enough we aren't but still, cardinal utility remains one of the few ways to analyze policy in areas where we need to go beyond pareto improvements (basically any policy that has winners and losers, which is the vast majority).

There is a lot of trauma to go around in HP, and tragically (and realistically), it keeps happening.

Harry is repeatedly orphaned, first from his parents, then from Sirius and Dumbledore - his actual appointed parent figure if anything should happen to his parents, and Harry's "last, greatest protector" according to his narration of the funeral.

Dumbledore's formative trauma is his role in his sister's death thanks to dabbling in Dark magic and the subsequent cover-up, and within his attempt to pay his karmic debt and stop another Dark wizard from taking over, he finds himself endangering god knows how many children under his care: Snape nearly died as a student, and many of the children he watched grow up and then recruited into the OOTP died as well. The seemingly incongruent triumphant look in his eyes when Harry tells him about the blood Voldemort took might be the moment his own pattern breaks for the first time - he is still fighting for the Greater Good, but thanks to his machinations over the years, he had given Harry a chance to survive his part in Dumbledore's crusade. I think this arc concludes when he fights for Draco's soul unto death - it serves a strategic purpose to cement Snape's position, yes, but also, he died having saved a child in his care from the fate that had tormented Dumbledore himself even after an actual century.

Snape's traumas are many, but the formative one is catalyzing Lily's death. He then finds himself - again, but worse this time - forced to push the trigger on his only friend's death. The pain this causes him is evident - he wails like a wounded animal in the immediate aftermath and even risks going to Sirius's house to find something that would keep him going.

I'd like to propose that Snape might have known that Harry's best chance at survival - i.e. Snape's best chance at redemption - would be Harry's Lily-like self-sacrificing act.

Pensieve memories are unfalsifiable, but there might have been an element of choice in when to end them, and it's possible Snape always knew he would have to use a Pensieve to persuade Harry to believe him. The conversation that ends in "Always" couldn't actually have ended like that, because nothing is actually resolved: Dumbledore does not convince Snape that Voldemort's defeat is more important than Harry's survival. The height of the conflict between Snape and Dumbledore is the least natural point to end the scene. Tellingly, Dumbledore's eyes are closed throughout the entire explanation of Harry's supposed ultimate fate. Snape and Dumbledore were both legilimenses, and legilimency requires eye contact. I strongly believe closed eyes, then, indicate "there's more".

“Precisely. If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort stops sending that snake forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside him under magical protection, then, I think, it will be safe to tell Harry.” “Tell him what?” Dumbledore took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

This is followed by the explanation, including the dialogue:

“So the boy . . . the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly. “And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”

So: Harry must know why he is dying, and it must be done by Voldemort's hand. Harry must also find out, and then sacrifice himself, at a very specific moment. If the only important thing is "dead Harry," this could easily be achieved. The specifics are essential.

Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.

Snape's admonishment, and the "Always" exchange, follow.

After this conversation occurs, Snape kills Dumbledore, and immediately after that he duels Harry and does not let him come to harm, saying "Potter belongs to the Dark Lord".

In Dark Lord Ascending, we see that Snape made sure Voldemort would know he alone must kill Harry. I posit that it was not merely Voldemort's ego, as he could have sent anyone (and indeed he used Narcissa as a human shield to make sure Harry was truly dead). He is uniquely bad at killing Harry. Yet he says:

"But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be."

This must have come from Dumbledore's spy, then sitting beside Voldemort as his most valuable servant.

Snape is still capable of producing the Doe Patronus, which represents Lily, and he is still serving Dumbledore despite having been used by him for years at that point.

It might mean that Snape understood that his personal quest for redemption is not as important as the entire world, but this insight is already served by his choice to die, sending Voldemort to battle with a wand that won't answer to him.

And anyway, if Harry must die, why is it so important that he sacrifice himself willingly? Why is it so important that Voldemort himself do it? A final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort or one of his cronies would have happened at some point, and Harry would have died, and Voldemort's last vestige would have died with him. Snape was not a stupid man, and not an unquestioning follower. The idea that this is actually rather a strange thing for Dumbledore to insist on must have occurred to him at some point. The self-sacrifice element was Harry's chance to come back, and this was why giving Harry the memories was imperative. Presumably, this knowledge also made it worthwhile to Snape to explain himself and his actions as thoroughly as he had, because really - only a couple of the memories he gave Harry are strategically important.

Snape dies because of the prophecy he had delivered. Lord Voldermort says:

"It cannot be any other way,” said Voldemort. "I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."

Snape is why Voldemort is interested in Harry, and he dies for this, and because of this. Voldemort thinks he is due to win at any moment.

But Harry - Harry, who had spared Peter Pettigrew, who had by then amassed so many tragic deaths - can feel pity and mercy, even for Snape. In the shrieking shack, where Harry had proved his mettle once before, Snape is slowly dying and Harry shows his compassion to him, the compassion Snape must have missed so much, lacked so painfully. He gets to look into Lily's eyes knowing that perhaps he might not have failed her.

He dies redeemed, even - especially - to the boy who was his main victim. Snape had both orphaned him and mistreated him as a student, but he was Harry's true latest and greatest protector. His pattern is broken, his trauma is resolved, and Lily's sacrifice is not wasted.

Story time with Snape in the astronomy tower

Hours before my birthday, @thecat-isblogging-blog gives me the BEST GIFT. A group photo with my pieces of my heart - the group of gremlins who kept me sane through the pandemic year. @phantomeo @bluethepineapple @thecat-isblogging-blog, @shes-a-gryffindor , @thedreamermusing , @dragonlordette , Potato (i cant find you on tumblr :O), @urupotter , and @kald-dal-art

I love how you just screamed this into my inbox XD Since I just talked about it yesterday with @phantomeo , a Harry stan I dearly love, I'm going to name a moment that we both mourned not putting in our top 10 (because we keep forgetting it T_T): Harry as Albert Runcorn letting the Muggleborns escape. From using the reputation of Albert Runcorn against hapless Ministry employees: “We’ve been told to seal all exits and not let anyone — "

“ Are you contradicting me?” Harry blustered. “Would you like me to have your family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell’s?” TO

“Seal the exit! SEAL IT!”

Yaxley had burst out of another lift and was running toward the group beside the fireplaces, into which all of the Muggle-borns but Mrs. Cattermole had now vanished. As the balding wizard lifted his wand, Harry raised an enormous fist and punched him, sending him flying through the air.

This was commissioned by me as a collective gift for @phantomeo 🌟

Hermione reads like a child who comes from privilege - and it will be interesting to see how she grapples with Muggleborn politics. @bluethepineapple had a very interesting insight into Hermione's process in the Polyjuice plan, where she declares threatening Muggleborns (where the dialogue makes it sound like she isn't one of them) is worse than brewing a complicated potion. Here is what Blue had to say:

"Being in a position of vulnerability is brand new and it is really throwing her off. She does not know how to integrate it with her previous position of privilege. So she is in this weird in between place where she is acting on said privilege (ie. the position of protector) while having been inducted to a minority group. At this point in time, being a muggle-born is still something she feels separate from."

Personally, this hits really close to home, and I kind of wanted to talk about it. (Actually getting to read this from Hermione’s perspective would’ve been great!)

For the first few years of my life, despite living in a western country, I didn’t interact with anyone outside of family or family friends and stuff (I wasn’t isolated, but as a little kid, taking me to a family friends’ house or to the mosque was a lot more likely than other public places)

It wasn’t until I started school that I came to the realization that I was actually technically part of a marginalized group. It felt like I was suddenly thrust into a new world where I was looked down on and seen as lesser. I experienced a lot of racism and people judging me based on skin colour or beliefs alone.

But despite that, it took a very long time for me to see myself as a person of colour. Like, yes it’s what I am, but the label always felt weird because it’s just what I was. I didn’t understand why it was something people needed to comment on or why it wasn’t just accepted.

Hearing stories of hate crime and police brutality always angered me because I couldn’t understand how people could be so horrifyingly hateful, and yet I never actually saw myself as someone who could be treated that way, even when I experienced it first hand.

When I would get called certain slurs or told offensive things, I knew it should upset me, but it never bothered me to the extent that other poc talk about, because I was always more confused or alarmed, rather than hurt or angry. (Similar to how Hermione reacts several times to being called a “mud blood”)

I felt separated from other poc despite also eventually experiencing a lot of harassment and racism, and to this day, despite being someone who speaks out against all forms of racism in my personal life and on social media, I still always feel like I’m lying when I say I’m a person of colour.

Even now, this hasn’t completely gone away. Even now when young woman like me who look like me keep being subjected to hatred, or kidnapped, or even killed in my own city that I live in, I still sometimes (not always) struggle with coming to terms with my identity, in a way I get the impression many other poc, don’t.

So yeah…it’s just really interesting to me, that others recognized this in Hermione because it too intrigued me.

Being hit with the sudden realization that I’m part of a minority, where many people don’t think I should be here, or be given rights, or even be allowed to breathe, especially at a young age…it was scary and weird and it definitely wasn’t easy.

That line about Hermione declaring threatening muggleborns is worse than brewing an illegal potion, while not including herself in that statement, feels SO real.

I definitely think (if we’re looking at this realistically and if Rowling had gone into that) that it would’ve taken Hermione until at least Goblet of Fire (and even than, she had to be reminded she was a muggleborn during the World Cup) for her to truly start to understand that she WAS a muggleborn, and it would have taken her even longer to understand all the implications of that. Even so, it wouldn’t have been until Deathly Hallows, and when she’d gotten captured, for it to truly have sunk in. The scar on her arm from Bellatrix especially, would’ve made it clear.