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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Splines 16y agoDiscussed previously on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385932 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385932 There are some links to an ePub version if anyone's interested (I enjoyed it). It also looks like the author regularly appends new content. I'm going to need to re-read this!
- jamie_ca 16y agoAlso, some kind soul is maintaining an RSS feed for chapter updates, since FF.net seems to be stuck in the last decade: http://demented.no-ip.org/~feep/rss_proxy.cgi?5782108 http://demented.no-ip.org/~feep/rss_proxy.cgi?5782108
- orangecat 16y agoHighly recommended to anyone who hasn't been reading it. I'm impatiently awaiting new chapters...there are quite a few interesting directions it can go in after the last sequence.
- meinhimmel 16y agoWow! I never expected to see this posted here. I'm a closet Harry Potter fanfiction reader, and I loved this story. I think it's time to re-read this again.. be back in a while.
- iron_ball 16y agoRecently re-read it myself. A tip for new readers -- if you find this version of Harry insufferable, yet the basic concept makes you keep reading, wait for around Chapter 20, where a much-needed mentor helps him learn some self-control.
- bgutierrez 16y agoThanks for the tip. I'm slowly reading this aloud with my wife, and she's pretty distracted with Harry's flaws.
- swombat 16y agoshe's pretty distracted with Harry's flaws She must have had a hell of a time with JK Rowling's version then...
- carterschonwald 16y agoThis is ridiculously awesome piece of fiction. If your friends are of the sort where logic at least partially underlies their thinking and behavior more so than it does most folks, then you will really love this. Bewarned, it's very well written and fun(ny). You may fall out of your chair with laughter
- smanek 16y agoIt 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 the muggles' variable ratio -Try to discover the underlying laws and mechanics of magic -Use a time machine to prove/disprove P == NP Read this Book!
- sbierwagen 16y agoUse 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 science papers while also attending wizarding school. 1: http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1991/TempComp.html http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.artic...
- Eliezer 16y agoActually, it happens to be true that all eleven-year-olds attending wizarding school read preprints of theoretical computer science papers.
- demallien 16y ago<snicker>. Though your statement does feel a bit like dereferencing a NULL-pointer, as in GetAllElevenYearOldsAtWizardingSchool()->doesReadTheoreticalCompSciPapers() should blow up... (Well, at least in the world of bare-metal C, any sane language will of course return an empty collection, and not a NULL pointer to the first function....)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- powrtoch 16y agoPro tip: Because of the smallish text size and full-screen layout (which gives some of us absurdly unfriendly line lengths), I find Safari's "Reader" feature to be indispensable in reading this fic.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoOr just increase your font size and use a window that's not full screen. Ctrl-+ increases font size in Chrome, shift-WheelScrollDown in Firefox, Shift-WheelScrollUp in Konqueror.
- whimsy 16y agoOr use bookmarklets like Readability: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
- mdemare 16y agoOr send it to Instapaper. There are very few websites that I prefer reading in the original form, as opposed to in one of the above formats. I wonder what that says about the state of web design.
- Jach 16y agoNot much, it says more about your personal preferences than it does about web design.
- ugh 16y agoThe row of buttons on the top right allows you to decrease the measure and increase leading as well as font size. Your setting will be remembered (presumably only if you allow cookies). Why they give you this ability but have absolutly horrible defaults will probably be forever their secret.
- akkartik 16y agoWish I could find a single page to read offline.
- jgershen 16y agoIt doesn't always include the latest chapters immediately, but here you go: http://www.mediafire.com/MethodsOfRationality http://www.mediafire.com/MethodsOfRationality
- dwwoelfel 16y agoYou can make your own: http://fanfictionloader.appspot.com/ http://fanfictionloader.appspot.com/
- meinhimmel 16y agoGreasemonkey with this script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/33325 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/33325 . It adds buttons that allow you to put the entire page on one story. Hope that helps.
- mdemare 16y agoWhat I like about this novel that is not directly related to rationality, is that Eliezer pays a lot of attention to the motivation of the "villains". Why would anyone want to be a Death Eater? Why on earth do Malfoy or Crabbe & Goyle act the way they do. Completely unconvincing in the original, (and almost all villains in Hollywood movies for that matter), but in MoR they have a convincing motivation for why they act the way they do. This is really a pet peeve of mine - nobody thinks they're the villain, not Hitler, not Bin Laden, not Timothy McVeigh, nobody. Comic villains and Bond villains are just silly, impossible for me to take seriously. So writers must give an explanation for their villains' evil acts that is distinct from "because they're evil". Most writers don't, but Eliezer Yudkowsky does, and it's a breath of fresh air.
- MBlume 16y agoWell, he did also write [Are Your Enemies Innateley Evil](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/)
- cynicalkane 16y agoThat's silly. Authors are allowed to forgo describing the childhood traumas and deep-seated desires of every character they introduce. They shouldn't have to choose between making every character a fully explored main character or a transparent cardboard prop. As for the Malfoys, it's clear to anyone who read the books that they are not one-dimensional villains. Crabbe and Goyle might be, but they were never important.
- memetichazard 16y agoThe 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/ http://luminous.elcenia.com/
- ugh 16y agoI’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.
- MBlume 16y agoA quick taxonomy of fanfic (from someone who spent way too much time in HP fandom in college): fill-in-the-blanks: This is a story that tells parts of the original work's backstory. The custom is to try scrupulously to maintain canon compatibility -- ie ensure that your work, and the original works, could be presented as a unified whole without contradiction. Fernwithy (http://www.sugarquill.net/index.php?action=profile&id=507 http://www.sugarquill.net/index.php?action=profile&id=50...) writes beautifully in this mode, is very careful about maintaining consistency, and has only started writing stories set in the future of the series since the 7th book closed the canon up. The future fic: This is the sort of thing authors do because they're impatient for the next installment of canon. They try to write the next installment themselves. Again, consistency is considered important. Usually there's some wish-fulfillment, not so much in terms of self-insertion, but in terms of the author taking the story where they wished it would go, especially by pairing two characters the author likes together. After the End(http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?chapno=1&storyid=619 http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?chapno=1&storyid=619) and The Letters of Summer(http://www.phoenixsong.net/fanfiction/story/53/ http://www.phoenixsong.net/fanfiction/story/53/) are both good examples. Once the next installment of canon comes out, the future fic is usually retroactively labelled AU, or alternate universe. The single-point-of-departure AU: "For want of a nail, the horse was lost..." -- the author picks a very specific time and place in canon in which something goes differently, and then tells the story from there. Even here, consistency is prized, unless you can justify how the change arose from the point of departure. I haven't read much in this mode, so I don't have any immediate suggestions. A strangely specific variant of the single-point-of-departure is the Peggy Sue, in which a main character travels back in time, inhabits the body of his/her young self, and redoes everything using their knowledge of future events. Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2636963/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Nightmares_of_Futures_Past http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2636963/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_N...) and Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4068153/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Wastelands_of_Time http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4068153/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_W...) are both examples. Peggy Susie (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5731071/1/Peggy_Susie http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5731071/1/Peggy_Susie) is a one-shot parody of this genre by MoR's author. The crack-fic: The author takes the story miles into left field, usually played for laughs. How Hogwarts Became a Nudist Colony (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2179136/1/How_Hogwarts_Became_a_Nudist_Colony http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2179136/1/How_Hogwarts_Became_a_...) or Potter Puppet Pals (http://www.potterpuppetpals.com/newppp/channels/TroubleAtHogwarts.htm http://www.potterpuppetpals.com/newppp/channels/TroubleAtHog...) are prime examples. No rules here but the rule of Funny. MoR doesn't fit neatly into any of these categories, but starts out sounding a lot like it's going to be a single-point-of-departure AU (the notes at the top of the first chapter have now been edited to specifically disclaim this). MoR is an example of, well, taking another author's universe, using the bits you like, and changing whatever you need to change to tell the story you want to tell, in the manner you want to tell it. It shares this "genre" with most comic reboots, Homer, Milton, the Bible, the brothers Grimm, Disney -- basically a huge chunk of western culture. But it still doesn't quite fit into the set of genres commonly seen in HP fanfic.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Xelaz 16y agoAnd do read the Sequences on Less Wrong: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences
- JulianMorrison 16y agoI suspect the hardest part of plotting this story must not have been changing Harry, but changing Voldemort. How on earth could someone capable of challenging the advanced Harry manage to lose so thoroughly against only Rowling canon good-guys?
- iron_ball 16y agoNot sure how far you've read, but it is not at all certain that Voldemort wants to challenge Harry. Whatever his plans are for Harry, they don't involve killing him -- at least not in the near term.
- JulianMorrison 16y agoI meant challenge as in, be up to the job of opposing him. This Voldemort does oppose Harry's plans, long term, largely because he doesn't get the idea of making the world better for everyone, he just wants out.
- iron_ball 16y agoThe methods Harry would employ would achieve Voldemort's aims as well, and if Voldemort's horcruxes work as advertised, he shouldn't care too much about the time frame.
- JulianMorrison 16y agoSure, and Harry would see that. Voldemort would not. He wants a subverted Harry on his side, but he doesn't care about rebuilding the universe to be nice.
- Estragon 16y agoWow, I've read the first three chapters, and this is so good. And I have always despised the Harry Potter books. Next time someone tells me that art would no longer be produced unless copyright guaranteed a way to monetize it, I'm going to point them at this masterpiece.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- gursikh 16y agoSomeone needs to write a "Frodo Baggins and The Methods of Rationality".