[Editor’s note: This is labeled Project Hufflepuff, but mostly draws from Straw Hufflepuffs and Lone heroes.] For good or for ill, the founding mythology of our community is a Harry Potter fanfiction. In J.K Rowling’s original Harry Potter story, Hufflepuffs are treated like “generic background characters” at best and as a joke at worst. All the main characters are Gryffindors, courageous and true. All the bad guys are Slytherin. And this is strange - Rowling clearly was setting out to create a complex world with nuanced virtues and vices. But it almost seems to me like Rowling’s story takes place in an alternate, explicitly “Pro-Gryffindor propaganda” universe instead of the “real” Harry Potter world. People have trouble taking Hufflepuff seriously, because they’ve never actually seen the real thing - only lame, strawman caricatures. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is… well, Pro-Ravenclaw propaganda. But part of being Ravenclaw is trying to understand things, and to use that knowledge. Eliezer makes an earnest effort to steelman each house. What wisdom does it offer that actually makes sense? What virtues does it cultivate that are rare and valuable? When Harry goes under the sorting hat, it actually tries to convince him not to go into Ravenclaw, and specifically pushes towards Hufflepuff House. In the end, Harry chooses to go to Ravenclaw - the obvious house, the place that seemed most straightforward and comfortable. And ultimately… a hundred+ chapters later, I think he’s still visibly lacking in the strengths that Hufflepuff might have helped him develop. He does work hard and is incredibly loyal to his friends… but he operates in a fundamentally lone-wolf mindset. He’s still manipulating people for their own good. He’s still too caught up in his own cleverness. He never really has true friends other than Hermione, and when she is unable to be his friend for an extended period of time, it takes a huge toll on him that he doesn’t have the support network to recover from in a healthy way. The story does showcase Hufflepuff virtue. Hermione’s army is strong precisely because people work hard, trust each other and help each other - not just in big, dramatic gestures, but in small moments throughout the day. But… none of that ends up really mattering. And in the end, Harry faces his enemy alone. Lip service is paid to the concepts of friendship and group coordination, but the dominant narrative is Godric Gryffindor’s Nihil Supernum: No rescuer hath the rescuer. No lord hath the champion. No mother or father. Only nothingness above. The Sequences and HPMOR both talk about the importance of groups, of emotions, of avoiding the biases that plague overly-clever people in particular. But I feel like the communities descended from Less Wrong, as a whole, are still basically that eleven-year-old Harry Potter: abstractly understanding that these things are important, but not really believing in them seriously enough to actually change their plans and priorities. Here’s the thing. Yes, the world is horribly unfair. It is full of poverty, and people trapped in demoralizing jobs. It is full of stupid bureaucracies and corruption and people dying for no good reason. It is full of beautiful things that could exist but don’t. And there are terribly few people who are able and willing to do the work needed to make a dent in reality. But as long as we’re willing to look at monstrously unfair things and roll up our sleeves and get to work anyway, consider this: It may be that one of the unfair things is that one person can never be enough to solve these problems. That one of the things we need to roll up our sleeves and do even though it seems impossible is figure out how to coordinate and level up together and rely on each other in a way that actually works. And maybe, while we’re at it, find meaningful relationships that actually make us happy. Because it’s not a coincidence that Hufflepuff is about both hard work and warmth and camaraderie. The warmth is what makes the hard work sustainable. Godric Gryffindor has a point, but Nihil Supernum feels incomplete to me. There are no parents to step in and help us, but if we look to our left, or right… Yes, you are only one No, it is not enough— But if you lift your eyes, I am your brother -Vienna Teng
edit