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

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Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Captain Mog posted:

Yeah, it's the same way with me. If anything, reading a good fantasy novel with great world-building challenges me to come up with my own even more. I remember back in the day when the big thing were all those stories which somehow made Cloud and Sephiroth into lovers, and I thought it was pretty odd back then, too. I was under the impression that fanfiction was mainly a late 90s/00s thing but I guess it's still going strong?

I guess I can see the appeal with this. Aren't there some now-famous authors who got their start writing fanfic? It'd certainly make signing a book deal easier if you can approach the publisher and say "My Buffy fanfiction has like 30,000 followers and they're all excited to read my own story".

Louis McMaster Bujold, a moderately successful and acclaimed sci-fi author, got her start this way - the first book of her Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor, was reskinned Star Trek fanfic, and you can still sort of tell.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2015 18:36

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:18

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Davros1 posted:

Because I was wondering how he deals with creatures that can't exist, like Centaurs, Hippogriffs, House Elves, Giant Spiders, and Dementors. Then see him try to Port Keys, and Voldemorts resurrection.

And Horcruxes.

Oh, you are going to love what this story does with Dementors.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 02:06

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The Unholy Ghost posted:

I guess I'll be that guy who likes HPMoR...

I get that Yudkowsky is an egotistical fool, and that it's dumb he put all of his writing talent (go ahead and quote this with "lol") into writing a fanfiction, but I still legitimately find HPMoR entertaining to read� and with interesting ideas. Yes, sure, some of them are wrong, but many of them are intriguing at least in a philosophical sense.

The sort-of "hacking the Harry Potter world" concept is fun too, and even if most of the character's actual personalities were replaced, I honestly believe that Yud is able to write characters and interactions pretty well.

I guess to summarize, I doubt any of you would be desperate to hate this story so much if the author didn't have such a big head.

Well, anyway, continue with the mocking. It's entertaining and points out some interesting things, even if I can't agree with the sentiment.

Counterpoint: Chapter Seven. Also, as a general comment, the tone and pacing is all over the place, to the point where I absolutely disagree that this is published-novel quality. Any editor worth his salt would have taken a chainsaw to this thing.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 03:13

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Pvt.Scott posted:

Nah, it's just weird that in 1000 years some Harry Potter fanfic might be considered part of the canon.

You think we'll remember Harry Potter in a thousand years?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 21:01

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Pvt.Scott posted:

It's a purposefully flippant and simplistic interpretation of history through a modern lens, I'll admit. Fan Fiction in the Internet Age is really its own beast; a terribly written, cum-soaked beast.

poo poo, man, you ever read Ovid?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 22:28

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Earwicker posted:

what is a "banking adventure"?

Try asking HSBC.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2015 00:28

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

i81icu812 posted:

Wouldn't it be better for everyone involved if he just died?

Endorsing deathism. No points, back of the class.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2015 11:05

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Part Eight? Man, you are just dragging out that big Chapter Seven reveal, aren't you?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 03:19

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

JosephWongKS posted:

Chapter Six is really long (10,000+ words) and I only have that much free time each day.

Fair enough. It's just kind of amusing given Seven's notoriety.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 03:25

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

reignonyourparade posted:

I agree that if you don't know about the author, it seems like Harry is intentionally written to have flaws and biases to make him a somewhat more rounded character. Of course, that's actually just the author exporting his own flaws and biases that he doesn't think are flaws are biases, but that's part of why it managed to hook in people before it got REALLY weird, I think.

I think you really mischaracterize the author's ideology a lot, which is dumb because it's got plenty of stupid bullshit to criticize and make fun of it for even before that. I think only the craziest of lesswrongers (And as crazy as Yudkowsky is, he is by no means the craziest lesswronger) would ever claim that you shouldn't ever enjoy yourself, at the very least for the sake of your mental health.

And then there's the Dark Enlightenment, the surprisingly well-tolerated 'neoreactionary' Less Wrong spin-off sect who believe LOTR to be the ideal social model and masturbate themselves to sleep over the idea of massacring swarthy, evil Southrons.

These nerds just cannot have a normal response to anything.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 21:19

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Nessus posted:

To be fair I don't believe Harry was literally being confined in that space full time, but rather it was his room, and inadequate as such. "Not having your own bedroom," which probably not good for a small child, is hardly necessarily going to produce psycho monkey syndrome.

The negativity of his home environment came from his foster family being boorish and overbearing, not literally starving him or confining him in a cage like a lab monkey.

They did actually starve him, though. There's a reason he's described as looking thin and malnourished while Dudley is a big fat tub of lard.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 22:01

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

The great big catch here is that Yudkowsky runs a ~~singularitarian honeypot scam~~ charity of his own, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and likes pouring his money into dodgy cryonics projects. I do not trust his judgment on what is effective charitable contribution.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 23:49

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

petrol blue posted:

Please tell me 'sigularitarian' is a real thing?

Well, you are reading a religious-text-poorly-disguised-as-a-fanfic written by one. If you mean the specific term, then well...

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 23:59

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

petrol blue posted:

Oooh, is he a libertarian? Can I donate in bitcoins?

Cos if so, I got a Bingo!

Could you ever doubt it?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 00:08

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Added Space posted:

I remember thinking when I read this part that this guy must be fairly young. Anyone old enough can remember a time before ATMs were on every block and a lot of places didn't take checks. Back then you carried around cash for most of your transactions, and for precisely that reason you always made sure to carry at least some extra around with you. Carrying a hundred dollars in cash, if you could afford to, was routine for many people. So he's made McG stupid not to show some deep aspect of human nature, but because he's young. Given the photos though I'm not sure, how old is this guy?

Thirty-five.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2015 04:01

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

I think the capital-C Conscientiousness is simply a joke about RPG stats. Given how Yudkowsky writes, though, I would not be surprised if it turns up as a serious metaphor he expounds upon at length in his 'sequences'.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2015 10:50

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Moddington posted:

It was editted, but he was unwilling to compromise on certain points, so it will still be that chapter.

Yeah, there were a couple of bits where the language was toned down slightly (and the originals should definitely be posted when that section shows up, as should Yudkowsky's hideously smug explanation for why he didn't want to dial things back any more), but the general gist remains.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 20:12

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

This:

quote:

"As soon as I'm old enough I'm going to rape her."

was originally this:

quote:

"As soon as I'm old enough to get an erection I'm going to rape that bitch."

This:

quote:

There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment.

was originally this:

quote:

Even in Muggle-land it was probably still happening, somewhere in Saudi Arabia or the darkness of the Congo. It happened in every place and time that didn�t descend directly from the Enlightenment.

This was the header he initially posted justifying the edit:

quote:

I've also tried a rewrite on Ch. 7 which I don't feel is a literary improvement, but which does make it clearer that Harry is talking about the Enlightenment having mostly solved the problem of nobility rather than the problem of surprise sex, and which eliminates the explicit reference to Saudi Arabia and the Congo as specific non-Enlightenment countries. Most readers, it's pretty clear, didn't take that as racist, but it now also seems clear that if someone is told to *expect* racism and pointed at the chapter, that's what they'll see. Aren't preconceptions lovely things?

This is a recent one of several news articles about the ruling elite of a country directly descended from the Enlightenment running an extensive paedophilic rape and murder ring with the co-operation of the police and security services. It is also my country.

All of the above is why Chapter Seven is notorious, and why that smug pseudointellectual gently caress Yudkowsky fills me with genuine rage.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 03:33

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

akulanization posted:

Ironically, this is a very Aristotelian way of looking at the world and basically as anti-science as taking the bible as incontrovertible divine truth.

Yud likely means to reference Descartes, "I think therefore I am." Thought in Yud's mind being the sum total of existence, which is a subtle divergence from the original spirit of the argument, but perfectly fits Yud's lovely attitude towards his fellow man.

This fic's attitude to science is pretty heavily Aristotlean in general. Keep looking for stuff like that. It'd be interesting to see what LW has to say about the big guy.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2015 09:54

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

anilEhilated posted:

Fixed that for you. Dangers of reductionism and so on.

Sure, but when it taps into racial theories that have done a lot of real-world harm, it's especially bad. Someone who says that, say, the Nintendo Gameboy was the beginning of civilisation is probably just silly, not dangerous.

Unless they're a Gamergater.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2015 14:25

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Seriously, I really want to see some Lesswrong posts on Aristotle. I mean, they have every reason to be :smug:

about how he's a pre-Enlightenment guy who got a vast amount of stuff comically wrong, and yet his scientific method is an ideal fit for Yudkowsky, and HPMOR really does seem to be championing it in practice if not necessarily in theory.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 19:44

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

JosephWongKS posted:

Chapter 8: Positive Bias
Part Four

I was wrong about the source of Harry�s �wandless magic� and Moddington was right. That�s what comes of reading in little chunks.

I still don�t understand how this �demonstrates Harry�s intelligence�, though. He�s just making use of a quality of the Comed-Tea that Hermione wasn�t aware of � it�s a gap in knowledge rather than a sign of �intelligence� on his part per se.

Here it comes � Hermione being forced by author fiat to bow to Eliezarry�s superiority.

Also, when Hermione said that �Maybe I�ll let you help you with my research�, it was clear that it was a verbal riposte to Harry�s arrogance and obnoxiousness. She never said that she actually thought she was a magic-scientist or wanted to be one.

This is starting to look a little like �negging�, as SSNeoman highlighted. Has Eliezer expressed any Men�s Rights Activist views in his writings in the past?

I went looking, and now my world is a silent, wordless scream.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 02:41

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Night10194 posted:

What the hell do you expect from a guy who is 'Hey! Evolutionary Psych and are amazing!'

Expectation had nothing to do with it. Like most of this thread's posters, I stuck my hand in that bear trap voluntarily.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 03:07

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Nessus posted:

What I also notice is that this 3^^^^3 figure or whatever is so ridiculously huge that it becomes absurd, and I think it's because Yud realizes that if you did the numbers for any semi-sane number, such as "every human who's ever lived" (which would probably be a hundred billion tops?) or "all the inhabitants of a thousand Earths" (which we could probably top out at ten trillion), the effects would be meaningless.

What I also don't understand is what the hell this is supposed to prove, exactly. Like what's the theological point of the dust-speck thing? The Nessus seeks to understand this foolishness.

That human scale insensitivity means that we are irrationally sceptical about the infinite virtues of the singularitarian rapture, and should really get over it and donate more money to MIRI.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 18:51

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

JosephWongKS posted:

Chapter 9: Title Redacted, Part I

Is there a stereotype that �wise old men� are supposed to be �Oriental�? Aren�t there plenty of �wise old men� in Western / European myth and literature, not least of which is Merlin, who was clearly the template on which Dumbledore was based and who was distinctly non-Oriental?

I don�t recall that from the books. Was that in the canon series?

Oriental is pretty... uhh... outdated terminology, too.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 08:54

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

su3su2u1 posted:

Bad news then- instead of Harry figuring out how it works by trial and error/science, he'll think real hard, assume the conclusion he came to is correct, and then the story will literally never mention it again.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - the extent to which Less Wrongers badmouth Aristotle gets stranger and stranger the more you learn about them.

# ¿ May 3, 2015 20:53

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Permission to go slightly off-topic and talk about another phenomenon in what I'll hesitantly call Harry Potter fanfic 'culture'? It doesn't have much to do with HPMOR's subject matter and particular breed of insanity, but it's an interesting companion piece with some notable parallels, and an amazingly deep well of crazy.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2015 03:00

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

OK, time for that big ol' effortpost I promised. Think Yudkowsky's magnum opus is crazy? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Two years before Methods of Rationality, the big thing in Harry Potter fanfic was Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, a 250,000-word monster (50,000 words bigger than the book it was theoretically based off, though positively svelte compared to HPMOR's bloated 660,000) about the adventures of Neville Longbottom and the Hogwarts resistance during the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. DAYD was laser-targeted to appeal to Harry Potter's teenage fandom - it was a dark, angsty, melodramatic power-fantasy following a fan-favourite character through one of the most intriguing unexplored parts of the Harry Potter saga. As a result, it' hard to exaggerate how big it was - it never achieved the mainstream presence of HPMOR, but it had an army of fans, the 'DAYDians', and even its own small convention, DAYDcon. Even now, after all the poo poo that's gone down, there are around two hundred people in fanfiction.net's DAYD community.

Then, in 2009, the mock-site fandom_wank discovered that Andrew 'Thanfiction' Blake, the author of DAYD, was also the individual known variously as Jordan Wood, Amy Player, and Victoria Bitter, the Lord of the Rings megafan and cult leader who was convicted of charity fraud for his role in the Tentmoot debacle, and poo poo hit the fan. Now, this requires a bit of backstory, but I promise we'll get back to Harry Potter fanfic eventually.

Blake was born as Amy Player, a Virginian from what by all reports was a loving, well-adjusted family. Despite this, he had psychological issues from an early age, and became unhealthily attached to various works of fiction including, eventually, Lord of the Rings. He dropped out of college and dived straight into the fandom, using his charisma and formidable manipulative talents to gather a group of close-knit devotees with ties to both LOTR and Wicca including a theologically confused young woman in a failing job and a failing marriage named Abbey 'Orangeblossom' Stone. He spun all sorts of wild fantasies for them, claiming that he was a 'paladin' for a mysterious goddess and could communicate with the dead. Then he could channel the dead, letting them speak through him. Then he could do the same thing for living people. Then he started explaining that due to the heavy influence of European myth on Tolkein's work, the Lord of the Rings and its companion texts was a fictionalised account of the history of the world, much like what Robert Howard claimed with his Conan novels. Like the Bible with a couple of extra degrees of separation. That logically (ahem) meant that the characters in it might have been based on real people, and guess who he'd just started channeling?

Yup, the guy founded a cult based around him being possessed by Frodo Baggins.

OK, that's not quite accurate. He was possessed by Elijah Wood. To be clear, he'd been born female, but wanted to transition, and he explained this to his cult (who were now in so deep and so isolated from the rest of the world that they'd swallow anything he fed them) as his old female personality being killed and replaced by the spirit of a Hollywood actor who served as a conduit to a small primordial being with big hairy feet.

Yeah.

Amy Player got his sex change, and started calling himself Jordan Wood (as in, Elijah Jordan Wood). He figured his cult had been marinating long enough, and were sufficiently insulated from reality that he no longer needed to artificially shelter them from it. With them as his core, he founded Bit of Earth, a popular Lord of the Rings fansite ostensibly designed to direct LOTR nerds' energies towards charitable work, and marketed himself as Elijah Wood's cousin, with a history in both child acting and the IRA (yes, the one with the bombs). Bit of Earth engaged in several projects, some successful, most not, and eventually launched Tentmoot 2003, a massively ambitious five-day convention where the profits were supposed to go to the literacy charity Reading Is Fundamental. It was a total disaster, with LOTR actors stranded in airports across the globe and devoted fans/cult members having to fork out ludicrous amounts of money to patch things up as more and more arrangements Blake/Player/Wood had promised to make failed to materialise. He locked himself in his hotel room, threatening suicide, and by the time the dust settled, there was a $3,000 black hole where Reading is Fundamental's profits were supposed to be that nobody could account for. To add icing to the cake, the Player family then showed up reporting a missing-persons case - they had received a long, dramatic suicide note about how their daughter Amy wanted to end her life after her girlfriend Abbey had run off with the villainously suave Jordan Wood. The police reaction when they found out the truth was predictable, and Blake is no longer allowed in the state of Oregon.

Tentmoot marked the end of Blake's high-profile involvement in Lord of the Rings. He retreated back into his cult, which got weirder and more controlling by the day. Eventually, it fell apart, as more and more of his disciples escaped and got help. Abbey Stone, his girlfriend, finally burned out in 2007 after a disastrous attempt by the cult to flee to Canada and start a new life there, reconnecting with her family and requesting their help (which was made a bit awkward because she'd cut them off in 2004 at Blake's behest after he gaslighted her into falsely recalling memories of extensive parental abuse). They bailed her out, got her away from him, and put her on an extensive cult reprogramming course, letting her slowly become a functional member of society again.

One year later, Andrew Blake emerged in the Harry Potter fandom with DAYD, back to his old tricks. The story was based on the narrative he'd created for his old cult after the whole Lord of the Rings thing fell through, about a group of child soldiers in World War II, and the DAYDians became a fresh recruiting ground for a fresh cult. His new name was taken from a hardcore porn director in order to thwart Googling by vengeful cult members and scam victims, and he presented himself as a cisgender man with an unusual disorder that prevented his body from absorbing testosterone (and also an ex-IRA spirit warrior, because of course). Abbey Stone (now Willson, thanks to a new and much more successful marriage) became 'Louise' (her middle name), the ex-girlfriend from hell who had cruelly snatched away their son during their breakup (actually a sparrow that the cult had raised together). Soon, he was back to isolating his devotees and channelling the fanfic's characters for them, as the sequels to DAYD got stranger and more divorced from Harry Potter canon (the second story, Sluagh, featured Seamus Finnegan travelling to war-torn Belfast to knife-fight an ancient Celtic demon). When the fandom_wank revelations came out, Blake waved them away by explaining that Amy Player, the villain of Tentmoot, had been his evil twin, then admitted he was Amy Player, then issued lachrymose apologies, then arranged DAYDcon (which was a mess, but not a Tentmoot-level mess), and then announced his retirement from the Internet.

Then poo poo got real.

In May 2011, Jason Eisenberg shot his wife, Brittany Quinn, and two of her roommates before suiciding. The only survivor, who escaped with minor injuries, was Andrew Blake. Quinn had been the new Abbey Willson, a woman in an unhappy marriage who was drawn into Blake's cult (she was a DAYDian) and convinced to let him live with/sponge off her. She'd cut off her family and extorted money from her husband with lurid tales of abuse that sounded suspiciously similar to the letters Willson and her fellow Lord of the Rings cultists had been told to write to their families by Blake. Blake responded with by forming a domestic-abuse charity with the unintentionally revealing name of 'It's About Power', and organising a hike along the Trail of Tears in Brittany's memory. Details are hazy, but the cult members who went along hint that it didn't end well.

Soon afterwards, Willson, now recovered, started blogging about her experiences with Blake in a series of posts aptly entitled 'The Crazy Train', reaching out to DAYDians still in the cult and explaining her ex's long and sordid history. This triggered a series of cult members coming out with their own stories, including another member of Willson's LOTR cult and a couple of ex-DAYDians.

The Quinn murder was the second Tentmoot, striking a fatal blow to Blake's presence in a second fandom. The DAYDians are still operational, but they're going the way the LOTR cult did as he loses interest. His new game is Supernatural, where he's embedded himself in the 'Destiel' community, focused on the fan-favourite pairing of Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel. Things haven't gone as smoothly this time around, as the Internet has become used to his tricks, and even the infamously deranged Supernatural fandom (Google 'omegaverse' to see what I mean, and bring mindbleach) aren't biting as hard as they might. Nevertheless, he's got an new young woman to sponge off, a rapt inner circle, and plenty of stories of channelling angels to go around. It's only a matter of time until poo poo gets bad again.

So yeah, that's the DAYD story. Methods of Rationality wasn't the first time Harry Potter fanfic was used as a cult recruitment tool, and for all that's bad about Yudkowsky's word-vomit, at least it hasn't got someone killed yet.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 14:40

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

divabot posted:

The Reddit thread meltdown continues, on Tumblr. nostalgebraist sums up the problem. Do click on all the "reblogged this from" below with comments, there's a fascinating conversation going on there. (I post here with stuff I said in this thread.) The disappointed cultists are particularly delicious, e.g. this one lamenting that Yudkowsky has strayed from Yudkowsky's path.

Shoulda blamed the whole thing on his evil twin.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 09:40

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Cingulate posted:

Dunno what I'm doing here.
Let that sink in. Do you find this easy to understand? I don't. I certainly can cite Bayes' Theorem from memory, and I'm running Bayesian models every day probably more complex than anything Yud will ever do, but I found this one hard to understand. Well, one reason this is hard to understand is because from what I can tell, Yud jumps between 3 different understandings of "(Bayesian) evidence": marginal likelihood; Bayes Factors; data.
(Consider: evidence in the sense of likelihood is your best guess for the first mention, and the most common meaning of the term in the Bayesian literature. But at the end, evidence has a probability, and is discussed as being conditional on a hypothesis. (Marginal) Likelihood doesn't have a probability. Data does have a probability though. But data doesn't work for the earlier mentions - likelihood and Bayes Factors do.

The alternative is that Yud means one thing by evidence, and another thing by Bayesian evidence, in which case, dude, gently caress you.)

Also, this is from a chapter on multiple hypothesis testing, but from what I can tell, it does not, in fact, discuss multiple hypothesis testing.

I also finally found a bit of brain science. Turns out it's wrong!
In fact, the parietal cortex (or rather, the dorsal stream) is famously relevant for figuring out where stuff is and/or what you can do with stuff; in contrast, object recognition is part of the inferior temporal and temporo-occipital cortices (or rather, the ventral stream). Yud/Harry knows this factoid that the parietal cortex is partially about "where", from which he intuits that it's then also about the shape and spatial coherence of objects, and recognizing objects as such; which is, admittedly counterintuitively, wrong.

This is a good example of why you should, if science is available, go for science rather than your intuitions, even if you're super smart.
That's a pretty small computer program.
In reality, none of this is a secret. The scientific method is not a secret. The Planning Fallacy is not a secret. Rationality is not a secret. In fact, every scientist has been trying to push their discoveries into the mainstream since forever.

To be completely fair to a story that deserves little fairness, isn't the whole point there that Harry's trying to market science in a way that appeals to a Slytherin? Secret, hidden knowledge is basically catnip to wizards.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 19:11

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Nessus posted:

I dunno, L. Ron nearly started a war with Mexico and was at least a world traveller type. If I had to hang out with one for a day I'd definitely pick Source.

On the other hand, there is a small possibility he might decide to free your thetan by administering Process R2-45. Worst Yudkowsky would likely do is try to get you to drink Soylent.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 02:37

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Mazzletoff posted:

Sort of? Like, it could be removed, but according to Book 1 the tail Dudley was given had to be removed at a hospital - meaning that Transfiguration can be removed by wizards, making it good for pranks, but it sure as poo poo isn't as dangerous as Yud wants it to be. Who would teach children how to literally murder people by mistake?

Well, except for Hagrid, although he's kind of a special case. And then there were some of the plants they encountered in Herbology, which I seem to recall ranging from 'incapacitating' to 'ludicrously deadly'. Some of the failed experiments in the Potions class got pretty spectacular, too - melting cauldrons were something of a running gag.

Hogwarts is something of a deathtrap - it's just that Transfiguration is one of the less lethal classes.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 19:44

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

chessmaster13 posted:

Hubbart is the cult leader for celebrities.
E.Y. is the cult leader for lonely outsiders.
This world is never stops to amaze me

Correction - a cult leader for lonely outsiders. As I've mentioned before, fanfiction cults are not new.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2015 10:33

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

computer parts posted:

It took me a minute to really understand what that is, but my reactions are A) That's really dumb and B) why do I care if a simulated version of me is tortured.

Because you might be the simulation, and so there's a chance you'll fail your AI-god's scenario and get all I-Have-No-Mouth-And-I-Must-Screamed.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 22:17

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Tunicate posted:

Magical ability is canonically a dominant gene, as well.

Once I found out rowling deliberately made quidditch nonsense so she could troll diehard sports fans, a lot of her declarations about canon suddenly made a shitload more sense.

To be more precise, I think it's a parody of cricket. When a real-world sport has matches that can and do last for days with point-scores approaching the thousands and includes positions like 'cow corner', 'deep square leg', and 'silly mid-off', having a couple of Beaters launch Bludgers at their opponents while Chasers and Seekers desperately hunt for the Quaffle and Golden Snitch sounds positively normal.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 20:17

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Nessus posted:

And clearly have nothing to do with one's whiteness or whatever, given all the non-white wizardlings running round. If someone wanted to try to model how magi-genes work based on the evidence in the books I suppose that would be harmless fan nerding.

I thought one of the key points about magic was that it wasn't reliably hereditary (hence Mudbloods and Squibs), so Voldemort and other scientific-racist wizard-supremacists were completely full of poo poo? It's always treated as an innate talent (like being good at chemistry or having a great ear for music) that you can't breed for. A gift from God, if you want to tie it in with Rowling's Christian leanings.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 22:49

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

i81icu812 posted:

Someone has! http://web.archive.org/web/20150326...laining-how-the

Basically the most plausible way for a genetic component to make any sense. Rowling should really have left magic as magic and not pulled a George Lucas, but genes are a lot better than midiclorians.

Did she pull a George Lucas, though? I never kept up with her comments as an author, but the books themselves consistently defied that line of reasoning where magic was concerned. I mean, consider the parallels with racism she did. Voldemort and company's whole problem is with trying to breed for something so complex, unpredictable, and... well... magical that you can't breed for it, just like the whackjob eugenics programs of the twentieth century trying to 'scientifically' produce moral, brilliant �bermensch and eliminate the corrupting influence of the 'lesser' races.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2016 03:13

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

A Tin Of Beans posted:

Somehow, making a phoenix look just like a chicken pisses me off more than nearly anything in this beside the rape threat in chapter 7. I don't even know why - I'm not overly fond of phoenixes, it just seems like such a flat joke, so utterly devoid of ... well, joy and wonder. Which Yud is determined to leech from the story at every instant anyway. I'm not surprised, but god, I hate it.

Then again, I'm also really frustrated by the 'sneezes' and the 12 wizards Dumbledore can't tell Harry about until he's older. That's just. Ugh. I'm pretty sure the twelve wizards are also some kind of weird sex joke, or maybe I'm assuming too much based on how unfitting the rest of the work is? I don't know.

I hate this.

Fawkes originally looked like an old, very sick chicken in the actual books, too. Phoenixes age badly.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 18:08

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

A Tin Of Beans posted:

Did he? I guess I let the covers color my memory/imagination more than I realized.

Yud gets a single, lonesome pass.

The covers show him in his prime, when he looks much less chicken-like. Yud's description of him during the death-rebirth where Harry first meets him, though, is accurate.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 20:13

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:18

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

chrisoya posted:

He won't even be in the top ten worst people trying to spam the Hugos this year. He's even a better writer than some of the Puppy trash that got nominated last time around.

Would it be cruel to ask these guys' expert opinion on A Girl Corrupted by the Internet is the Summoned Hero?!?

dooo iiit

# ¿ Jan 30, 2016 15:51

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

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