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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#31

Post by Eliezer »

sbierwagen wrote: post #10
smanek wrote: post #7

It sounds crazy, but as someone who reads a lot of fiction (and very little fan fiction, because most of it's crap), I sincerely think this is one of the best things I've read in years. I'd personally rank it up with Asimov or Heinlein at their best. If you're the kind of person, upon discovering a 'wizarding world' would: - Look into establishing arbitrage between the wizards' fixed ratio of Gold/Silver currency and…

Use a time machine to prove/disprove P == NP Hold up. P==NP is only proved if you have a time machine.[1] It's still unknown in story if you can do it with a conventional, causal, turing machine. Also note that Harry is either ahead of the times (he doesn't mention the Moravec paper in-story) or very, very au courant, being perhaps the only eleven year old in the world to be reading preprints of theoretical computer…

Actually, it happens to be true that all eleven-year-olds attending wizarding school read preprints of theoretical computer science papers.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#32

Post by Eliezer »

swombat wrote: post #29
Eliezer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But because it's fan fiction, I wouldn't object if, after the story finishes, someone produced their own edit of it.

Oh wow, there you are. I just wanted to say that I absolutely love this series of Harry Potter stories. Awesome. Brilliant. Genius. This is as someone who does read a lot as well. It's really, really, really excellent. It's the only mostly static website on the web which I go and manually check every couple of days, excited at the thought that maybe there's a new chapter up. It's like having a child's Christmas every…

"Thanks," he said in the small, awkward voice of someone who'd never quite figured out how to take a compliment like that gracefully.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#33

Post by araneae »

AngryParsley wrote: post #21
araneae wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love HP and the Methods of Rationality, and absolutely hated "Three Worlds Collide" because a)It was very contrived, and b)Rape will never be legal, sorry, unless it's an anti-feminist society similar to some Arab countries, which that society wasn't. I know it's just one little thing, but that completely killed the suspension of disbelief for me.

It's contrived because the goal of the story was to get people to think about metaethics. It's still pretty good for entertainment value though. b) was a reference to http://lesswrong.com/lw/xm/building_weirdtopia/ There was some discussion of this when the chapter was posted. The rape idea was really weird, but it made more sense after reading some of the discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_con…

I've read the comments, and the point still stands. There's a reason that I had never heard of a "weirdtopian" novel before. If something is outside of the scope of what humans are capable of, it's very jarring to one's suspension of disbelief. Just because it fits with his desire to make it weirdtopian doesn't mean I like it any better.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#35

Post by memetichazard »

The thing that I find the most interesting is that a few people on the fanfiction groups I frequent absolutely loathe the story, and there's a sizable group that are ambivalent to it. What I haven't seen, however, is anyone here or on reddit criticize it in any way.

Probably because this is not really Harry Potter fanfiction - the main character of this story is not Harry Potter, so many aspects of the story are radically changed from canon, the author even admits to not having read some of the books, etc. Harry is your basic self-insert in this situation.

So this isn't really fanfiction - it's original fiction set in the Harry Potter universe, and I guess that's what makes it appeal to readers who don't follow fanfiction, and repels some people that do.

Along similar lines is Alicorn's Luminosity[1], which replaces Bella's character from the Twilight series with someone more rational and introspective. Where MoR was based on Eliezer's sequences on Rationality, Luminosity is based on Alicorn's sequence on Luminosity.

1:http://luminous.elcenia.com/

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#36

Post by pjscott »

swombat wrote: post #29
Eliezer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But because it's fan fiction, I wouldn't object if, after the story finishes, someone produced their own edit of it.

Oh wow, there you are. I just wanted to say that I absolutely love this series of Harry Potter stories. Awesome. Brilliant. Genius. This is as someone who does read a lot as well. It's really, really, really excellent. It's the only mostly static website on the web which I go and manually check every couple of days, excited at the thought that maybe there's a new chapter up. It's like having a child's Christmas every…

I hope I'm not raining on your Christmas, but if you register at FanFiction.net, you can subscribe to get an email whenever a new chapter is posted. That way you find out about new chapters quickly, and you don't have to check manually. That's what I do, anyway. There's also an unofficial RSS feed:

http://demented.no-ip.org/~feep/rss_proxy.cgi?5782108

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#37

Post by mattmanser »

Symmetry wrote: post #12
smanek wrote: post #7

It sounds crazy, but as someone who reads a lot of fiction (and very little fan fiction, because most of it's crap), I sincerely think this is one of the best things I've read in years. I'd personally rank it up with Asimov or Heinlein at their best. If you're the kind of person, upon discovering a 'wizarding world' would: - Look into establishing arbitrage between the wizards' fixed ratio of Gold/Silver currency and…

As someone who also reads a lot of fiction, I think this fic is in great need of a good editor... but that after the normal publication process it would be as good as anything Asimov or Heinlein wrote.

Have you read Asimov recently?

In the cold light of adulthood it is unfortunately not as good as my inner child remembers. Nowhere near as bad as Rowling, who is an awful writer, but still pretty bad. To be fair to Rowling her first book actually introduced some good ideas, the rest were pretty much universally crap.

Some of Asimov's themes and ideas are also feeling very dated now too, he seemed to be heavily influenced by the US/Russia situation and early electronics and those inspirations have not stood the test of time.

A visionary in his time and for a generation afterwards, but I'm starting to doubt he'll be much read in 10 or 20 years time.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#38

Post by crux_ »

smanek wrote: post #7

It sounds crazy, but as someone who reads a lot of fiction (and very little fan fiction, because most of it's crap), I sincerely think this is one of the best things I've read in years. I'd personally rank it up with Asimov or Heinlein at their best. If you're the kind of person, upon discovering a 'wizarding world' would: - Look into establishing arbitrage between the wizards' fixed ratio of Gold/Silver currency and…

I'll be honest: I read a lot of fiction too. And this is awful. (Note: giving it up at chapter 3.)

Everything so far has followed this pattern:

* 1) Set-up. * 2) Harry demonstrates his special, unique smarts.

Of course, step two is the far more important of the two.

Combine that with a ridiculously over-the-top amount of name-dropping (more citations than a doctorate!). (I admit, I did have a soft spot for the Flubber reference; it was instantly ruined by the AD&D one that followed -- and if "+6 thingamabobie" wasn't explicit enough for you, the entire next paragraph was about AD&D.)

This is not storytelling: "And she told him of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the Dark Lord, Voldemort." Bleargh. And following it up with an academic citation WRT the bystander effect: WTF?

Anyway, everyone has opinions; that's just mine. Story should come first, and wish-fulfillment fantasies second. (Not that they can't add to a story!)

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#39

Post by derefr »

araneae wrote: post #33
AngryParsley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's contrived because the goal of the story was to get people to think about metaethics. It's still pretty good for entertainment value though. b) was a reference to http://lesswrong.com/lw/xm/building_weirdtopia/ There was some discussion of this when the chapter was posted. The rape idea was really weird, but it made more sense after reading some of the discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_con…

I've read the comments, and the point still stands. There's a reason that I had never heard of a "weirdtopian" novel before. If something is outside of the scope of what humans are capable of, it's very jarring to one's suspension of disbelief. Just because it fits with his desire to make it weirdtopian doesn't mean I like it any better.

But isn't the basic idea that, through genetic engineering et al, we can become a species other than our own? I can't fault a science fiction story for showing the possible sociological consequences of scientific progress, no matter how much I don't "like" the direction science or society is taking—that's the whole point of science fiction, after all.

People like to have protagonists with "human" values to root for in stories—in fact, it can be said that consuming narrative is basically how humans indulge in pretending to believe their own far values (by identifying with characters that act on those far values as if they were near, and then "liking" the works of writers that cause those identifiable characters to "win" the story—or, alternatively, that cause characters without those values to "lose", as in tragedies.) That's the reason that any setting, no matter how fantastic (D&D, 40k, HHGTTG) still has (something that acts and thinks like) modern-day humans. However, if you really think in Hard sci-fi terms, you begin to realize that there's no good, probable explanation for "the future" being such a setting without further, conscious intervention on our part to retain our current values (see Eliezer's "Theory of Fun" sequence.)

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky

#40

Post by ugh »

memetichazard wrote: post #35

The thing that I find the most interesting is that a few people on the fanfiction groups I frequent absolutely loathe the story, and there's a sizable group that are ambivalent to it. What I haven't seen, however, is anyone here or on reddit criticize it in any way. Probably because this is not really Harry Potter fanfiction - the main character of this story is not Harry Potter, so many aspects of the story are radi…

I’m very confused by the often very vitriolic criticisms from some avid fanfiction fans. Is MoR violating some kind of fanfiction etiquette I as an outsider don’t get?

Some seem to be very annoyed whenever they think MoR veers too far from canon which I don’t understand at all. What do I care about canon as long as it makes sense internally? Picking and choosing certain ideas from the existing material while dropping or changing others – even radically – seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do if executed correctly.

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