Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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alexandriao: Jul 20, 2019

Daikloktos posted:

And here I thought that doublepost ruined the punch of the initial... but it does actually make me feel less alienated by how easily stunted people I've known turned out, to keep tabs on this community. To me the saddest fans aren't the ones completely down with Eliezer's philosophies and fantasizing about uploading their consciousness to cyber-Equestria, but the ones who catch the more overt absurdities in HPMOR without engaging with the fundamental problems in "rationalizing fiction". This is a pretty good thread because as much as it hits the easy dunks it doesn't ignore how deep you can trace the rot.

You know, as much as I despise Yud and his followers, and the philosophy he espouses, I don't disagree with his general (originally stated) goal, to add more consistency to a series of novels where the magic system was too underdeveloped to be interesting. There are worse problems with the books, like Harry not actually having any kind of effect on the plot, etc. But for some reason, the magic system always bugged me the worst. Mostly, how Rowling never bothered to put any effort into developing it. It's emblematic of a lot of the problems in Rowling's writing, and political beliefs -- that she puts nothing more than a surface-depth thought into anything. It explains her most recent remarks -- a lot of them are driven by "hey this is neat, and will get me retweets and popularity, I'll tweet it!!".

It's usually the mark of a good writer to put more thought into their work than actually ends up on the page, and as a reader you can generally feel how much thought has gone into the universe that ends up on the page because it comes out through the writing. Pratchett, for example, had an "inconsistent" magic system, but hell if he didn't privately work out the details. The jokes all revealed something about the world, and the later books explored it in depth (The concept of "narrutivium" as a magical force, a fourth wall break, and a joke is pure genius, to be honest). The same with LeGuin.

And it would have been nice to see the magic system, and hell, the politics, the entire universe, recreated with consistency, or investigated in-universe and imbued with some consistency retroactively. Seeing what kinds of consistency we could create out of the smouldering trash heap of a universe that Rowling put onto paper. But nope! "gently caress u!" says Yud.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 02:19

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 09:40

ContinuityNewTimes: Dec 30, 2010; Я выдуман напрочь

I'm sorry I should have read more. Have a blessed day

# ? Jul 6, 2020 02:32

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

Without HPMOR, would Dominic Cummings be quite so awful? It's really hard to say. He'd still exist, and be awful, but

# ? Jul 6, 2020 08:58

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

alexandriao posted:

You know, as much as I despise Yud and his followers, and the philosophy he espouses, I don't disagree with his general (originally stated) goal, to add more consistency to a series of novels where the magic system was too underdeveloped to be interesting. There are worse problems with the books, like Harry not actually having any kind of effect on the plot, etc. But for some reason, the magic system always bugged me the worst. Mostly, how Rowling never bothered to put any effort into developing it. It's emblematic of a lot of the problems in Rowling's writing, and political beliefs -- that she puts nothing more than a surface-depth thought into anything. It explains her most recent remarks -- a lot of them are driven by "hey this is neat, and will get me retweets and popularity, I'll tweet it!!".

This kind of criticism always makes me think of people who complain that Pokedex entries don't make sense. It seems like a lot of adult fans of the books kind of seem to forget that this is a series of books written for children ages ten and up, not grown men who want "depth" and "complexity" in their fairy tale story. Harry Potter magic runs on whatever seemed cool or wondrous at the time because that's what works for children. You can't rewrite the story to make sense under a "hard" Sanderson-style magic system and have it still work, because it wasn't supposed to be that kind of story.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 10:58

Qwertycoatl: Dec 31, 2008

Cardiovorax posted:

This kind of criticism always makes me think of people who complain that Pokedex entries don't make sense. It seems like a lot of adult fans of the books kind of seem to forget that this is a series of books written for children ages ten and up, not grown men who want "depth" and "complexity" in their fairy tale story. Harry Potter magic runs on whatever seemed cool or wondrous at the time because that's what works for children. You can't rewrite the story to make sense under a "hard" Sanderson-style magic system and have it still work, because it wasn't supposed to be that kind of story.

It kind of turns into that kind of story as the books go on, mostly to its detriment.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry as a baby in the first book because Harry is protected by his mother's love.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry in the last book because Voldemort thinks he became master of the Elder Wand by defeating Dumbledore, but he doesn't realise that technically it was Malfoy who defeated Dumbledore and Harry defeated Malfoy.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 12:23

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Qwertycoatl posted:

It kind of turns into that kind of story as the books go on, mostly to its detriment.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry as a baby in the first book because Harry is protected by his mother's love.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry in the last book because Voldemort thinks he became master of the Elder Wand by defeating Dumbledore, but he doesn't realise that technically it was Malfoy who defeated Dumbledore and Harry defeated Malfoy.

It's part of why I think the first four books are the only really good ones, yeah. The moment they started taking themselves seriously, everything just kinda went off a cliff.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 12:25

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Qwertycoatl posted:

It kind of turns into that kind of story as the books go on, mostly to its detriment.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry as a baby in the first book because Harry is protected by his mother's love.

Voldemort fails to kill Harry in the last book because Voldemort thinks he became master of the Elder Wand by defeating Dumbledore, but he doesn't realise that technically it was Malfoy who defeated Dumbledore and Harry defeated Malfoy.

The thing is, as far as I know "wand allegiance" didn't exist at all until the last book and there's no evidence of it being a thing in any previous fight. I'm pretty sure it was invented on the spot.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 15:04

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

It also hasn't come up in Fantastic Beasts despite Grindlewald being defeated and disarmed at the end of the first film.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 15:10

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Isn't that mentioned as early as Halfblood Prince? I could swear it's made out to be a big thing that's specific to the elder wand.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 15:30

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Cardiovorax posted:

This kind of criticism always makes me think of people who complain that Pokedex entries don't make sense. It seems like a lot of adult fans of the books kind of seem to forget that this is a series of books written for children ages ten and up, not grown men who want "depth" and "complexity" in their fairy tale story. Harry Potter magic runs on whatever seemed cool or wondrous at the time because that's what works for children. You can't rewrite the story to make sense under a "hard" Sanderson-style magic system and have it still work, because it wasn't supposed to be that kind of story.

this kind of scolding is something that has never really made sense to me. hpmor is a particularly clumsy and bad attempt at "grounding" a fictional story, but that doesn't mean the entire genre is misguided. the goal is not to "have it still work" in the sense of retaining exactly the same plot beats, themes, and setting details, but more "realistic" - generally these kinds of stories end up spiraling away into something very different from their source material because the more "realistic" setting demands that things happen differently. this can be handled well (rarely) or poorly (usually) but it's not an invalid idea for a story

# ? Jul 6, 2020 16:08

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Jazerus posted:

this kind of scolding is something that has never really made sense to me. hpmor is a particularly clumsy and bad attempt at "grounding" a fictional story, but that doesn't mean the entire genre is misguided. the goal is not to "have it still work" in the sense of retaining exactly the same plot beats, themes, and setting details, but more "realistic" - generally these kinds of stories end up spiraling away into something very different from their source material because the more "realistic" setting demands that things happen differently. this can be handled well (rarely) or poorly (usually) but it's not an invalid idea for a story

I don't disagree, it's not an invalid idea for a story. It's just not the idea for the kind of story that the actual Harry Potter books wanted to be, which is why those stories always spiral away from it. You can tell a story like that. It just won't be Harry Potter, because the entire setting runs on being silly and making only as much coherent sense as the narrative demands.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 16:39

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

alexandriao posted:

There are worse problems with the books, like Harry not actually having any kind of effect on the plot, etc.

The books are pretty clear on the fact that victory is a team effort and that prophecies of a chosen one is largely bullshit. It's even stated in the books that the prophecy about Harry Potter is so vague that it could fit several persons.

# ? Jul 6, 2020 17:19

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

alexandriao posted:

And it would have been nice to see the magic system, and hell, the politics, the entire universe, recreated with consistency, or investigated in-universe and imbued with some consistency retroactively. Seeing what kinds of consistency we could create out of the smouldering trash heap of a universe that Rowling put onto paper. But nope! "gently caress u!" says Yud.

trap sprung, but this is the fanfic you want for that

quote:

"Well, the wand move's simple enough � " Flamel ran through it slowly � "but it's a little tricky�" he tapped his wand on his head � "on the inside. What if you were to point your wand up and do accio sun?"

"Sounds dangerous," said Harry

"It doesn't work. Personally I tried it thinking I'd be dragged into the sky because relative masses, but no, nothing. You can't accio things you don't conceptualise correctly, you can't accio things that you can't fundamentally have. Consensus, I think we agreed to call it. Who'd respect your right to own the sun? Who'd believe you if you claimed it? The moon, mountains, same thing. Once you get down to things like bridges it gets a bit iffy � you might be able to vandalise a bridge if you were puissant enough." He looked around at the largely empty room, and settled on the fireplace. "If you want a challenge, try accio smoke. Smoke, it's like the sun but it's a little different, see if you can imagine your way into possession of smoke."

Harry waved the motion a few times, and made a few corrections to the shape, and then waved it a few more times, and then waved it again �

Accio smoke, " said Harry.

Nothing happened, and then happened again the second time.

Harry paused, twirling the wand between his fingers. There was a long pause, and then he said, "Oh. �Accio smoke!"

##############

Total success was not in fact such a wonderful thing on the whole, and they had to rather quickly fall back into the other room, and Flamel had to toss off a couple of evanescos � the second for the ash all over the floor � and then a few more charms on account of the smell and the (surprisingly not immediately obvious) fact that the carpet was on fire, as were the drapes.

All the drapes.

"Not bad," coughed Flamel, after the last reparo. "Wasn't expecting you to succeed, really, not without advice � how'd you manage it?"

"I thought about filtered cigarettes."

# ? Jul 8, 2020 21:38

animist: Aug 28, 2018

yeah it's fine for magic to be confusing and unpredictable, that's how cultural constructs of magic were treated for the majority of history in most societies. you just gotta sell it, make it awe-inspiring or scary.

if you're jumping through hoops to make your magic rigorous and predictable to the decimal point, you're writing science fiction, not fantasy.

(imo Harry Potter pulls off wonderment well enough where it counts, it's not trying to be robust. HPMOR, on the other hand, aims for rigor. But it doesn't substantively change the system from HP, beyond a lot of sarcastic eye rolling about "isn't this silly". so it's neither good science fiction nor good fantasy.)

animist fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Jul 8, 2020

# ? Jul 8, 2020 23:17

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

animist posted:

HPMOR, on the other hand, aims for rigor.

Correction: it claims to aim for rigor, but when it comes to Harry Potter fanfics that are written around the idea of scientifically investigating magic, it's actually one of the worst around. Harriezer pulls new powers of his rear end exactly when the plot demands it, no sooner and no later. There is no more rhyme or reason to it than to anything the novels also do.

# ? Jul 8, 2020 23:24

animist: Aug 28, 2018

Cardiovorax posted:

Correction: it claims to aim for rigor, but when it comes to Harry Potter fanfics that are written around the idea of scientifically investigating magic, it's actually one of the worst around. Harriezer pulls new powers of his rear end exactly when the plot demands it, no sooner and no later. There is no more rhyme or reason to it than to anything the novels also do.

but there was a quiz at the end!!

# ? Jul 8, 2020 23:26

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

reminder that yud doesn't actually believe in science, he believes in the power of brain and bayes just thinking about things and coming up with the answer

# ? Jul 9, 2020 12:11

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

alexandriao posted:

You know, as much as I despise Yud and his followers, and the philosophy he espouses, I don't disagree with his general (originally stated) goal, to add more consistency to a series of novels where the magic system was too underdeveloped to be interesting. There are worse problems with the books, like Harry not actually having any kind of effect on the plot, etc. But for some reason, the magic system always bugged me the worst. Mostly, how Rowling never bothered to put any effort into developing it. It's emblematic of a lot of the problems in Rowling's writing, and political beliefs -- that she puts nothing more than a surface-depth thought into anything. It explains her most recent remarks -- a lot of them are driven by "hey this is neat, and will get me retweets and popularity, I'll tweet it!!".

And it would have been nice to see the magic system, and hell, the politics, the entire universe, recreated with consistency, or investigated in-universe and imbued with some consistency retroactively. Seeing what kinds of consistency we could create out of the smouldering trash heap of a universe that Rowling put onto paper. But nope! "gently caress u!" says Yud.

Absolutely, and it's interesting you put "we" instead of "one". One of the idiosyncratic things about Yudkowsky, among the many, is that by never reading beyond the 3rd or 4th book he got to experience the latter half of the series this way through fanfiction. And it was the first pop literary hit of the internet age that could facilitate experiencing a work that way. Maybe back in Don Quixote times you'd end up reading more romantic knight stories written by proto-goons than actual medieval whatever, or Dickens fanclubs and Star Trek fanzines, but size and scope and scale, and not so readily in replacement of the originals.

And that Yud attempts to write not just a rationalization of Harry Potter, but a metatextual rationalization of Harry Potter through the lens of its fanfiction is one of the elements of the work that elevate it. As with every grand theme he attempts, it is half-constructed and easily abandoned, but I recognize the impulse. "The consistency we could create"...

But ultimately we already have that, as I mentioned, in the fanfiction body as a whole. I believe there was some bruhahah about trying to enter the entire aooo into the contest, which I agree was not entirely sound. But I have read Harry Potter fanfics (branching from you guys "guilty pleasures" you posted here and there over the years, I see each and every one of you now) that do a fantastic job providing consistency of agency, geopolitic, and cosmology to whatever particular aspect of the series most drew its authors - Harry raised by Goblins, Harry becomes Snape's bickering lab assistant, Harry becomes a BYOB communist because we all knew this JK Rowling poo poo was coming.

But when any singular author creates a holistic world, or extends anothers holistic world, they are naturally going to imbue their own perceptions and biases about what elements and philosophies are important to draw out. This relation between creator and subcreator, and metatexually the relation between author and God, is central to Tolkien's Silmarillion cosmology - but check those guys out if you want to know more about Tolkien, it's one of the most legit threads in forums history.

We can see an object example of this in another element worthy of praise in Methods, the Interdict of Merlin. I have not read enough fanfic to understand any potential antecedents, but it's one of those rare bits where Yudjkowsky remembers his most essential premise and provides a continuous patch to an element of dissonance in the framework of the original. That is: A culture constantly reaching back to the a past age of epic glory while having an extensive academic, literary and research landscape. Cosmologically it allows for artifacts unreplicable yet a "crunchy" (ugh) casting system; geosociopolitically it fills in the history with unfathomable disasters that end up, serendipitously, solving elements such as population size

Yet, it is also a vehicle for Yud to explore that element of existence most important to him: existential risk. Merlin becomes twisted to Yud's purposes so far afield because Yud is "uniquely outsider as an artist", but any work will see its characters and devices shaded towards what the author thinks most. Targeting any such "rationalization" towards not the work itself, but its body of fanfiction tropes and standouts, very neatly democratizes that ideal of extended the world of the work beyond its original author, solving this inherent contradiction.

I probably wrote a thousand words there so here's my post in picture form

Daikloktos fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jul 10, 2020

# ? Jul 10, 2020 04:23

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Daikloktos posted:

Absolutely, and it's interesting you put "we" instead of "one". One of the idiosyncratic things about Yudkowsky, among the many, is that by never reading beyond the 3rd or 4th book he got to experience the latter half of the series this way through fanfiction. And it was the first pop literary hit of the internet age that could facilitate experiencing a work that way.

eh, ranma fandom was like that

also IIRC yud didn't read any of the books

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:18

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

Oh no doubt, and I remember a time before google when virtually any search string on like, AltaVista would return Yu Yu Hakusho fanfic. But Harry Potter also comes in at the level of wider cultural impact. The groundwork was laid by the anime community, and the Star Trek guys like I mentioned and hell, the creators of kids cartoons today were writing fanfiction of the ones we grew up with.

And also, while I don't know the numbers, I'd just assume Harry Potter had the biggest volume of fanfiction for its time by whatever metric, and is probably still Top 3.

EDIT: Oh and I did say "literary" hit, the fact it's a text is central

Daikloktos fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jul 10, 2020

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:26

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

Here's a good post from this thread five years ago (!!). We're extremely lucky to have this thread, and the Less Wrong Mock as it lasted, to accumulate experiences and thoughts like this

Curvature of Earth posted:

Like, part of me wants to go easy on him for that. Back in 2002 when I first started reading fanfiction, if you missed an episode of a show you were hosed and had to hope some weeaboo had posted a summary of it on their fansite. I never actually saw about half of the episodes of my favorite show from childhood, but between lovely fansites and lovely fanfiction I could still give you a detailed account of what happened. (It's not that hard. Most of the really popular fics in any fandom are essentially retellings of the series with the author's own spin on it, and they're lazy enough to recycle scenes from the show if they don't feel the need to change them. Read enough and, just from the overlap between all those fics, you can get a very good idea of what actually happened in the series proper.)

Then I remember that Yud isn't a young teen with dial-up internet and no income. He's a loving adult whose entire day is free time and can afford whatever media he wants. Suck it up and read the source material you poo poo.

But I failed to find the Yud quote. It went something like "I felt no need to return to the series, as I had come to think of the universe as a grown up place to tell grown up stories". So I'm going to say I'm either right or too easily able to generate plausible Yudspeak.

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:33

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

Murphy Brownback posted:

Is this actually true? Several paragraphs in the next couple chapters were copy-pasted pretty much verbatim out of the first book. Did he just read the wiki to get the general plot/character names, and then flip to random pages to copy material or what?

Big Yud posted:

[I r]ead the first 3 books, watched the next 5 movies, checked the wiki often, and most importantly, read at least a hundred other Harry Potter fanfictions. I know off the top of my head who Fleur Delacour's little sister is, in fact I've read a whole book about her bonding to Harry Potter's ghost after he dies in the Second Task of the Triwizard tournament.

(From another 5 year old post)

Also

quote:

after Book 3 I read enough Harry Potter fanfiction that my brain started to think of the Potterverse as a grownup place and when I went back to Book 4, it felt too young.

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:49

YggiDee: Sep 12, 2007; WASP CREW

Shamefully, I know the numbers and Harry Potter is absolutely in the top three fanfic by any reasonable measure. On fanfiction.net, Harry Potter is King poo poo of gently caress Mountain, there's 800k+ stories and the next contender, (Naruto) has half that. Archive Of Our Own has HP fic in third place (259k) , but the two properties beating it are 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' (352k) and 'Kpop', (319k) which are... An entire media franchise and a whole-rear end music genre. I don't know if those even count. If you ignore those the next highest seem to be Supernatural (227k) and Sherlock Holmes (131k).

None of you wanted that information but unfortunately, I'm here.

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:55

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

His brain started to think of it as a grownup place and his heart, never held childhood whimsy to begin with

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:56

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

YggiDee posted:

Shamefully, I know the numbers and Harry Potter is absolutely in the top three fanfic by any reasonable measure. On fanfiction.net, Harry Potter is King poo poo of gently caress Mountain, there's 800k+ stories and the next contender, (Naruto) has half that. Archive Of Our Own has HP fic in third place (259k) , but the two properties beating it are 'Marvel Cinematic Universe' (352k) and 'Kpop', (319k) which are... An entire media franchise and a whole-rear end music genre. I don't know if those even count. If you ignore those the next highest seem to be Supernatural (227k) and Sherlock Holmes (131k).

None of you wanted that information but unfortunately, I'm here.

Yesss, thank you. I can't believe I was so timid

# ? Jul 10, 2020 05:58

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

Daikloktos posted:

Absolutely, and it's interesting you put "we" instead of "one". One of the idiosyncratic things about Yudkowsky, among the many, is that by never reading beyond the 3rd or 4th book he got to experience the latter half of the series this way through fanfiction. And it was the first pop literary hit of the internet age that could facilitate experiencing a work that way. Maybe back in Don Quixote times you'd end up reading more romantic knight stories written by proto-goons than actual medieval whatever, or Dickens fanclubs and Star Trek fanzines, but size and scope and scale, and not so readily in replacement of the originals.

And that Yud attempts to write not just a rationalization of Harry Potter, but a metatextual rationalization of Harry Potter through the lens of its fanfiction is one of the elements of the work that elevate it. As with every grand theme he attempts, it is half-constructed and easily abandoned, but I recognize the impulse. "The consistency we could create"...

But ultimately we already have that, as I mentioned, in the fanfiction body as a whole. I believe there was some bruhahah about trying to enter the entire aooo into the contest, which I agree was not entirely sound. But I have read Harry Potter fanfics (branching from you guys "guilty pleasures" you posted here and there over the years, I see each and every one of you now) that do a fantastic job providing consistency of agency, geopolitic, and cosmology to whatever particular aspect of the series most drew its authors - Harry raised by Goblins, Harry becomes Snape's bickering lab assistant, Harry becomes a BYOB communist because we all knew this JK Rowling poo poo was coming.

But when any singular author creates a holistic world, or extends anothers holistic world, they are naturally going to imbue their own perceptions and biases about what elements and philosophies are important to draw out. This relation between creator and subcreator, and metatexually the relation between author and God, is central to Tolkien's Silmarillion cosmology - but check those guys out if you want to know more about Tolkien, it's one of the most legit threads in forums history.

We can see an object example of this in another element worthy of praise in Methods, the Interdict of Merlin. I have not read enough fanfic to understand any potential antecedents, but it's one of those rare bits where Yudjkowsky remembers his most essential premise and provides a continuous patch to an element of dissonance in the framework of the original. That is: A culture constantly reaching back to the a past age of epic glory while having an extensive academic, literary and research landscape. Cosmologically it allows for artifacts unreplicable yet a "crunchy" (ugh) casting system; geosociopolitically it fills in the history with unfathomable disasters that end up, serendipitously, solving elements such as population size

Yet, it is also a vehicle for Yud to explore that element of existence most important to him: existential risk. Merlin becomes twisted to Yud's purposes so far afield because Yud is "uniquely outsider as an artist", but any work will see its characters and devices shaded towards what the author thinks most. Targeting any such "rationalization" towards not the work itself, but its body of fanfiction tropes and standouts, very neatly democratizes that ideal of extended the world of the work beyond its original author, solving this inherent contradiction.

I probably wrote a thousand words there so here's my post in picture form

tl: dr

# ? Jul 10, 2020 06:24

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

Thank you, I should have bolded and keyworded that. It's important to have both kinds of posting accessible in a thread like this and who might know if that picture was part of a predicate point I was making

# ? Jul 10, 2020 08:52

Fajita Queen: Jun 21, 2012

I don't think any sentence I've ever read in my life has made me despair for humanity so much as "The Baby-Sitters Club future fic where they're grown up Bay Area rationalists now". Thanks for that.

# ? Jul 10, 2020 10:07

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 09:40

Daikloktos: Jan 1, 2020; by Cyrano4747

Crossposting because the Animorphs thread got to this before I could get to it here

Daikloktos posted:

drat, this thread got to fanfic recommendations before I could establish why "Animorphs: The Reckoning is Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality done right" is not a ridiculous sentence to type. The pithy emblematic thing I'll say is that it casts the transhumanist hyper-rationalist optimizer that was the protagonist of that work in Visser 3, and the kids are written as thoughtful human beings struggling with their own limitations. This is a series where the themes and subjects "rational fiction" (as descends from HPMOR) wants to explore are actually congruent to the original canon and for vast stretches it feels more like just thoughtful fanfic than anything written to a literary movement and its philosophies.

If you're familiar with that series and want to explore rational fiction it's a good recommendation. For all the positives I wrote there it does suffer many of the deeper ideological flaws of HPMOR, less on its sleeve and covered by genuine writing skill. This is also why I place so much value on HPMOR - having an author like Yud with that degree of mental illness and lack of fundamental ability creates works indispensable to understanding broader literary trends. That his work started a concrete literary movement funneling fanfiction authors interested in his same trends to a singular community, a movement that encourages metacommentary as it relates back to the movement?

Having this forums context to engage with Yud and his works and his community to such depth allows us insight into all sorts of authors and works we'd have never had reason to think about to such degree. Even if you don't think about things to the degree I do about everything (clearly) you're still going to make brief abstract connections to posts in those megathreads as you encounter similar writers. If you think it's pointless for anyone to take all this so seriously then explain the hundreds and hundreds of pages before I got here.

Daikloktos fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Jul 20, 2020

# ? Jul 20, 2020 13:07

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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