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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#42It 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…
It's not bad as far as fiction goes. It's straight awesome compared to just about all other fanfic. It's main problem is that it's front loaded with all of the authors non-fiction blog posts on transhumanism. The story is stalled repeatedly by the Rand-like "John Galt" speeches by the Potter character especially.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#43It 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 Flubb…
Just to clarify, you're judging this story after only 3 chapters? Because if you want to get an accurate impression of the story, you should push past chapter 5 at least. The tone of the story evolves considerably, and you might find you like it after all. (Though to quote the author, "If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.")
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#44The 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…
The characters here don't depart any further than those in, say, A Black Comedy or The Wastelands of Time, both of which are a lot further from canon than MoR, widely acclaimed by some (including me), and not much hated by others that I've ever seen. "It violates canon!" is a rationalization of a strong ick reaction for other reasons. There may be parts of this that I don't fully understand, but I'm reasonably sure of that part.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Flubb…
Just to clarify, you're judging this story after only 3 chapters? Because if you want to get an accurate impression of the story, you should push past chapter 5 at least. The tone of the story evolves considerably, and you might find you like it after all. (Though to quote the author, "If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.")
Yes: I set it aside very early on.
I'm quite certain the story will change & evolve. However, I'm rather sceptical that the writing quality will.
Part of why I gave it up so early is purely on me: I am a sucker for a page-turner -- once a plot picks up a certain amount of steam, I have a near-compulsion to finish. This is the case even if, upon reflection, I don't like the writing, characters, events, etc...
Nothing less fun than coming out of a reading binge at 3am on a work night reading a book you didn't like!
edit: Random sampling in future chapters reveals great heapings of soliloquy and dialectic. I don't feel too bad about setting it down.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#46It 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…
It's not bad as far as fiction goes. It's straight awesome compared to just about all other fanfic. It's main problem is that it's front loaded with all of the authors non-fiction blog posts on transhumanism. The story is stalled repeatedly by the Rand-like "John Galt" speeches by the Potter character especially.
Which is rather ironic, given Harry's dismissal of Atlas Shrugged in one of the early chapters.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
I'm not sure it's possible to argue someone into enjoying a work of fiction.
I explained why it didn't work for me. Any work of fiction- the successful ones, anyway- will always be about people. If they're too different of a people (genetically engineered out of their humanness), then people simply won't enjoy it.
There's a reason that there are virtually no popular science fiction novels where the protagonist is an alien that has a completely different value/mating systems to us. I got like a page into a story about an alternate history of Earth where birds resembling jacanas (a species where the females are behaviorally like the males of other species and v.v.) were the intelligent species on the planet. Then I realized that no-one could ever relate to or care about my characters. They were just too alien. That isn't to say there can't be great fiction where the conflict between alien races is over that difference, like 3 worlds, (Ender's Game comes to mind), but the point is always to reaffirm what it means to be human. You just can't do that if the humans in your book are alien.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 influe…
His writing is pretty bad in the original Foundation trilogy, but it was his early work. He got a lot better later on. Have you read Stephen King's first novel, Carrie? The writing is awful.
And yes, there are a lot of direct cold war references in something like Fantastic Voyage II that make it seem outdated, but I think that his really futuristic stuff doesn't have that flaw.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, because it is fan fiction, it will never be published.
But because it's fan fiction, I wouldn't object if, after the story finishes, someone produced their own edit of it.
Ahem. You don't happen have that .tex template hanging around that was used to produce the .pdf? Because it's absolutely beautiful and I would like to co-opt the template for my NaNoWriMo novel :D.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 i…
I'm not sure it's possible to argue someone into enjoying a work of fiction. I explained why it didn't work for me. Any work of fiction- the successful ones, anyway- will always be about people. If they're too different of a people (genetically engineered out of their humanness), then people simply won't enjoy it. There's a reason that there are virtually no popular science fiction novels where the protagonist is an…
I'm not suggesting that you should enjoy it. It's not escapism; it's not intended to pass mindlessly into your amygdala. It's meant to be a serious, critical analysis of the consequences of doing such a thing—a satire, in other words. you're meant to come away with it with an opinion on whether or not doing this—becoming alien in this way, having these irreconcilably different values—is a good thing or not.
...which was, oddly enough, the plot of the story itself! The protagonists decided that the values of the Baby Eaters were a bad thing; and, likewise, the Super Happy people decided that the values of the protagonists were a bad thing. One day, our future, alien selves might decide that our current values are a bad thing, and, likewise, if we see their (potential) values as bad enough, we might consider not allowing such a positive feedback loop toward new values to take place at all.