On lying and cheating

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 165324

---  "Geoff Bannister" <gbannister10 at ...> wrote:
>
> ---  "Steve" <bboyminn@> wrote:
> 
> 
> > This very much reminds me of my many 
> > Big Letter/little letter arguments in the past. 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > Well, in this case, and I'm sure much to your 
> > surprise, I agreee thereis 'cheating' then again 
> > their is /Cheating/, the two not necessarily being 
> > the same. 
> 
> Geoff:
> Having followed this thread at a discreet distance 
> for some time, I thought I would just drop in a couple
> of thoughts from the real world.
> 
> ...
> 
> Harry has used the book to produce good results. As 
> has been observed, he has had the ability to translate
> the information in the book into the correct 
> end-product and that has involved his own skill. You
> can give me a detailed recipe book and I will still 
> make a pig's ear of the resulting meal... as can Neville. 
> 
> ...

bboyminn:

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but 
Geoff has just given me the perfect analogy to 
describe that is happening - Home Economics or Bachelor
Living (for guys). (What do you call it in Britain?)

You are in your cooking class and the teacher says
tomorrow we are all going to bake a chocolate cake.
You bring in you mother's best favorite chocolate
cake recipe, and everyone else uses the recipe in the
textbook. Is that cheating? 

I don't think so, and cooking recipes are the perfect
analogy because, as Geoff points out, he could have a
well-know well-respected tried-and-true recipe for 
'chocolate cake' and he would probably still muck it up.

The recipe itself is not as critical as having an
intuitive sense of how the ingredients go together.
Even a simply recipe can be ruined of you stir too
much or too little. So, the instinct and understanding
are about having the sense to know when you have 
stirred just enough. Having the right recipe is no
guarantee of success. Having a good instinct for 
applying the recipe, is a much greater predictor of 
success. So, that is what Potions Class is, it is
for developing a good instinct for how to apply 
recipes. 

First and foremost, you must learn to read and follow
instructions, that is a must for a beginner, but quickly,
if you have a talent, you go beyond that. You learn you 
can wing it, but wing it based in knowledge and 
experience, and still get good and sometime superior 
results. 

I think perhaps Snape's improved recipes are just an
natural instinct and understanding of how the recipe
is coming together. One counterclockwise stir for every
seven clockwise stirs simply made sense to Snape based on
what he saw happening in his cauldron. Squashing your 
beans with the flat of your knife simply made sense, and
once tried, clearly produced superior results. Snape is 
cooking with an eye toward the goal, not toward the
recipe.

Now in this case, we know that the textbook recipes, even
when done right, don't produce much beyond mediocre 
chocolate cake. Harry on the other hand simply found a 
better, and I might add, a more detailed and complex,
chocolate cake recipe. Yes, he produced better results,
but he did it by using a more complicated and detailed
method. If Harry didn't have a basic aptitude for potions,
the complexity of the recipe would have guaranteed 
disaster. 

Again, the basic goal is chocolate cake. Those with good 
instincts will produce better chocolate cake. Those with
a better recipe, will produce even better chocolate cake
but only if they have a natural gift for understanding 
and following the recipe.

In terms of level of cheating, I think this is far closer
to baking chocolate cake in cooking class, than it is to
performance in any academic class. There is a goal -
chocolate cake, and that is the objective you are being
rated on. The degree to which you achieve that objective
is based on your ability to combine recipe with instinct.

So, I'm sure the other kids in cooking class would have
thought you were 'cheating' (in parenthesis and with 
small letters) but I don't think anyone would have 
considered it Cheating (with capital letters). 

Harry achieves his goal by a more complex and detailed
method, but I must add that the other students did NOT
achieve their goal even when there lesser instructions
are considered. These were recipes for 'chocolate cake'
and it seems that each student did NOT achieve that
goal within the limits of the recipe. It was a mediorce
chocolate cake recipe, and the student seem to have
achieve a noticable /less/ than mediocre chocolate
cake. 

Yes, Harry achieve his results by using his 'mothers'
cake recipe, but it is not about the specific recipe,
it is more about your ability to /apply/ ANY recipe. 

These are difficult potions; this is NEWT level. My sense
upon remembering what I read are that the other students
are stuggling regardless of what recipe they have. The
good students come close, but no student is dead on, even
within the limits of their recipes.

Does that make sense?

Steve/bboyminn