Instigator / Pro
34
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Topic
#168

[NO KRITIK] Hogwarts should have had six houses based on the four foubders and what they represented.

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
15
9
Better sources
10
10
Better legibility
4
5
Better conduct
5
0

After 5 votes and with 10 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
24
1266
rating
119
debates
15.97%
won
Description

You must represent the four-house system.

Round 1
Pro
#1
PLEASE BE AWARE: Obviously this entire debate will contain a ton of spoilers potentially as rebuttals get going. This round also has some gentle ones.

I'm going to keep the case simple and avoid psychology research and concepts of optimal sorting until Round 2 as I want to see what I'm up against in that it is Con upholding the status Quo so I want to see how Con justifies the very basis of the original policy in the first place.

In this debate, Con is not allowed to take a stance of a more complex sorted-by-3-system but if demanded to explain why I'd opt for 2 instead of 3, I'll explain why a 3/4 system per house is not only suboptimal but is simply a one-per system reversed.

In essence, and I am sure Con would agree, the correct interpretation of the houses isn't nearly as simple as the average fan thinks.

Gryffindor represents the willingness to do despite the logic against doing so.

Slytherin represents the capitalising of the willingness to do what is illogical.

Ravenclaw represents knowing the logic and gathering the data so as to know just how wise the decisions you make are.

Hufflepuff represents wilfully ignoring logic when it comes in line with what should be done.

In reality, in my eyes Gryffindor and Hufflepuff are actually very similar individuals morally, and very different individuals in temperament and ego. Slytherin and Ravenclaw are quite the same.

When you put a person into a house, you are missing out an extremely key element of the person in the four-house system.

A Gryffinpuff would be an individual who would sooner do the right thing than know a single 'true thing' at all in life whereas a true Slytherclaw would sooner know a 'true thing'  than do the right thing (and may well believe there's no actual right option without irrational prioritising by which ot optimise one's judgement system etc).

Now, you may say 'but won't the naming itself be unfair' and it likely would for two reasons:

I hate to be sexist here, as this is a formal debate, but it's not sexist if it's only 2 women. I think the 2 women were ultimately the 2 more submissive personalities and had less domineering and thus more humble ethos by which their houses stood. Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff would more willingly have agreed to a system which has only one house with 'Raven' at the start and 0 houses with Huffle:


This would likely be agreed on by the Founders not only because of the awkwardness of ending something in 'ryn' (and in my eyes Slytherin is actually the more dominant persona even though Gryffindor stands for courage) but because their personalities genuinely match that way.

What I mean by this is anyone who is a 'puff' variant is foremost the other house in the first place. This is a huge, unfair plot-hole in the entire book. There's not a single HufflePuff member, be it Cedric Diggory (who would be a Gryffinpuff) or Pomona Sprout (who would be a Ravenpuff) who properly 'fit their house'. It's basically the 'trash can' house where whoever doesn't seem too brave, street-smart or knowledge-seeking is going to end up being put. This is why it's actually unfair on the submissive personas and ethos to have the four-house system and why every single relevant character was either a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. This is literally directly due to the dominant nature and ethos they hold as people and thinkers.

If there has been a six-house system, not only would this have been a far fairer legacy, enabling the submissive nuances of the difference between a Claw and a Puff to be made clearer and truly accentuating the individuality of such-sorted individuals but it would blatantly have furthermore stopped the bastardising of Slytherin which occurred the entire book even when Snape's tragic story was revealed, HE STILL WAS CONSIDERED A 'BAD GUY'.

The issue with the entire book is that Hermione is clearly a Gryffinclaw and is more extremely claw than Gryffin but you can imagine why someone who values courage and is already entering the school on a social backfoot being muggle-born is going to beg the hat to put her into Gryffindor. Ron also would have been Gryffinclaw and his genius-level IQ was not remotely hinted at past the first book and only in the last book was his on-the-spot thinking regarded as astonishing given the things he did with the book-Horcrux and such.

To take this a little further we need to ask what the Houses were even designed for and the purpose of the concept in the wizarding world. You see, in the four-house system one could justify punishing all Slytherins for the sins of a few that year and making Gryffindor the jundeserving winners (as occured) the reason being that Slytherdors naturally do such cunning, brutal things (Voldemort is the epitome of a slytherdor). They do not care about the reasons unless the reasons help them to take the right risks. They are the type who are both adrenaline-seeking and adrenaline-punishing (think of a typical high-ranking Pirate, although arguably some high ranking Pirates would be slytherclaws instead such as Barbossa so let's not go too into that analogy). The point is, the way you tame and punish Slytherdors is indeed to make their whole house lose due to their innate sins due to their ethos and make them learn there's such a thing as too much risk and that others will play dirty as well to take your trophy (last-minute disqualifying etc). On the other hand, the two other types of half-Slytherins would be punished in a totally wrong way and in a way that makes them even more cynical and unhappy. A Slytherclaw isn't going to cheat the system, they're going to abuse every rule, bend every rule but never actually break it and would loathe their riskier, ignorant opponents for playing that irrationally in the competition for most points. A Slytherpuff isn't going to cheat because to them, cunning would be a means to an end (think benevolent secret agent-types, teacher's pets etc).

The nuances of the 2-house-per system are just the right amount to split people exactly into their outlook on life, magic and morality in general. This is therefore superior to the four-house system that my opponent must represent.



Con
#2
Although the 6 house system makes sense, the main problem with it is that there are actually people who fit seamlessly into each house such as Voldemort in Slytherin and Ron in Gryffindor and when you consider people's core personality traits the 4 houses make more sense even with people who don't fit seamlessly. For example, Hermione may have Ravenclaw traits but at her core she is a gryffindor which is evidenced by her priorities in life which center around friendship and doing the "right" thing more than curiosity and intellectual achievement. The six house system assumes that everyone is some mixture of two houses but what it doesn't take into account is that everyone primarily falls into one category more than the others, and although mixed traits may be present in an individual there is always a core personality which can be summed up more accurately by the 4 houses. Let's go into another fictional universe (that of star wars) and apply the four house system to Anakin Skywalker. Anakin has traits from literally all four houses, when he is in his Anakin form he seems to be a gryffinclaw on the surface and a Slytherin as Vader, but despite these fluctuations throughout his life one thing has always remained the same throughout his life and that is loyalty, his core personality is that of a hufflepuff at the end of the day. No matter how you try to sort him with 6 houses the hufflepuff core will always overpower the other houses, he was willing to completely shit on his own gryffindor traits out of loyalty to Padme and Sidious, and he may have been intelligent but that is not the same as being rational or an intellectual person, he also has shown Slytherin traits but these are something he took on the more he failed to uphold his "duties" as a hufflepuff to serve and protect those he was attached to. He even shit on those traits at the end of the day out of loyalty to his own son. So Anakin/Vader has exhibited traits from every house but at the end of the day he always ends up following his hufflepuff heart. Take any character that appears to be mixed and I will show you that their are always superficial learned traits which change over time and then there is the core personality which they can never escape. With the six house system your placement would change several times over the course of your life and it would fail to capture your true inner personality like the 4 house system does.

Just to clarify, there are multiple traits attributed to each house but I will try to sum them up in a more concise way to get to the root of what they are.

Gryffindor= Heroic
Slytherin= Machiavellian
Ravenclaw= Logical
Hufflepuff= Loyal
Round 2
Pro
#3
I don't understand what Con means with Ron and Voldemort or any character at all but I want to correct something that I corrected in the comments before Con posted so he did have time to read it:

Hufflepuff represents wilfully ignoring logic when it comes in line with what should be done.
COMES IN CONFLICT NOT COMES IN LINE, I WILL CORRECT THIS IN ROUND 2
- Pro in comments

It is quite clear to me that Voldemort is a Slytherdor and not in the slightest bit a Slytherpuff or a Slytherclaw. He does not seek knowledge beyond what it can enable him to do and capitalise on having done. He is so clearly not a Puff that I don't think I need to even explain it but basically the Slytherpuff type is the loyal secret agent type or the teacher's pet type etc, a good example is Percy Weasley or Dolores Umbridge. I'd also say that Draco was actually a Slytherpuff overall too since he was always loyal to his parents and those he considered mattered, it's just they were corrupt. This becomes far clearer in later books as at the start Draco may appear to just be a Slytherdor but he isn't all that brave and most definitely doesn't enjoy betraying people, he is however cunning and will use deceit as a means to an end as any Slyther-type would.

Ronald Weasley is not at all a 'straight up Gryffindor' aside from him running away from the Tent in the last book and consistently failing to take on his problems in life in general, he has consistently proven to be timid by nature almost as a philosophy. This is because he is actually a Gryffinclaw and his genius intellect wasn't shown in the entire book series in any blatant way until the last book. Ron sees everything that can go wrong as he's innately capable of strategic planning and game-theory analysis to a level that takes most people years of training to achieve. He sees every single way things can play out and is terrified of the uncertainty (or worse, when it's more likely it's going to go wrong, the certainty). He garners knowledge to then make bold moves, he makes them even when they defy what's sensible but unlike a Gyrffinpuff he would never ever endorse ignoring logic, only actively against against it calculating 'how against it' you're acting. Gryffinclaw is also what Hermione is but she is more so claw than Gryffin in her tendencies.

The reason the system I propose makes sense is because the four values of the founders never make sense on their own as a 'type of human being'. This is why the sorting hat struggled with every single main character. There wasn't one main character that the hat found easy to sort (and no, Ron isn't blatantly a Gryffindor, neither is Voldemort blatantly a Slytherin). Voldemort and Harry Potter are both the SAME EXACT HOUSE but TOTALLY OPPOSITE personalities, this is what was so phenomenal about the book. While Tom Riddle (Voldemort) would use brash moves as a means to enable him to capitalise on risks in a way no other natural Slytherin could, Harry would be cunning and analytical in how to capitalise on risks only after taking them because he was an adrenaline junkie with many, many underlying conditions. Slytherdor is a house for the mentally ill as would be every house in its own way but the difference is Slytherdors are never sane in an overt sense at all. A person who not only takes risks often but is blessed with good reasoning and rapid thinking so as to mean they are both idiots and geniuses at the same times is a very odd type of person indeed. All houses are admittedly unique/odd/mentally-disordered in their own way but the fascinating thing about Slytherdors is it harbors complete opposite people in the same way Ravenpuff would. A good example of a Ravenpuff is the botanics teacher Pomona Sprout, she is extremely high in IQ but overall leads a humble life, thinks very much about how to assist others on their ambitious journeys and feels fulfilled when teaching in a submissive manner and letting children explore plants in their own unique way etc. She is the epitome of what Helga Hufflepuff stood for in one way but undoubtedly an intelligent scientific-minded individual in others who, if she'd been in muggle society, would undoubtedly have developed PhD's in the filed of our normal biology given her brain and skill-set and gone on to be a great environmentalist who helps other environmentalists etc as opposed to furthering her own agenda in any shape or form. This is still quite strange as a the ravenpuff knows how much they are losing out on in details that non-claws don't but they choose to assist others on their ambitious journeys anyway and be a supportive person in general. They are as contradictory as the Slytherdor and both types would harbor the highest percentage (out of their house-pool) of mentally strange.

Probably most 'normal people' would be a Gryffinclaw or Gryffinpuff purely because being 'brave' is a highly held value among well... 'normal' people by and large and the variance between claw and puff would be based on IQ and introversion most likely (Gryffinpuffs being extremely extroverted, woudl likely be the party-hosts for most leisurely events etc).

I think the biggest flaw of the four-house system is that it denies you to full express what you are. Everyone is two of the four, everyone. Con says no, Ron was only Gryffindor and Voldemort was only slytherin but it's not at all true. Ron was a Gryffinclaw who also had Gyrffinpuff leaning and Voldemort was a Slytherdor who had Slytherclaw leanings. Everyone is going to have a leaning because everyone has a house they are LEAST like but the reason a tri-house formation where there's four houses but you're sorted in the one you are least-like wouldn't work in my eyes is simple; that's going to be the single worst way to split people up in relation to their closeness to what the foudners stood for since the only thing they definitely share with their buddies in the house are the trait or ethos they least represent. Alternatively, a system of ordered-housing as in let's say just 2 houses like I have in this system but the order of the house says something more about you (there would be both Raverin and Slytherclaw for instance) is worse than a 6-house system is simply the practicality of it in distributing enougho f the population to each house to keep competitions semi-fair. While most people are Gyffinclaw or Gyffinpuff, the 'most' is such a small margin since there's a fair share of semi-weird people in a pool of school-children who are going to fill up the 'weird' categories (the most eccentric being slyther-variants in my opinion). If we had ordering mattering, you'd find barely any humans are like Voldemort: A genuine Slytherdor and you'd find almost all high achievers academically to be Ravendors or Gyffinclaws and all socialites would be Gyrffinpuffs while undeniably the biggest house by a HUGE margin is going to be Huffledor not because more would be there than in my system (obviously less would than in the combined 'Gryffinpuff' house) but because all other houses are stretched thin among the eccentrics.

I think what Con would do here, and why I built it up to this point is argue 'that's also the advantage of the 4-house system'. The issue is that the four-house system, while fair, turned the submissive houses with traits like humility and ethos of not having to compete much (especially Hufflepuff but also Ravenclaw) into 'you don't fit into the 'main' houses so you're a natural background character, let's put you in Hufflepuff... Oh wait, you're smart and studious enough? Meh, let's put you in Ravenclaw. Also people like me are pure hybrids, I'm really really in between Slytherin and Ravenclaw but I have yet to meet a single human being who is more than 2 houses in even split. Examples of 'true hybrids' that blatantly are never going to be a 3-type or would be wrongly housed in the doubled 'order of house-in-name matter's system with 12 houses, are the following:

The following list is of characters who were blatantly 50/50 (almost exactly)...

Gyffinpuffs
  • Rubeus Hagrid
  • Neville Longbottom
  • Remus Lupin
  • Lily J. Potter (Maiden name Evans)
  • Nymphadora Tonks

Gryffinclaws
  • Minerva McGonagall
  • Luna Lovegood
Slytherdors
  • Bellatrix Lestrange
  • Peter Pettigrew
  • James Potter
Slytherclaws
  • Lucius Malfoy
  • Severus Snape
  • Moaning Myrtle
Slytherpuffs
  • Percy Weasley
  • Dolores Umbridge
Ravenpuffs
  • Pomona Sprout
  • Sybill Trelawney

Con
#4
Forfeited
Round 3
Pro
#5
I'm going to, in this Round, explain the elitism and issue with the four-house system and go more into many characters who were either wrongly housed or split up from one another when they blatantly are meant to be in the same house.

Percy Weasley is the single most blatantly wrongly housed character in the entire series. JK Rowling is a very intelligent woman who obviously has consistently thought through her characters and the House they belong in but Percy Weasley being not only a Gyrffindor but a damn Head Boy of the House... LOL! He is a Slytherin first, a Hufflepuff second, much like Dolores Umbridge in many, many ways. Slytherpuffs are people who value cunning and ruthless obedience to their 'homeboys' or 'gang' etc. They would sooner die or go through immense torture than betray those they are loyal to but would sooner lie to your or feed intelligently constructed misinformation to escape the torture (perhaps with a gem of truth among the lies) as they are not 'brave', they are 'witty' in their eyes about how they go about things. He was put in Gryffindor House because his parents were and because almost the entire bloodline of Weasleys were automatically put there. The Sorting Hat valued what people wanted especially because the Sorting System was so biased and flawed in its extremist way of splitting people up who were always a mix of 2. It is blatant that under the 6-House system it will be rare for a family is going to have all their family members be the same type, especially if it's a big family, so the pressure of being put in a house and 'begging the sorting hat' to do something beyond put you in a half-house category for your OWN desires (not family's) is going to be free of this House-elitism and peer pressure involved with it but not have too many houses so that the students are ever disproportionally split (Hufflepuff was athe 'garbage can house' so if really applied, without Rowling being able to rig the populations, a ridiculous amount of people would have been in Hufflepuff with the second-biggest being Gryfffindor as many woudl beg the sorting hat to label them with 'bravery' as Slytherin is considered a vermin-breeding house and Ravenclaws are 'cowardly/emotionless nerds').

Love pairs in Harry Potter would be far easier to not just predict but then be shocked by if genuinely opposites attract under the 6-House system. Lupin and Tonks would both be Gyffinpuffs instead of G+H respectively. The most obvious way my system helps 'OMG they fell in love' is, let's take Harry and Ginny (who also was wrongly housed) she is a Ravenpuff who is much more H than R. Harry is a Slytherdor... The added shock that people with 0-house-linkage fell in love would increase the surprise to the reader who the author could have conditioned to get used to the pairings being at least one-house in common (as shown in James and Lily where James is a S-variant G and Lily is a H-variant G. It also would help you better comprehend why the Slytherclaw Snape ends up never being the lover of Lily despite being the better person and being the direct victim of the sadistic bullying of Mr. alpha male James Potter throughout his entire schooling life in front of Lily's eyes, no less. There's just no chemistry. The only reason Harry and Ginny had chemistry, in my eyes, is how close he was to her brother AND that Voldemort picked on her leaving Harry being the only one who could save her early on (it all combines to the love forming, think about it). Also, a Ravenpuff falling in love with a Slytherdor is more understandable especially with a female RP purely because, IDC if this is sexist, the submissive, effeminate RP submitting to the dominant wit of the SD is quite blatantly going to be a better 'pure opposite' match than the Snape-Lily combo where Lily has the alpha-ness from being a Gryffindor but lacks any appreciation (and possesses contempt) at how unrewarding a SC is to loyalty and how lacking in that department the SC is altogether. Not only do they appreciate totally unrelated things to one another but their chemistry would be between an energetic, fairly alpha female who sees the best in everyone and a geeky, 'I want to dominate the world but do it in the safest way possible and not share any of my plans with you' type. They just don't match, like at all. I would know, I'm a slytherclaw and it confuses me that Lily would even be appealing to Snape, she's the type of female I always clash with, the gryffynclaw at least can share intellectual discourse with me.

I will now give characters their 6-house house and explain their love pair if they had one.

Harry Potter - explained above regarding love with Ginny - SD
Ginny Weasley - RH
Percy Weasley - SP - Audrey (his wife) is not spoken of much so I can't explain the love.
Dolores Umbridge - SP - never found a match for her type, stayed single.
Lucius Malfoy - SC - fell in love with a SD (Narcissa Malfoy maiden name Black) - Her confidence intrigued him because she was even more corrupt than him and yet showed confidence and enthusiasm into the lifestyle he wished to lead that he lacked. Despite all SC males being domineering men in general, LM was without a doubt not the one wearing the pants in this relationship.
Hagrid and Maxime - GP and SP - These two NEVER ever can mix in a loving relationship. They have identical tendencies and views on life but totally different approaches to people, temperaments and general value system in terms of ranking what their shared worldviews 'parts' are in importance. This didn't fail because of him calling her a half-giant (she wants to be recognised as a full giant whereas Hagrid had the opposite insecurity of hating his Giant-part and wishing he'd been born human) but it ended moreso because they had nothing in common past their general outlook in life and ways of expressing and implementing that outlook. The GP and SP never ever will fall in love or deeply bond, a GC and SC can, especially if the SC is the male and is a dominant type matching with a 'confident nerd' type who isn't too 'goody goody' in their G-leanings.
Ron and Hermione - While both are GC, Ron is borderline CP and clearly doesn't feel much pleasure in being controlling or aggressive. Hermione is an extremely 'fragile-domme' sexually and romantically. She isn't the butch type of dominant woman, she loves being feminine and seen as such but she NEEDS the control, she has unbelievably high anxiety levels and not the submissive kind of anxiety where she feels pleasure of 'letting the other take the reigns' she needs a supportive counterpart who can match her intellectually but never 'challenge her' in IQ in any overt manner. Ron was the perfect combination for her and both shared an addiction for adrenaline pumping scenarios (easier for Ron to get that high though, let's just say haha) and they are a perfect match in my eyes.

Con
#6
Forfeited
Round 4
Pro
#7
Correction I was confusing the R and C of Ravenclaw and H and P of hufflepuff at times in the abbreviations, it's quite obvious as it can't be confused for the G/S/D alternatives.
The system I propose is actually flawless in the sense of being applicable in a blatant way to every single character (even non-wizard and non-witch) in the HP world.

Observe:

Dobby - GP
Sirius Black - SP (wrongly housed in Gryffindor)
Vernon Dursley- SD
Petunia Dursley - SP
Dudley Dursley - SP

I mean think of any character at all... 

Argus Filch - SD
Three Headed Dog from Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone - GC (While not obvious how a creature like that can be a claw, it blatantly was more knowledge-seeking and comprehension-oriented than it was cunning/on-the-spot-witty or loyal/submissive.
Molly Weasley - GP
Arthur Weasley - RP (wrongly housed in G)
Both of Hermione's parents - RP

Con
#8
Forfeited
Round 5
Pro
#9
I think I've said all that needs to be said. No new points allowed in last Round as I can't defend against them (for Con).
Con
#10
Forfeited