Epistemic status: outside view critique based on public discourse, some HQ/location discussion, and a bit of lived experience. I know there are exceptions and counterexamples; I’m arguing about the center of gravity and revealed incentives of the Bay/EA/safety cluster, not claiming omniscience about every individual.

There's a scene near the end of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality that I have not been able to get out of my head.

Voldemort has Harry fully under his power in the graveyard: stripped, surrounded by Death Eaters, locked in by fresh constraints. Before he moves forward with his plan for Harry and the protections around that, he pauses. He looks at his followers and asks whether anyone can see a flaw in what he's arranged. Whether he's overlooked anything important.

And the Death Eaters just stand there.

No one suggests a change. No one points out a flaw. Not because there's nothing to say, but because they’re in an echo chamber: too similar, too deferential, too scared of contradicting the Dark Lord. Voldemort curses them for it. It's framed as a core failure mode of having a smart leader surrounded by people who are too similar and too deferential [...]

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.