The.following is a meta joke, intended as a good-natured wink to the reader. It’s supposed to make you feel nice and in-groupey. It’s supposed to make you empathize with the author:
“Well, I don’t intend to hang around with anyone who hangs around with Draco Malfoy,” Ron announced coldly.
Harry shrugged. “That’s up to you. I don’t intend to let anyone say who I can and can’t hang around with.” Silently chanting, please go away, please go away…
Ron’s face went blank with surprise, like he’d actually expected that line to work. Then Ron spun about, yanked his luggage’s lead and stormed off down the platform.
“If you didn’t like him,” Draco said curiously, “why didn’t you just walk away?”
“Um… his mother helped me figure out how to get to this platform from the King’s Cross Station, so it was kind of hard to tell him to get lost. And it’s not that I hate this Ron guy,” Harry said, “I just, just…” Harry searched for words.
“Don’t see any reason for him to exist?” offered Draco.
“Pretty much.”
… and at this point I put the fanfic down, feeling nauseated, and find that I can’t pick it up again. There you have it. This is the perfect metonymy for how Yudkowski’s mind work, for that uncanny-valley sensation when reading his essays, that unmistakable intuition that something’s missing—something important. Yudkowski is an educated adult, and he can’t understand the narrative function of Ron Weasley in Harry Potter. He doesn’t get Ron. He thinks the story, he thinks Harry would be better off without him. (One wonders what he’d make of Dostoyevski or Mishima or any other mature piece of literature).
Then I think of the possibility that, when the incoming socio-environmental disasters hit, and as the previous generation gets replaced, technocrats might well find themselves with actual politico-economical power. I think of the discourse surrounding basic income, of the growing support for biological determinism and eugenics, of the orgiastic nature of the AI fantasy apocalypse/apotheosis. I think of how many people in the real world would qualify as Ron Weasleys to them.
And I shudder.
When I read this excerpt, I didn’t interpret it as the voice of the author, but as indicative of Harry’s worst character flaw - that he doesn’t really understand friendship or cooperation. It also sets up Draco as a mean and obnoxious person. Of course, different people will read things different ways.
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Oh boy, basically everyone, in Yud’s eyes
There’s a point to Draco Malfoy existing, he’s the asshole that needs to be slain, so leave him around, but get rid of all the decent normal people
Rationalism is just disgusting.
Like nazis