3 ms·

It went above your head.

operatingthetan 4y ago
It went above their head because it was poor writing in their view? Why would you think taste in writing has anything to do with their ability to understand the points the writer was trying to make? This seems unecessary and you are probably capable of coming up with a more interesting response.
- SamReidHughes 4y ago
  It was supposed to be a flawed protagonist.
  - operatingthetan 4y ago
    It's commonly thought (and obvious) that Yud wrote the book about himself so I doubt it. It doesn't really fit the rationalist playbook either, they take themselves excessively seriously.
    - SamReidHughes 4y ago
      The character's author-insert aspects are self-parody.
      - operatingthetan 4y ago
        He's too fragile and prone to overcompensation for that, nice try. Of course he's going to back track after getting mercilessly mocked for it and then claim it was just a joke.
        AgentME 4y ago
        The first few chapters have a song scene parodying ghostbusters and a joke about the protagonist biting a teacher in a tantrum as a young kid. There's plenty of elements of crackfic parody in it.
        davidgerard 4y ago
        > a joke about the protagonist biting a teacher in a tantrum as a young kid. wasn't that literally Yudkowsky, tho
        AgentME 4y ago
        Not disagreeing that Harry in the story is an author self-insert, just with that it's a fully self-serious non-parody one.
  - SiempreViernes 4y ago
    At the end Harry is basically a Messiah that can order the magical world to provide emergency medical aid to everyone in the whole world and turns Hermione into basically an angel; not really seeing the story itself saying he did anything wrong...
    - AgentME 4y ago
      You're describing one of the unofficial fan-written fanfic sequels.
- kimixa 4y ago
  I saw it as an attempt at popular outreach, a puff piece for a rather niche philosophical view. If it "goes above the head" of the people it's targeted at, that just makes it a poorly written puff piece.
precompute 4y ago
Nah, HPMOR just sucks, plain and simple. There was no need for a HP fanfiction in the first place. Also, if you ever ask anyone that reads fanfiction, no one will ever have a positive opinion of HPMOR. There are millions of HP fanfics, and there are many that are much better than HPMOR. My guess is that it was set in the HP universe just so it could be popular.
- aetherson 4y ago
  My strong belief is that HPMOR is a Harry Potter fanfic not for any calculated reason, but just because the author was in a demographic maximally interested in making Harry Potter fanfic.
  - davidgerard 4y ago
    he has literally stated that's why he did it as a Harry Potter fanfic. "There's a large number of potential readers who would enter at least moderately familiar with the Harry Potter universe." He was also reading a lot of HP fic himself, so he knew the stuff.
    - aetherson 4y ago
      Let me slightly revise my claim: I think that Eliezer is very well-situated by both age and social niche to find HP fanfiction vastly more appealing than most human beings do. I think that he genuinely finds the idea of "Harry Potter but more as a hard fantasy with a hero bent on breaking the setting by using everything without regard for genre convention" interesting as a story concept. And when he set out to write up his ideas about rationality in the form of something other than dry nonfiction essays, I think that HP fanfiction sounded good to him. I don't think that he correctly found the medium that is maximally appealing to the potential target audience for his ideas (like, I definitely do not want to read a super long Harry Potter fanfic, and I think I'm joined in that by essentially everyone who's not a very geeky millennial), and I don't think that he gritted his teeth and wrote a HP fanfic in order to increase the audience for his ideas despite not liking HP fanfics.

It went above their head because it was poor writing in their view? Why would you think taste in writing has anything to do with their ability to understand the points the writer was trying to make? This seems unecessary and you are probably capable of coming up with a more interesting response.

SamReidHughes 4y ago
It was supposed to be a flawed protagonist.
- operatingthetan 4y ago
  It's commonly thought (and obvious) that Yud wrote the book about himself so I doubt it. It doesn't really fit the rationalist playbook either, they take themselves excessively seriously.
  - SamReidHughes 4y ago
    The character's author-insert aspects are self-parody.
    - operatingthetan 4y ago
      He's too fragile and prone to overcompensation for that, nice try. Of course he's going to back track after getting mercilessly mocked for it and then claim it was just a joke.
      - AgentME 4y ago
        The first few chapters have a song scene parodying ghostbusters and a joke about the protagonist biting a teacher in a tantrum as a young kid. There's plenty of elements of crackfic parody in it.
        davidgerard 4y ago
        > a joke about the protagonist biting a teacher in a tantrum as a young kid. wasn't that literally Yudkowsky, tho
        AgentME 4y ago
        Not disagreeing that Harry in the story is an author self-insert, just with that it's a fully self-serious non-parody one.
- SiempreViernes 4y ago
  At the end Harry is basically a Messiah that can order the magical world to provide emergency medical aid to everyone in the whole world and turns Hermione into basically an angel; not really seeing the story itself saying he did anything wrong...
  - AgentME 4y ago
    You're describing one of the unofficial fan-written fanfic sequels.
kimixa 4y ago
I saw it as an attempt at popular outreach, a puff piece for a rather niche philosophical view. If it "goes above the head" of the people it's targeted at, that just makes it a poorly written puff piece.

precompute 4y ago

Nah, HPMOR just sucks, plain and simple. There was no need for a HP fanfiction in the first place. Also, if you ever ask anyone that reads fanfiction, no one will ever have a positive opinion of HPMOR. There are millions of HP fanfics, and there are many that are much better than HPMOR. My guess is that it was set in the HP universe just so it could be popular.

aetherson 4y ago
My strong belief is that HPMOR is a Harry Potter fanfic not for any calculated reason, but just because the author was in a demographic maximally interested in making Harry Potter fanfic.
- davidgerard 4y ago
  he has literally stated that's why he did it as a Harry Potter fanfic. "There's a large number of potential readers who would enter at least moderately familiar with the Harry Potter universe." He was also reading a lot of HP fic himself, so he knew the stuff.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    Let me slightly revise my claim: I think that Eliezer is very well-situated by both age and social niche to find HP fanfiction vastly more appealing than most human beings do. I think that he genuinely finds the idea of "Harry Potter but more as a hard fantasy with a hero bent on breaking the setting by using everything without regard for genre convention" interesting as a story concept. And when he set out to write up his ideas about rationality in the form of something other than dry nonfiction essays, I think that HP fanfiction sounded good to him. I don't think that he correctly found the medium that is maximally appealing to the potential target audience for his ideas (like, I definitely do not want to read a super long Harry Potter fanfic, and I think I'm joined in that by essentially everyone who's not a very geeky millennial), and I don't think that he gritted his teeth and wrote a HP fanfic in order to increase the audience for his ideas despite not liking HP fanfics.