Harry Potter and the Way of Reason

Barbara claims ownership of Barbara Rowling Barbara.

Author's Disclaimer: The "Aftermath" section of this chapter is part of the story, not extras.

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Do you feel like you are having an incredible day?try mine.

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Some kids wait until at least their first trip to Diagon Alley is over.

"The bag for element 79," said Harry, taking his hand out of the pouch - empty.

Most kids will wait at least until they get their wands.

"A bag for okane (Japanese: money)," said Harry.The heavy bag of gold coins jumped into his hands.

Harry took the purse out and put it back in the Mok's pocket.He took his hand out, put it back, and said, "A bag for tokens of economic transactions." This time his hand came out empty.

"Give me the bag I just put in it." The gold coin bag came out again.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verys acquires a magical item.What are you waiting for?

"Professor McGonagall," said Harry to the bewildered witch beside him, "can you give me two foreign words I don't understand, one for gold and one for something else, not money? Don't tell Which one am I?"

"Ahava and zahav," said Professor McGonagall. "It's Hebrew, and another word means love."

"Thank you, Professor. Bag for ahava." Empty hands.

"Bag for zahav." The money bag jumped into his hands.

"Zahav is gold?" Harry asked, and Professor McGonagall nodded.

Harry analyzed the test data he had just collected.This is just the most primitive and preliminary attempt, but it is enough to support at least one conclusion:

"Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah this doesn't make sense at all!"

The witch beside him raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Potter, what's the matter?"

"I just disproved every hypothesis I could think of! How could it understand 'a bag containing 110 five Galleons' but not 'a bag containing ninety plus 25 Galleons' ?It can count but not add?It can understand nouns but not phrases that mean the same thing?The maker of this moke bag probably doesn't understand Japanese and I don't understand Hebrew so it doesn't borrow from them Neither did I borrow my knowledge—" Harry waved his hand resignedly. "These rules seem to be consistent, but they don't make sense at all! Not to mention how a bag can do speech recognition and natural language understanding. Experts in artificial intelligence have been working hard for 35 years and can't make the fastest supercomputer Do it!" Harry paused and took a breath, "What the hell is going on?"

"Magic," said Professor McGonagall.

"That's just one word! Even if you told me that, I wouldn't be able to make any new predictions from it! You're like saying it's 'phlogiston', or 'element force', or 'presentation ’, or ‘complexity’ or something like that!” [2]

The witch in black robe laughed. "But it's magic, Mr. Potter."

Harry's back bent a little. "Excuse me, Professor McGonagall, but I think you may not understand what I want to do."

"With all due respect, Mr. Potter, I'm sure I don't understand. Unless—of course this is just a guess—you want to rule the world?"

"No! I mean, yes—oh no!"

"I suppose I should be concerned that you should have difficulty answering that question."

Harry gloomily remembered the 1956 Dartmouth Conference on Artificial Intelligence.That was the first meeting held around this topic, and the term artificial intelligence was born at this meeting.Some key issues were raised at this meeting, such as how to make computers understand natural language, learn, improve themselves, and so on.They seriously thought that by bringing ten scientists together for two months, they could make significant progress on these problems.

No.Do not be discouraged.You've only just begun figuring out how to unravel all the mysteries of magic.You actually don't know how difficult the problem is, and two months will not be enough.

"Have you really never heard of other wizards asking similar questions, or doing similar scientific experiments?" Harry asked again.For him, it was completely natural to do so.

Having said that, more than 200 years after the scientific method was invented, only Muggle scientists thought of systematically investigating which sentences a four-year-old human child could understand.Psycholinguistic development theory could have appeared in the eighteenth century, but no one thought of it until the twentieth century.So you really can't ask why the much smaller wizarding world doesn't study how fetch spells work.

Professor McGonagall pouted and shrugged. "I'm still not sure what you mean by 'scientific experiments', Mr Potter. As I said, I've seen Muggle-borns use Muggle science at Hogwarts, and new ones are invented every year. Spells and potions."

Harry shook his head. "Technology and science are not the same thing at all. There is a difference between trying to do something in various ways and using experiments to find out the rules." Just like many people who want to invent flying machines, they have tried Various winged designs, but only the Wright Brothers built a wind tunnel facility to measure lift...[1] "Well, how many Muggle students are admitted to Hogwarts each year?"

"About ten or so?"

Harry missed a step and almost tripped himself. "Ten?"

There are 60 billion people in the Muggle world and counting.If you are only one genius out of a million people, then there are seven people like you in London and a thousand in China.With a Muggle population, there were always going to be kids who could do advanced math by 100 - and Harry knew he wasn't the only one.He met other child prodigies when he participated in math competitions.In fact, he lost pretty badly, people who probably spend all day practicing, never read a sci-fi novel, totally blown out before puberty, never achieve anything in the future, because they Only know to practice known skills, not to learn creative ways of thinking. (Harry was pretty sour grapes when he lost.)

But...in the wizarding world....

Ten children from Muggle families every year, interrupting Muggle education at the age of 11?Although it may be Professor McGonagall's bias, she once said that Hogwarts is the largest and most famous wizarding school in the world... and this school only teaches until the age of 17.

Professor McGonagall undoubtedly knew all the details of the transformation from man to cat.But she seemed to have never heard of the scientific method.To her, it was Muggle magic.She wouldn't even be curious about the mystery behind the natural language understanding behind the fetching spell.

That leaves only two possibilities, really.

Possibility #[-]: Magic is so difficult, complicated, and unreasonable, to the point of being unbelievable, that wizards and witches, despite their best efforts to understand, fail to understand, so they have to give up; it is impossible for Harry to do more good.

or...

Harry pressed his knuckles to make up his mind, but they made only a quiet click, echoing not at all ominously between the walls of Diagon Alley.

The second possibility: he will dominate the world.

eventually will.Maybe not right away.

This sort of thing does sometimes take longer than two months.Nor is Muggle science going to the moon after Galileo studied it for a week.

But Harry couldn't help but grin so wide that his cheeks ached.

Harry had always been afraid that he would be like other child prodigies who would accomplish nothing and spend their lives bragging about how smart they were when they were ten.But most grown-up geniuses are equally underachievered.For every real Einstein in history, there may be a thousand unknown people as smart as him.These other geniuses failed to get one thing absolutely necessary on the road to greatness.They didn't find an important problem.

You are mine now, Harry thought to the walls of Diagon Alley, to all the shops and their goods, to all their shopkeepers and their customers; to all the lands and people of Magical Britain, and the whole wizarding world more broadly; and Muggle scientists think they understand, but don't really understand, the whole wider universe, and I, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verys, now occupy this territory in the name of science.

The sky was cloudless, and the lightning and thunder that should have appeared did not appear at all.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Professor McGonagall, alert and tired.

"I was wondering if there was a spell that would add lightning and thunder to the background of my ominous resolution," Harry explained.He took care to memorize every word of his resolution so that future history books wouldn't get it wrong.

"I have a definite feeling that I should intervene in this matter," sighed Professor McGonagall.

"Never mind, it's going to pass. Oh, it's so bright!" Harry put his world-conquering ambitions aside for a moment, and skipped to a shop window, with Professor McGonagall following.

Harry had now bought the ingredients for his Potions class, a cauldron, and, well, a few other things.Great stuff to keep in Harry's Treasure Bag (aka: Super QX31 Mok Bag with Undetectable Expansion Magic, Fetch Magic, and Pocket Self-Expanding Magic).Sensible, mature consumption.

Harry really didn't understand why Professor McGonagall looked so suspicious.

Now Harry was working in a shop of a high class, expensive enough to rent a space in Diagon Alley's Main Street.The store is open-shelf sales, and the goods are placed diagonally on wooden shelves in layers, protected by light gray light, and the store is watched by a very young female shop assistant with a short-cut robe, elbows and knees All exposed.

Harry was examining a wizarding world version of a first aid kit called the Enhanced Emergency Healing Kit.In the bag are two rolls of self-tightening tourniquets.A tube of injectable drug that resembles a liquid flame and is said to drastically reduce blood circulation in the injected area while maintaining oxygen supply for 3 minutes, useful if necessary to prevent the spread of toxins in the body.There is also a white cloth wrapped around the body to temporarily relieve pain.There are also many drugs that Harry can't understand at all, such as "treatment after exposure to dementors", which look and smell like ordinary chocolate.There's also a "healing stuttering and talking through the nose" thing that looks like a tiny quivering egg with an instruction card on how to plug it into a person's nostril.

"Five Galleons is a good deal, what do you think?" Harry asked Professor McGonagall, and the shop assistant who was less than 20 years old eagerly nodded in agreement.

Harry thought the Professor would praise him for his prudence and foresight.

The gaze he got can only be described as evil eyes.

"Why on earth," asked Professor McGonagall suspiciously, "do you think you'd need a first-aid kit, young man?" (After the unfortunate trouble at the potions shop, Professor McGonagall began to avoid calling him when anyone was around "Mr. Potter".)

Harry's mouth opened and closed again. "I don't think it will be useful! I'm just in case!"

"What if?"

Harry's eyes widened. "You think I'm planning something dangerous and that's why I want to buy a first aid kit?"

He was answered with a stern suspicion, and a look of ironic disbelief.

"Above the great Scott!" said Harry. (He learned the phrase from the mad scientist Dr. Brown in Back to the Future.) "While I was buying the featherweight potion, gill grass, and food and water pills, Do you think so too?"

"Yes."

Harry shook his head dumbfounded. "Then what do you think my plan is?"

"I don't know," said Professor McGonagall, "but the end of the plan is to get a ton of silver to Gringotts, or to take over the world."

"Dominating the world is ugly. I prefer the term optimizing the world."

This funny joke didn't reassure the witch, she still glared at him with a doomsday expression.

"Whoa," said Harry, beginning to realize she meant it. "You really do. You really think I'm planning something dangerous."

"Correct."

"Is this the only possible motive for buying a first aid kit? Please don't get me wrong, Professor McGonagall, but what kind of crazy kids do you usually deal with?"

"Gryffindor," said Professor McGonagall, uttering words full of bitterness and despair, like an eternal curse on all youthful enthusiasm and exuberance.

"Professor Minerva McGonagall, Vice-Headmaster," said Harry gravely, with his hands on his hips, "I'm not going to Gryffindor—"

At this, the Deputy Headmaster interjected that if he went to Gryffindor, she would try to murder a hat.Harry didn't comment on this strange statement, but the female shop assistant next to him suddenly choked and coughed for a while.

"—I'm going to Ravenclaw. If you really think I'm planning something dangerous, you don't know me at all, to be honest. I don't like danger. Danger is terrible. I It's prudence. It's caution. I'm preparing for the unexpected. Like my parents used to sing to me: Get ready! It's the Boy Scout marching song! Get ready! Like in life March! Don't be nervous, don't panic, don't be afraid—get ready!"[3]

(Harry's parents really only sang these lines to him from the Tom Lear song, so Harry remains blissfully ignorant of the rest.)

Professor McGonagall's posture relaxed a little bit - but mainly when Harry said he was going to Ravenclaw. "What contingencies do you think this kit will prepare you for, young man?"

"A horrible monster bit one of my classmate and I frantically searched through the mok bag for something that could help her and she looked at me sadly and said with her last breath, 'Why aren't you ready ?' and she died, and I knew the second she closed her eyes that she would never forgive me—”

Harry heard the saleswoman gasp, and looked up to see her staring at him with her lips pursed.Then the young girl turned quickly and fled into the depths of the store.

what……?

Professor McGonagall bent down, took Harry's hand gently but firmly, and pulled him away from the main street of Diagon Alley, and turned into an alley between two shops.It was paved with dirty bricks, and the road ended in a black mud wall.

The tall witch pointed her wand at the main street and said "Silence," and silence fell around them, cutting off all the noise in the street.

What am I did wrong...

Professor McGonagall turned to face Harry.Her face was not exactly that of an adult scolding a child, but her expression was serious and restrained. "Please remember, Mr. Porter," she said, "this country was at war less than ten years ago. Everyone loses someone important. Don't talk about friends dying in your arms." thing."

"I—I didn't mean to—" The meaning of the incident slammed like a stone in Harry's super-clear imagination.He said at the time that someone took their last breath - and the shop girl ran off - the war ended ten years ago, so the girl was like eight or nine years old at the most, when, when, "Sorry, I'm not Deliberately,…" Harry's throat stopped, and he turned to run away, avoiding the eyes of the old witch, but a mud wall blocked his way, and he didn't have a wand yet. "sorry Sorry sorry!"

A heavy sigh came from behind him. "I understand, Mr. Potter."

Harry dared to look back.Now there was only sadness in Professor McGonagall's expression. "I'm sorry," Harry repeated, feeling sad. "You have also experienced this kind of experience—" He quickly shut his mouth, and pressed his mouth with his hand.

The sad expression on the face of the old witch grew a little stronger. "You must learn to think before speaking, Mr. Potter, or you will have no friends in this life. This is the fate of many Ravenclaws. I hope you will not follow in their footsteps."

Harry just wanted to run away.He wanted a wand, so that he could erase the whole thing from Professor McGonagall's memory, and go back in time to the moment when he and she were just outside the shop, so that this never happened—

"But as to your question, Mr. Potter, no, I have never experienced anything of the kind you speak of. Of course I have watched my friend take his last breath, not once, but many times. But among them No one ever cursed me before they died, and it never occurred to me that they would not forgive me. How could you say such a thing, Mr. Potter? How could you think such a thing?"

"I, I, I," Harry swallowed. "I'm just imagining the worst," he might have been joking, but he'd rather bite his tongue off than admit it.

"What?" said Professor McGonagall. "but why?"

"Because then I can prevent it from happening!"

"Mr. Potter..." the old witch's voice dropped.She sighed and knelt beside him. "Mr. Potter," she said gently, "it's not your job to protect the students at Hogwarts. It's mine. I won't let you or any other students get hurt. To a magical child, Hogg Watts is the safest place in the whole wizarding world, and Matron Pomfrey has a general practice clinic. You won't need a first aid kit, let alone five Galleons of advanced first aid."

"No, I'll need it!" Harry blurted out. "Nowhere is ever safe! Besides, what if Mom and Dad have a heart attack or get into a car accident when I get home for Christmas? Sister Pomfrey won't be there, and I'll need myself first aid kit—”

"Merlin, what are these..." Professor McGonagall said.She stood up, looking down at Harry with concern and exasperation. "There's no need to imagine such terrible things, Mr. Potter!"

Harry's expression twisted angrily after hearing this. "Of course it is necessary! If you don't think about it, you will not only hurt yourself, but also others!"

Professor McGonagall opened his mouth and closed it again.The witch rubbed the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. "Mr Potter... if I would listen to you chat for a while... is there anything you would like to say to me?"

"say what?"

"Tell me why you think you must always be on your guard, lest something terrible happen."

Harry stared at her in bewilderment.This is a self-evident axiom. "Um..." Harry said slowly, trying to collect his thoughts.How can I explain my thoughts to this witch professor who doesn't even understand the basic concepts? "Muggle scholars have found that people are always too optimistic when compared with reality. For example, what they think can be done in two days actually takes ten days, and what they think takes two months actually takes 35 For example, there is such an experiment, let the participating students estimate that they have 50%, 75% and 99% of the time to complete the homework. The results are only 13%, 19%, and 45% The students did their homework at the time they reported. They found out why: They asked one group to assume that things would go perfectly well, and then made a best-case scenario; Making a prediction in the common case, the resulting data doesn't make any difference statistically. So you see, if you ask a guy his prediction for the normal case, he's actually imagining that every step is smooth Situation - everything went according to plan, without any surprises. But in reality, since more than half of the students hadn't finished their assignment when they were 99% sure they should have done it, realistic results are always worse than ' Worst-case predictions are a little bit worse. This is called the planning fallacy theory, and the best way to correct it is to think about how long it took you to do something similar last time, that is, to do it in an objective rather than subjective way Prediction. But when you're doing something new and you have no history to draw on, you need to be very, very, very pessimistic. So pessimistic that there's a 50% chance that the actual situation will be worse than you expected In fact, it is very difficult to be pessimistic to the extent that it is worse than reality. For example, I put a lot of effort into trying to be pessimistic, imagining that my classmate was bitten by a terrible monster, but maybe what actually happened is The surviving Death Eaters attacked the whole school trying to get me. But luckily—"

"Stop," said Professor McGonagall.

Harry stopped.He was about to say it, but luckily, the Dark Lord won't come to attack them, because he's dead.

"I thought I might have misunderstood," said the Witch, her strict Scottish accent sounding more careful now. "Is there anything you've been through yourself that frightened you, Mr. Potter?"

"My own experience is just an exception," Harry explained. "Its importance is not as important as a paper that has been repeatedly verified and peer-reviewed. The controlled study in the paper uses random grouping and investigates many samples. The conclusion is clear and supported by strong statistical data."

Professor McGonagall pinched the bridge of his nose, took a breath, and let it out again. "I still want to hear it," she said.

"Um..." said Harry.He took a deep breath. "There was a robbery near our house. My mother asked me to return a pot she borrowed from a neighbor nearby. It was about two streets away from us. I said I didn't want to go because I was afraid I would encounter robbers. But she said, 'Harry, don't talk nonsense!' As if if I thought about it I'd facilitate the robbery, but if I didn't say it I'd be safe. I tried to explain why I was worried, but she insisted that I return the pot. I was too young to understand that the odds of encountering a robber were statistically low, but old enough to know that something doesn't go away just because you don't think about it, so I felt very scared .”

"Is there nothing else?" Professor McGonagall asked after waiting for a while, after making sure Harry had finished speaking. "Didn't anything else happen?"

"I know that doesn't sound like much," Harry argued. "But it's a pivotal moment in my life, you know? I mean, I know a thing doesn't go away just because you don't think about it. I know, but I can tell that's what Mommy thinks ’” Harry paused, struggling to keep his anger from welling up. "She didn't listen at all. I tried to tell her, I begged her not to let me out, she just took it as a joke. Everything I said, she took it as a joke..." Harry pressed the dark rage down . "That's when I realized that the people who had the responsibility to protect me were insane, that they wouldn't listen to me no matter how much I begged them, that I could never get anything done with them." Sometimes good intentions It's not enough, sometimes you have to be sensible...

There was a long silence.

Harry took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm himself down.Anger doesn't make sense.Anger doesn't make sense.All parents are like this, and no grown-up will condescend to sit on an equal footing with a child and listen carefully to what they say, not even his own parents.Sanity is a tiny spark in the dark night, a rare exception in a mad world, so anger has no meaning.

Harry didn't like himself when he was angry.

"Thank you for telling me, Mr. Potter," said Professor McGonagall after a while.She has a rapt look on her face (almost identical to Harry's when he was testing the pouch, which he would have noticed if he had looked in the mirror at the time). "I'll think about it." She turned to face the alley, raised her wand—

"Well," said Harry, "can we go and get a first aid kit now?"

The witch paused and stared back at him. "What if I say no - say it's too expensive and you don't need it -?"

Harry's face contorted with resentment. "Exactly what you think, Professor McGonagall. Exactly what you think. I'll conclude that you, too, are an uncommunicative, unreasonable adult, and start planning how to get a first-aid kit some other way."

"I am your guardian on this journey," said Professor McGonagall, with a tinge of danger in his voice. "I will not tolerate you threatening me."

"I understand," said Harry, trying to hide the hate in his voice without saying anything else that came to his lips.Professor McGonagall told him to think before speaking.Maybe he will forget tomorrow, but he can remember at least 5 minutes.

The witch's wand made a small turn in her hand, and the hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley returned. "All right, young man," she said. "Let's go get a first aid kit."

Harry's jaw dropped in shock.He hurried to keep up with her, almost tripping because of his anxiety.

The store selling first aid kits was exactly the same as the last time they had been there, recognizable and unrecognizable merchandise still on the wooden slanted shelves, still protected by gray lights, and the shopgirls were back in their places.The clerk looked up as they approached with a surprised expression.

"I'm sorry," she said to them both, and Harry said almost simultaneously, "I'm sorry—"

Together they stopped and looked at each other, and then the saleswoman laughed. "I didn't mean to get you into trouble with Professor McGonagall," she said.She lowered her voice knowingly. "I hope she's not being too mean to you."

"Della!" said Professor McGonagall, sounding slandered.

"Pack of coins," Harry said to his pouch, and looked up at the shopgirl as he counted five Galleons. "It's okay, I know she is fierce to me because she loves me."

While Professor McGonagall was stuttering incoherently, he handed five Galleons to the clerk. "Please give me an enhanced emergency treatment kit."

In fact, watching the self-expanding pockets swallow this briefcase-sized first aid kit is pretty scary.Thinking that only he could get out what he had put in, Harry couldn't help but imagine what would happen if he climbed into the pouch himself.

Harry swore he heard a very soft hiccup when the mok bag... finished... the first aid kit he had fought so hard for.This must have been a spell added on purpose.The other possibilities were too frightening to think about...in fact Harry couldn't think of any other possibilities at all.Harry looked up at the Professor when they were back on the street in Diagon Alley. "Where are you going next?"

Professor McGonagall pointed to a shop that appeared to be made of flesh instead of brick and covered in fur instead of paint. "Hogwarts allows students to keep small pets—for example, you can buy an owl to deliver letters—"

"Can I rent an owl for some money when I have to deliver a letter?"

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.

"Then I definitely don't want it."

Professor McGonagall nodded, as if a point had been deducted for correcting an assignment. "May I ask why?"

"I had a pet rock.[4] It died."

"You think you can't take care of pets?"

"I will," Harry said. "But I would worry all day whether I remembered to feed it, whether it was slowly starving to death in the cage, wondering where the owner went, and why there was no food."

"Poor Owl," said the old Witch softly. "Abandoned just like that. What's to be done with it."

"Well, I think it's going to get more and more hungry, and start clawing at the cage or the box or something, trying to escape, but I'm afraid it won't work—" Harry snapped his mouth shut.

The witch continued to ask softly, "And what will happen to it?"

"Excuse me," said Harry, and he took Professor McGonagall's by the hand, and gently but firmly led her into an alley; after dodging so many people who wanted to bless him, the process almost became Everyday. "Please cast the spell of sound insulation."

"Silently."

Harry's voice was shaking. "That owl doesn't represent me. My parents never locked me in a closet to starve me. I don't have the fear of being abandoned. I don't like what you think, Professor McGonagall!"

The witch looked down at him gravely. "What's on my mind, Mr. Potter?"

"You think I," Harry said with difficulty, "was abused?"

"Have you ever been abused?"

"No!" Harry yelled. "No, never! Do you think I'm stupid? I know what child abuse is, I know what touching is inappropriate, wait, I would have called the police if that happened! And tell the principal! And Call social services! And tell grandparents and Mrs. Figg! But my parents never did that, ever! How dare you suggest such a thing!"

The old witch watched him steadily. "If there are indications of possible abuse in the children under my care, I will investigate and that is my role as deputy headteacher."

Harry's rage rose out of control, into pure, black rage. "You're not allowed to say another word and make such a suggestion to anyone! Anyone, hear, Meg? Such accusations destroy people and destroy people's families, even if the parents are completely innocent! I am in Saw it in the paper!" Harry's voice broke into a piercing scream. "This system doesn't know when enough is enough. Even if the parents and children say it's okay, it doesn't believe it! How dare you threaten my family like this! I won't let you destroy my home!"

"Harry," said the old witch softly, holding out a hand—

Harry took a quick step back, reaching up to slap her hand away.

Mag was stunned, she withdrew her hand, and took a step back. "Harry, it's all right," she said. "I trust you."

"Really," Harry snapped.Fury still roared in his blood. "Or are you just waiting to leave me so you can write your report?"

"Harry, I've seen your house. I've seen you with your parents. They love you. You love them. I do believe you when you say your parents didn't abuse you. But I have to Ask because something is weird."

Harry stared at her coldly. "for example?"

"Harry, I've seen a lot of abused kids at Hogwarts, and it would break your heart if you knew how many. When you're happy, you don't act like these kids, not at all. You Laugh at strangers, you hug people, I put my hands on your shoulders, and you don't flinch. But sometimes, just sometimes, you say something, do something very much like... being raped in the cellar Locked up for 11 years. Not like the loving family I've seen." Professor McGonagall turned her head, her expression confused again.

harry listen