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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
- te_platt 12y agoWell done! Thank you for your time and effort to do that. I enjoyed the story and learned a thing or two along the way.
- pshc 12y agoThank you for the wild ride, Eliezer.
- grantlmiller 12y agoI've recommended this book to sooo many people, I think it is one of the best ways to introduce rational thinking & understanding to people (well... at least to Harry Potter fans).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- fiatmoney 12y agoEpub / mobi / PDF available from here, as well as better (IMHO) web formatting, author's notes, etc: http://hpmor.com/ http://hpmor.com/
- ajuc 12y agoAlso allows selecting text while reading. Seriously, what were the fanfiction.net guys thinking?
- Amezarak 12y agoIt's implemented for copy-protection purposes. Yes, seriously. http://blog.fictionpress.com/2013/10/11/languages-for-navigation/ http://blog.fictionpress.com/2013/10/11/languages-for-naviga... You can get around it by disabling Javascript, but then all the text becomes annoyingly center-aligned.
- kaybe 12y agoAnd then there are the download services (e.g. http://ficsave.com/ http://ficsave.com/), so it's obviously working (not).
- gwillen 12y agoYou can also get around it, at least in Chrome, by going to the console and entering: $('div#storytextp.storytextp').css('-webkit-user-select', 'inherit'); If that doesn't work, I would also try: $('div.nocopy').removeClass('nocopy'); I have no idea what the 'nocopy' class actually does (in Chrome it seems to do nothing), but it seems like something to try.
- atondwal 12y agoSwitching to the mobile version s/www/m/ also does the trick
- alanh 12y agoI made a bookmarklet that allows text selection on most websites which prevent it. Please give it a try: https://alanhogan.com/code/text-selection-bookmarklet https://alanhogan.com/code/text-selection-bookmarklet
- dhruvmittal 12y agoOne of the more popular Stylish "themes" for the site disallows just the javascript blocking text selection, avoiding the center-aligning.
- iandanforth 12y agoPeople who do this are simply bad people.
- StavrosK 12y agoI was also maintaining a version here: http://leanpub.com/hpmor http://leanpub.com/hpmor
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- SoftwareMaven 12y agoI'm very happy about this. I got to around chapter 85, but, due to the author's time constraints, I put it down at that point. I'll have to pick it up and start over. It is well worth the read.
- mkuhn 12y agoAlmost exactly the same for me. I read it when he was on Chapter 87. Looking forward to read the whole thing from start to finish now.
- kaybe 12y agoThank you for writing this, and also thank you for adapting the updating time to suitable times for Europe! I'm looking forward to your next project.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wavelander 12y agoWell done ! I started reading this - got around to 10 and stopped for a while - and totally forgot about it. It continued and - finally ! - finished. PS: Fellow readers, did it ever stop being awesome and/or become unpleasant from the perspective of the original plot ?
- rictic 12y agoCan you clarify "from the perspective of the original plot"?
- Issac 12y agono it never stopped being awesome ! But over time and many plots the focus changed and it became a bit more serious... but its totally worth every minute reading ! its really great!
- maaku 12y agoWhat original plot? It's basically one story from start to finish. Are you talking about the Rowling books?
- T-A 12y agoI loved it. But I did have second thoughts when it started turning dark after I had already recommended it to a friend as adequte reading for his very young, Potter-obsessed son. After the troll incursion, I was thinking "Uh oh, what have I done?!?". On a lighter note, I was hoping right to the end that the last transfiguration would end up producing a house elf, ideally Dobby. :D Eliezer, if you're reading this: thanks. It was awesome.
- pavel_lishin 12y agoFor those who start reading and wonder when Harry stops being an insufferable little jerk... I'm on chapter 57, now, and he's getting better.
- rictic 12y agoOne important thing, for those who find the main character insufferable at times: this is not a simple mary sue story. When you notice Harry doing something dumb, oblivious, overconfident, condescending, etc. do not assume that this is the author's personality leaking through. It may be the intended reading.
- maxerickson 12y agoI only read a little of it, but every time a character did something dumb, oblivious, overconfident, condescending, I braced myself for a thought missile. I guess you could say I found it a bit hamfisted.
- db48x 12y agoIn fact, Harry's personality is a Clue, or rather Bayesian evidence to use when predicting future events in the story, or deducing the true nature of the mysterious events that started the story.
- zyxley 12y agoGiven that the early parts of the story are written in such a way that the narrative treats Harry's behavior as completely right and justified, it seems far more likely to be a retcon done years after the fact than some secret master plan Yudkowsky had in mind from the beginning.
- db48x 12y agoIt's possible. He did however make an offer to reveal the entire plot to anyone who could puzzle out a fairly minor part of it pretty early on.
- Mahn 12y agoIs this something you would recommend reading to non Harry Potter fans as well?
- skybrian 12y agoAbsolutely. It makes a fair bit of fun of the original, but doesn't require that you've read it.
- Eliezer 12y agoI do think it kinda helps to have read at least the first book or watched the first movie.
- maaku 12y agoYou would get more out of it having had the back story of at least watching the first movie (it's only 3rs). But the Yudkowsky version of it stands on its own.
- Issac 12y agoIt was a brilliant story , loved it! and did recommend it to i think almost everyone i know at least once XD ! A bit sad its finished
- qrendel 12y agoDitto. Started reading it a few weeks ago and just caught up two days before the end. Certainly ranks among my favorite novels now. Almost literally could not put it down until I finished. Thanks, Eliezer.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y agoI read a bunch of chapters a few years ago and thought it was remarkably horrid.
- Splendor 12y agoYour comment could be more valuable if it included your reasoning or suggestions for improvement.
- andolanra 12y agoI have been following someone's critical chapter-by-chapter criticism of HPMOR for some time now, which might be illustrative. It is admittedly quite long: http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/tagged/Hariezer-Yudotter/chrono http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/tagged/Hariezer-Yudotter/chrono Among other things, I've often seen people try to sell HPMOR as, "Harry Potter fanfiction in which Harry applies the scientific method to the magical world of Harry Potter!" And that shows up a little [^1] but is by and large not the content of the work. Harry does very few experiments to verify his hypotheses and is actually a broadly incurious character. For example: Harry is nominally interested in eliminating death, but never once investigates the many magical mechanisms which seem to eliminate death, preferring to just talk about it instead. Similarly, he comes up with hypotheses as to how magic works, but never bothers to investigate them beyond speculation. Additionally, a lot of the "solutions" to problems Harry has are relatively unsatisfying: Harry often circumvents a problem by "clever" applications of the rules, but because the rules of magic as given both in Rowling and in Yudkowsky are ill-defined and even self-contradictory, this seems less clever and more like arbitrary author fiat. Harry is also given a small time machine early on in the plot, and so more often than not, the solution to his problems is, "Use the time-turner again." Finally, I personally found the writing style to be generally in need of editing—not terrible but certainly not polished—but I consider that to be a smaller problem than the above plot-related issues. EDIT: All this doesn't mean that you shouldn't like it! These are just problems that I had with the work. [^1]: The bit where Harry tries to experimentally prove that P=NP is probably my favorite part of the entire thing.
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- Luc 12y agoThanks Eliezer. I loved it. People new to HPMOR will be able to gorge on it, but reading it in episodes and anticipating the next one with a bunch of people made it something special.
- chrislloyd 12y agoThanks Eliezer. That was an amazing journey.
- sowhatquestion 12y agoAs a philosophy grad who finds this stuff mildly interesting, I wish the "rationalists" had chosen a different name for their movement. While "rationality" brings to mind Plato or Descartes, this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. In any case, if you're going to be an empiricist, it strikes me as a pretty decent way to go.
- jessaustin 12y agoSerious question: what would you recommend, instead of empiricism?
- RodericDay 12y agoPositivism. Logical positivism.
- cbd1984 12y ago> Positivism. Logical positivism. Isn't this name taken by a somewhat different philosophy?
- RodericDay 12y agoI don't think so. Parent asserts, > this movement appears to be a kind of hyper-empiricism informed by cognitive psychology, AI research, and Bayesian statistics. Opening intro from wiki for Logical Positivism asserts, > Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy that embraced verificationism, an approach that sought to legitimize philosophical discourse on a basis shared with the best examples of empirical sciences. Stephen Bond had a neat essay, perhaps a bit dubious on the AI/declarative side, about this exact topic. He writes a bit acerbically, but read at least past "For a long time I accepted this explanation at face value...". http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/positivism.html
- robinhoodexe 12y agoI'm wondering if this will be published as a physical book. I prefer reading more than a few pages on normal paper.
- solarmist 12y agoFan fiction at best is a grey area and at worst is blatant copyright infringement. The community seems more than happy to leave it in that place rather than put it to the test by publishing something like that or attempting to make money from that. As soon as someone tries to make money from it, even if just to recoup self-publishing costs there will be a lawsuit and it'll be decided concretely, probably not in the community's favor.
- zyxley 12y agoYudkowsky has already made money off it by gating chapters behind receiving a certain amount in donations, which is part of why I find it really strange that he's apparently now trying to explicitly get Rowling's attention.
- solarmist 12y agoI didn't know that, donations are baiting the lion, I suppose it helps though that his story is almost completely separate from canon. That's a very risky path to walk though.
- Eliezer 12y agoI offered to post pre-written chapters at a higher speed (1 per 2 days instead 1 per 4 days) if a medium-sized charity I cofounded many years earlier made its annual donation target during a matching grant. Beware that HPMOR has a hatedom, and don't believe everything you're told about it.
- solarmist 12y agoYeah, donations to a charity and donations to an author are very different things.
- orp 12y agoThank you, Eliezer. It's been a great run and the last few weeks have been indeed special
- zyxley 12y agoI'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky, given his lack of any real productive output beyond thought experiments and fanfiction, the distinctly weird stuff he judges as right by taking his philosophy to the extremes (e.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), and the way he treats certain fringe positions as absolutely true despite the lack of any solid evidence to support them (for example, many-worlds theory).
- kissickas 12y agoI haven't read all of the "Sequences," nor am I familiar with most details of the Less-Wrong-mindset's idiosyncrasies. However, I just re-read the whole book and I'm not sure either of those concepts have any bearing on this work. There is a bit of assertion that "timeless physics" is representative of true reality, but my reaction was to look it up and find that it's an interesting fringe theory. For all I know, EY doesn't even assert that same theory's truth. Nothing harmful in sparking curiosity, especially in things such as statistics and logical biases, which is where HPMOR puts its emphasis.
- davidgerard 12y agoHe does assert it, then assume its truth in later pieces. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence#Timeless_Physics http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence#...
- kissickas 12y agoInteresting. I still have no problem with it, of course, buttressed by my quick glance at that page to see, at the very top: Warning: The central idea in today's post is taken seriously by serious physicists; but it is not experimentally proven and is not taught as standard physics. Today's post draws heavily on the work of the physicist Julian Barbour, and contains diagrams stolen and/or modified from his book "The End of Time". However, some of the arguments here are of my own devising, and Barbour might(?) not agree with them.
- Mr24601 12y agoFascinating and excellent story. I was originally "eye rolling" at the diatribe against death, but I changed my mind when I realized how few people really have different and thought provoking opinions on what we think about the status quo. The rationality of the argument got past my original response, in time.
- jtheory 12y agoSimilar here -- there are plenty of huge pitfalls there, if we don't die; but that's not the same thing as saying the pitfalls are insurmountable, and I value things that get me thinking without just hitting "oh, that's dumb" after a bit of reflection.
- homulilly 12y agoEvery time I see anything related to Less Wrong all I can think of is Roko's Basilisk and I can't stop laughing.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoEvery time I see your nickname all I can think of is that time you got drunk and puked on the floor. I'm joking of course, but that and your comment are equally smart ways of evaluating other people's deeds and ideas.
- zyxley 12y agoWe have no way to know if homulilly got drunk and puked on the floor in public, but we do know that Yudkowsky and assorted Lesswrong visitors had a reaction to the Roko's basilisk concept that most relatively "normal" people would judge as embarrassing or humorous.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoThat was one situation in the long history of a community with high standards of reasoning and discussion, that produces tons of interesting and educative content. Are you really going to judge the whole community by a single overreaction they AFAIR later admitted was an overreaction?
- homulilly 12y agoI'm not really saying anything about the community other than my own immediate reaction to it. I've read a bit of hpmor and found it fairly entertaining in an Ayn Rand sort of way but I have trouble investing the time required in online fiction as vast as it is and I've found the fanbase to be fairly obnoxious in my personal interactions. For the record, while I wont deny that I've had more to drink than I could handle in the past, I've always made it to the toilet in time to avoid any public embarrassment.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
- adamzerner 12y agoHPMOR is available as a podcast also - http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/ http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/.