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LaughMyselfTo: Nov 15, 2012; by XyloJW

The only way I was able to take Methods Of Rationality without going insane was assuming that Yudkowsky was not intending to criticize the original work.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:09

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# ? May 24, 2024 22:22

MinistryofLard: Mar 22, 2013; Goblin babies did nothing wrong.

The Monkey Man posted:

He mentioned his real name and the story in his profile, but I'm taking it down anyway.

Actually, I think Eliezer Yudkovsky is his real name. He's actually a publicly known computer scientist, and he operates professionally under that name.

Eliezer Yudkovsky actually is basically a troper in the professional field as well. He apparently has no formal degree, no published research and is self educated. He'd dedicated his professional life to working on keeping AIs 'friendly' in the supposedly inevitable and imminent event of the singularity (which is, according to him, when artificial intelligences will finally become smarter than humans), and has set up a whole institute funded by public donations for this.

If that sounds like a strange doomsday cult, I don't blame you.

Anyway, a lot of people think he's a crank for a lot of reasons, notably because he doesn't do very much of anything actually useful. I think one guy I read said something along the lines of "Well, thats great, but I don't care if you don't have any actual code on the table."

To use a rough analogy, Yudkovsky is like a man who really, really wants a dog. He spends all his time talking about how much he loves dogs, and what he'd do with a dog when he'd get one, and making all these great recipes for dog food and everything. One day, he finally has enough money to buy a dog. He then goes out, buys a doghouse, and goes back to what he was doing before.

He's not an idiot in the field, just strangely focused on one thing of no particular use to anybody but his own interests. If the guy put this much effort into non-lovely AI research, I think we'd all be better off for it.

He's also deluded himself into thinking that he can write, but thats a whole different kettle of fish.

Eliezer Yudkovsky is basically what happens when Tropers leave school.

EDIT:

LaughMyselfTo posted:

The only way I was able to take Methods Of Rationality without going insane was assuming that Yudkowsky was not intending to criticize the original work.

I don't think he is - he's just a lovely writer who's really bad at making his point, and it comes off as him criticising everything because he can't write fiction. I haven't read it properly, because I'd rather stab myself in the eye, but I get the impression that he's attempting to write a book about how to apply rationality to your day to day life, using Harry Potter as a background for how to apply rationality and rational thought into situations where its not apparently useful.

Its just that he's really, really bad at writing, so what you get is HPMOR. If the guy wrote a textbook or a manual or something, it probably wouldn't be so bad. But he's deluded himself into thinking that he's a rational genius and thus everything he touches is gold, so what you get is, well, utter garbage.

MinistryofLard fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Sep 28, 2013

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:11

Thinky Whale: Aug 2, 2012; All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Fry.

MinistryofLard posted:

He'd dedicated his professional life to working on keeping AIs 'friendly' in the supposedly inevitable and imminent event of the singularity (which is, according to him, when artificial intelligences will finally become smarter than humans), and has set up a whole institute funded by public donations for this.

This isn't as silly as it seems. If an AI achieved consciousness and the first person it talked to was this guy, switching straight to "kill all humans" would be a real risk.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:15

Asgerd: May 6, 2012; I worked up a powerful loneliness in my massive bed, in the massive dark.; Grimey Drawer

Ineffable posted:

Methods of Rationality is hosed up. Harry decides he doesn't like Ron because he'd rather hang around with Malfoy:

Poor ol' Ron really gets the shaft in that fanfic. Every character not deemed smart enough to hang around with Harry has no real role in the story other than to gawp in astonishment at ~~Yudkowsky~~ Harry's awesomeness. (Wish fulfillment? What's that?)

Thinky Whale posted:

This isn't as silly as it seems. If an AI achieved consciousness and the first person it talked to was this guy, switching straight to "kill all humans" would be a real risk.

Read this. This is what Eliezer Yudkowsky and his LessWrong cultists actually believe. (RationalWiki is normally pretty terrible, but they've got the measure of Yudkowsky if nothing else.)

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:23

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

Ineffable posted:

So, by this rationale, I could take a stack of paper into a bank and have them print it into $100 bills? Does he offer any justification for this at all?

Here's the argument presented:

Harry Potter and the Invention of Strawmen posted:

"Are these coins the pure metal?" Harry said finally.

"What?" hissed the goblin Griphook, who was waiting near the door. "Are you questioning the integrity of Gringotts, Mr. Potter-Evans-Verres?"

"No," said Harry absently, "not at all, sorry if that came out wrong, sir. I just have no idea at all how your financial system works. I'm asking if Galleons in general are made of pure gold."

"Of course," said Griphook.

"And can anyone coin them, or are they issued by a monopoly that thereby collects seigniorage?"

"What?" said Professor McGonagall.

Griphook grinned, showing sharp teeth. "Only a fool would trust any but goblin coin!"

"In other words," Harry said, "the coins aren't supposed to be worth any more than the metal making them up?"

You know, sort of like how USD are made of paper and dollars printed by anyone other than the US mint are worthless counterfeits, therefore logically dollars must be worth exactly their weight in paper.

It seems more likely to me that something like "stone to gold" is a fourth-year transfiguration spell.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:23

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003; peed on;
sexually

MinistryofLard posted:

Anyway, a lot of people think he's a crank for a lot of reasons, notably because he doesn't do very much of anything actually useful.

Ahhhh, he's an "ideas guy".

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:35

WickedHate: Aug 1, 2013; by Lowtax

FMguru posted:

Ahhhh, he's an "ideas guy".

Whenever I hear this I think of a story I heard(possibly on here?) about someone who tried paying a group to make an app for touchscreen devices that turns the screen into a mirror.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 01:38

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

Post your favorite least favorite lines from tropers' own writing.

quote:

The character is talking to a really serious and formal woman who actually a vampire.
quote:
"He has my sympathies. Aaron was a bit of a scrub.�

He looked back at her confusedly. Scrub? Like the TV show?

�That isn�t a term that�s used anymore, is it?�

He shook his head.

Really serious and formal secret vampire whose only exposure to popular culture is No Scrubs.

quote:

quote:
Yeah, doesn�t she hang with that dork who thinks the government is run by ghouls or something? Maybe he's using her to fight fire with fire.

~A minor peripheral character only there to show my protagonist's All of the Other Reindeer status. I kind of feel like that line is a little too good for a minor character, but eh, whatever.

to whoever can figure out what this is trying to say. From the same guy:

quote:

quote:
I was walking down a road of flames, barefoot. I was looking for the coolest spot, naturally, trying not to let the mud on my feet dry up too fast. The coals beneath my feet seemed to stretch on for miles in all directions, but there had to be an end to it somewhere. God forbid it end up in a men�s sauna. Unless it had Leon in it. Not that there was much time to think about that since the coals were suddenly turning into ninjas, all equipped with Fifi-repellant ninja spray. I countered by giving them an innocently flirtatious pose, causing watermelon juice to rain down and dissolve all of them into platypi. Three of them rubbed against my feet and that was when I finally woke up, got dressed, and went to school.

~My idea of a proper Dream Sequence. Believe it or not, there is some actual foreshadowing in there, though even if you know the context, the metaphors are still probably a little obtuse. Even I have a hard time making the mental leap from one concept to another.

sometimes people are funny when they say ninja so i said ninja to make it funny

quote:

quote:
"I swear, you are the most useless of the Forsworn Lords." Liana, ever so smug and used to her superiority in the social hierarchy, gloats in a demeaning tone, "What, gonna cry, you little mousy bitch? You useless, spineless idiot."

The mousy looking woman in the black dress opposite her quakes a little, and then slowly rights her posture, "I am sick of you, Liana." All of a sudden, burning pain in Liana's head. She collapses on the ground, her brain feeling like it was boiling.

"You constantly talk down to people, using your high position like a bludgeon. Well, you picked on the wrong person today." The pain escalates until it feels like ice picks cracking Liana's skull open. She screams, but none can hear her, "I-I might not be as beautiful a girl, or as alluring, or as rich, but I do have one thing you don't."

Liana can only scream now, and suddenly vomits as the pain sluices down through her neck and then quickly down to her toes. Megala quakes, but remains steady, "I-I'm a Forsworn Lord, just as much as Gabbie and Sam, and I command respect. I can be a million times meaner than you can, Liana. Lets compare; you bully, talk down to, and isolate. I spy on and destroy nations. I think I win in the evil department."

Liana realizes her fatal error. She had underestimated her new allies, and overestimated her own position, "P-Please...not t-that."

Megala looks away from her dismissively, "Yes, that. From now on, Liana of House Midrune, you revere me. Y-You never talk down to or bully anyone ever again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

Liana struggles one last time, as she feels Megala's magic squirming in her brain, deleting her individuality, destroying the woman she once was. One last scream, and then, "Mistress, your orders?"

"Clean up this mess. With your fancy dress." Megala walks off, allowing herself a small smile.

Here we have ex-social outcast Megala from an RP I am participating in, and she's a villain, granted, but she takes down and demolishes the Alpha Bitch who was dabbling in dark magic to get her own petty, very mean spirited revenge. Given what this libby was doing before, this is Laser-Guided Karma.

I really, really liked writing this.

"I really, really got off on writing this."

quote:

For the funny Forsworn Lord, here's Ashlau Dimodeus trying to attack some knights.

quote:
Ashlau combed his beauteous raven colored hair offhandedly, contemplating if they were past the tree yet. Lincifa told him he could get the drop on them from there.

The pretty youth thought over The Plan Lincifa and Sam told him; Kidnap the Prince. Ransom him to his father. Set a meeting for the exchange. Kill both of them at the meeting. Simple as...simple as...simple as simple could be.

"I just need to magickify them." He watched the knights walking past with the Prince at the center of their formation. Ashlau was immediately angered. The blond was exactly the same as Ashlau's old tormentors, those who he tracked down and had thrown in his dungeons before he was sealed. Big. Muscular. Carried himself with confidence.

Mind muddled with anger, Ashlau stalked forward with what he thought to be cat-like tread. The knights, due to the inexperienced attempt at skulking, immediately knew something was up, and were ready.

Ashlau leaped into action with a half-way sort of almost attempt at a half-hearted valiant warcry, "Come with Forsworn Lord Ashlau Dimodeus, you...you...you...big dumb doodoo head! Or face my sorcerous fury!" The knights proceeded to draw their swords around him, having arranged themselves in a circle around the would be assailant.

Dimodeus gulped, he had some ways out of this. He was certain. He had gotten out of worse sticky moments. There was that time Selmira almost tortured him by accident. It was surely accident. Surely. And he got out of that.

The Prince chuckled, "Big dumb doodoo head? What are you, seven?"

Ashlau whimpered, "...S-Seven hundred..."

Hell yeah this scene totally fits in a story with mind rape ego death enslavement.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 02:04

ArchangeI: Jul 15, 2010

Lottery of Babylon posted:

Here's the argument presented:

You know, sort of like how USD are made of paper and dollars printed by anyone other than the US mint are worthless counterfeits, therefore logically dollars must be worth exactly their weight in paper.

It seems more likely to me that something like "stone to gold" is a fourth-year transfiguration spell.

Its actually what the gold standard was. Coins held their own value because they consisted of precious metals. Paper money, if it held only the value of the paper, would obviously be without any value. Thus they were originally bills you could hand in to a national bank and get the printed value in gold. When that stopped, inflation really started (it only happened if more precious metal was introduced into the system before, see 17th century Spain with the American silver), and gold bugs everywhere believe if you rolled it back we would instantly have a stable economy because reasons. Its really not that far of a leap that the wizards still operate witha gold standard.

Still, I would not at all be surprised if he was a Ron Paul gold bug.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 02:08

omnibobb: Dec 3, 2005; Title text'd

WickedHate posted:

Whenever I hear this I think of a story I heard(possibly on here?) about someone who tried paying a group to make an app for touchscreen devices that turns the screen into a mirror.

Djeser posted:

Post your favorite least favorite lines from tropers' own writing.

Really serious and formal secret vampire whose only exposure to popular culture is No Scrubs.

~A minor peripheral character only there to show my protagonist's All of the Other Reindeer status. I kind of feel like that line is a little too good for a minor character, but eh, whatever. [/quote] :10bux:

to whoever can figure out what this is trying to say. From the same guy:

~My idea of a proper Dream Sequence. Believe it or not, there is some actual foreshadowing in there, though even if you know the context, the metaphors are still probably a little obtuse. Even I have a hard time making the mental leap from one concept to another. [/quote]
sometimes people are funny when they say ninja so i said ninja to make it funny

Here we have ex-social outcast Megala from an RP I am participating in, and she's a villain, granted, but she takes down and demolishes the Alpha Bitch who was dabbling in dark magic to get her own petty, very mean spirited revenge. Given what this libby was doing before, this is Laser-Guided Karma.

I really, really liked writing this. [/quote]
"I really, really got off on writing this."
[/quote]Hell yeah this scene totally fits in a story with mind rape ego death enslavement.
[/quote]

The 10 bux thing without ever (ever) looking at tvtropes:

All of the other reindeer: there was only one person who could save the day (protagonist) and everyone (the other reindeer) make fun of him for knowing the goblins run the poo poo or whatever.

I accept paypal.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 02:45

Bear Sleuth: Jul 17, 2011

Asgerd posted:

Read this. This is what Eliezer Yudkowsky and his LessWrong cultists actually believe. (RationalWiki is normally pretty terrible, but they've got the measure of Yudkowsky if nothing else.)

This is facinating and would make great fiction but as a real thing it seems the very anthsis of rational thinking. Worse, that the idea came out of an attempt to justify spending stupid amounts of money on LessWrong.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 02:57

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Djeser posted:

to whoever can figure out what this is trying to say. From the same guy:

This is just a guess (I'm not going to TVT to look anything up), but I think that dialogue line is supposed to imply that the protagonist is gross or ugly (thus why a guy who thinks ghouls run the US government would use her against them to "fight fire with fire"), and that the "All of the Other Reindeer" trope described is your generic "protagonist is belittled by everyone around them before their eventual vindication" thing. It's not totally opaque, but if that's what that guy thinks is a good line, I'd hate to see the ones he edited out.

Wait, who am I kidding? Nobody who posts in TVTropes writing threads has ever cut anything out of their work. How else would they be able to win NaNoWriMo?

# ? Sep 28, 2013 03:02

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

quote:

Shamshalg Shows What Kind of Villain He Is:

Shamshalg: "I think we should kill him and his uncle's entire family."

Mercenary: "Why? He's just a messenger!"

Shamshalg: "Because they look like purple monkey baskets of orange apples. That is as good as incest and fetishizing airships in my book!"

Merc: "...Sir? Are you okay?"

Sham': "I've never been okay. I've been so un-okay I've been excellent!"

godd writang

edit to add:

quote:

I haven't actually written this yet, but I did have this one line I quite liked: "Sacrifices have to be made for our convictions; I merely sacrificed those who did not agree with mine."

Hasn't actually written it but he has a favorite line from it. Tropers! :psyduck:

# ? Sep 28, 2013 03:11

Kinu Nishimura: Apr 24, 2008; SICK LOOT!

Djeser posted:

to whoever can figure out what this is trying to say.

It's a line from the midst of a conversation belittling the protagonist for being "uncool" in some presumably Tropery way. The line is to mean that the ghouls running the government are "uncool" in exactly the same way, and the anti-government guy who hangs out with the protagonist is only doing it to manipulate her into assisting him in overthrowing the government because nobody in their right mind would hang out with someone that "uncool."

# ? Sep 28, 2013 04:40

Keromaru5: Dec 28, 2012; Pictured: The Wolf Of Gubbio (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Djeser posted:

quote:
Liana realizes her fatal error. She had underestimated her new allies, and overestimated her own position, "P-Please...not t-that."

Megala looks away from her dismissively, "Yes, that. From now on, Liana of House Midrune, you revere me. Y-You never talk down to or bully anyone ever again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that when you're trying to make a character in a dramatic story seem intimidating, it is not a good idea to have them quote Rick Moranis in Spaceballs.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 05:18

Lottery of Babylon: Apr 25, 2012; STRAIGHT TROPIN'

I wasn't planning on posting more from their Analysis tabs because I already made my point, but then I stumbled across... this thing:

Analysis: Mermaid Problem posted:

Writers have come up with several ways for a mammal to sleep with a character having the lady parts of a fish. The variety of suggestions shows that the Mermaid Problem is by no means insurmountable (heh, you said mountable):

* A mermaid has a mouth. Association of mermaids with fellatio might have something to do with the fact that mermaids used to represent prostitutes; Mary Queen of Scots was particularly associated with them.
* A mermaid has a navel. That's great...if you're Tommy Wiseau shooting The Room.
* A mermaid has hands to perform erotic massages of various sorts.
* A mermaid's breasts admit paizuri or mammary intercourse.
* They could make love like fish do: After foreplay, the female lays eggs in the shallow pool, and then the male beats off on them. (Then they smoke a cigarette and fall asleep.) Assuming a good lot of the eggs are viable, he could father dozens of mer-sons and mer-daughters in a sitting.
* Several shark species give live birth, as do dolphins and manatees. So they could probably have sex as a tetrapod knows it, as long as the genitals roughly match. The fish part might start a few inches lower to allow this. This would imply that merfolk have their genitals at the same place that humans do, where the crotch is, but modified a bit in according to the structure of the lower body. Mermaids have a vulva which could be closed to protect the delicate spots and the vaginal opening. Mermen would have their genitals inside as well, extending their penises from a similar slit (basically how dolphins and whales are set up). To mate, they swim facing each other, the merman presses his hips to the mermaid's, they open their slits, and Tab A goes into Slot B.
* An amphibious sapient sea creature might be an even mix of mammal and fish, not unlike the Zoras of The Legend of Zelda or Selkie Smith of Selkie. The logo of Starbucks Coffee shows a mermaid with two tails, which sort of hints at this.

Some of the above solutions ignore how the mermaid gets her own sexual pleasure. Those can be solved as well:

* Nipple massage.
* She may have other erogenous zones down there.
* The notion of sex for pleasure might be alien to someone with fishlike reproductive system.
* ...mumble mumble something about shellfish...
* Even if she can't enjoy it as sex and give back (compare "We had what Joe calls sex" in Family Guy), she may be able to experience pleasure of another sort.
* Or she might be doing it out of obligation to him or to create in him a feeling of obligation to her.

Some readers get hung up on Interspecies Romance being the same thing as bestiality. But that hasn't stopped characters in other speculative fiction stories from Boldly Coming or the Furry Fandom from writing yiff fiction.

The inverted mermaid case raises its own questions:

* Consent: With a fish's brain and respiratory system, an inverted mermaid would have to give nonverbal consent the way an animal does. If a woman kisses me and starts removing clothing, consent has been granted via nonverbal clues. That is to say if she's naked and I'm naked and she's mentally aware (so if it has a fish brain it possibly too stupid to consent, but not being able to speak above water is a non issue.)
* Attractiveness: Reverse mermaids are often drawn with the upper part as a disgustingly realistic fish, especially in parodies of the Mermaid Problem. The apparent Double Standard is on purpose. But apart from The Cat, let's leave it at infinite monkeys have infinite fetishes.

Sex is not the only problem, especially in visual media. The gills often aren't drawn, which would at first glance leave the mermaid unable to live in a deep water civilization without drowning. So an artist who has done the research has to somehow hide the gills so as not to make the mermaid unattractive to the man.

* The respiratory systems of merpeople don't have to mirror those of known mammals and fish. They could have an organ that draws oxygen from either water or air, somehow compensating for the vast difference in oxygen concentration. Salamanders and lungfish, for example, can breathe both air and water, though they prefer one environment to the other. Selkie uses such an organ as a plot point.
* In some stories, they are mammals. They could be the fishy version of a monotreme: mammals with physiology reminiscent of another phylum. Monotremes have features from both mammals and birds (they lay eggs, but suckle young). Why couldn't there be a fishy equivalent (has partial scales and a tail instead of legs, maybe spawns instead of giving live birth, but still suckles young)? Also consider that merpeople move their tails up and down, much like cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and like the manatees that inspired mermaid stories in the first place. And like dolphins, mammalian merpeople would have to return to the surface occasionally to take a breath. This might be associated with living near beaches, like seals or manatees, more than with some sort of The Little Mermaid-style undersea kingdom. This also handily solves the sex problems.

Mermaids are commonly drawn with large breasts. This would appear to create drag, but boxfish aren't especially streamlined either.

The other solution is various forms of shapeshifting, as mentioned in Our Mermaids Are Different. Apart from the various magical methods in the original mermaid myths, there is one form of shapeshifting that stays well on the hard side of the Mohs Scaleof Science Fiction Hardness, namely that a mermaid's fishlike tail is a removable swimsuit. This form exists in real life (see: monofin); however, in fiction, it tends to be associated with a seal-like bottom half more often than a fishlike one.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 05:18

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Lottery of Babylon posted:

I wasn't planning on posting more from their Analysis tabs because I already made my point, but then I stumbled across... this thing:

At... at least they talk about consent? That's something, right?

# ? Sep 28, 2013 05:29

WickedHate: Aug 1, 2013; by Lowtax

They totally got rid of all the creepy sex stuff guys for real.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 05:31

LeafyOrb: Jun 11, 2012

Ah, yes the source of all my knowledge about mythical sea creatures, the Starbucks logo.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 05:46

Lowly: Aug 13, 2009

I can't believe I just looked at so many words about mermaid sex.

REVERSE MERMAIDS?! Why is that even ...

Now I'm thinking of mermaids, so let's see what Tropers have to say about The Little Mermaid:

quote:

Fan Preferred Couple: For some bizarre reason, whenever Disney pops up on Imageboards /u/, they ship Ariel with Meg from Hercules (something we need to thank to batlesbo and X-Arielle). Another very popular pairing in the fandom is Ariel/Jim Hawkins and a lesser extent, Jim and Melody. And Ariel/Sora. Ursula/Evil Manta, despite the both of them not having any sort of interactions in the TV Series.

That is just bizarre. At least they aren't "shipping" Ariel with the crab or something. (Please don't prove me wrong on this.)

quote:

Ariel gasping for breath once reaching the surface after being changed into a human is very orgasmic-looking.

Okaaaay ....

quote:

Ho Yay: Not sure of their genders but Flotsam and Jetsam sure give this impression on occasion.

These are two fish ...

Okay let's see what kind of analysis we have ...

quote:

Ariel is a mermaid and therefore, by definition, a maid, that is, a virgin. She becomes fascinated by Prince Eric, and wants to leave her father's house to be with him. Her overprotective father wants to keep her away from Eric, and safe in his own care. Now watch Ariel's transformation: Ursula gives her legs (and what lies between them), but also takes her voice and her ability to breathe underwater, forcing Ariel to swim desperately to the surface, where she breaks through the water in a cloud of spray, almost completely nude, her head thrown back, her hair flying about her head, with her gasping for breath. To put it bluntly, she looks like she's having an orgasm. The entire subtext of the story is Ariel's sexual awakening. And, of course, the danger she finds herself in is that the man she loves, and for whom she has risked everything, may not love her in return, and may come to love another.

Seriously, the "Ariel looks like she's orgasming when she comes out of the water" is brought up several times, it's really creepy. I don't remember ever thinking anything like that and I was a teenager when the movie came out.

ETA: So I tried to look up this scene, since I couldn't remember it very well and of course some creeper has put it on YouTube in slow motion with "adjusted brightness" so that you can see her sort of naked. The internet is just ... ugh, sometimes.

Lowly fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Sep 28, 2013

# ? Sep 28, 2013 06:55

Namtab: Feb 22, 2010

The rape scene is just as bad in context as out of it, so I'm faithfully restoring my original read of the chapter because you probably need archives to see the last thread.

CONTEXT: Before this sequence starts, Harry buys some pop that makes you do a spit take at some point while drinking it. He then sees a copy of the Quibbler with the headline "BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT"

Namtab, June 2012 posted:

Alright, it's time for the very low point of Methods of Rationality (that I know of). I should point out before starting that Luna Lovegood is one of my favourite characters in the franchise, and therefore this whole exchange makes me legit angry.
Also there's rape chat so if that affects you at all you may want to skip this post. Although admittedly if rape chat triggers you you're probably in the wrong thread.

quote:
"I take it back," Draco said, "that was pretty good."

"Hey, Draco, you know what I bet is even better for becoming friends than exchanging secrets? Committing murder."
Why is Harry so evil? How does growing up with a scientific family that loved him take a modest, heroic character and turn him into a narcisstic villain?

quote:
"I have a tutor who says that," Draco allowed. He reached inside his robes and scratched himself with an easy, natural motion. "Who've you got in mind?"

Harry slammed The Quibbler down hard on the picnic table. "The guy who came up with this headline."

Draco groaned. "Not a guy. A girl. A ten-year-old girl, can you believe it? She went nuts after her mother died and her father, who owns this newspaper, is convinced that she's a seer, so when he doesn't know he asks Luna Lovegood and believes anything she says."
So yeah, in canon Luna's a tad quirky, but she's also a really really good character. Naturally quirky cannot exist in a rational universe, therefore she's insane.

quote:
Not really thinking about it, Harry popped the top on his next can of Comed-Tea and prepared to drink. "Are you kidding me? That's even worse than Muggle journalism, which I would have thought was physically impossible."

quote:
Draco snarled. "She has some sort of perverse obsession about the Malfoys, too, and her father is politically opposed to us so he prints every word. As soon as I'm old enough I'm going to rape her."

Green liquid spurted out of Harry's nostrils, soaking into the scarf still covering that area. Comed-Tea and lungs did not mix, and Harry spent the next few seconds frantically coughing.

Draco looked at him sharply. "Something wrong?"
Emphasis mine. What the gently caress is this? Why is Draco so casual about his desire to rape someone. Let's loving find out.

quote:
It was at this point that Harry came to the sudden realization that (a) the sounds coming from the rest of the train platform had turned into more of a blurred white noise at around the same time Draco had reached inside his robes, and (b) when he had discussed committing murder as a bonding method, there had been exactly one person in the conversation who'd thought they were both joking.

Right. Because he seemed like such a normal kid. And he is a normal kid, he is just what you'd expect a baseline male child to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.

"Yes, well," Harry coughed, oh god how was he going to get out of this conversational wedge, "I was just surprised at how you were willing to discuss it so openly, you didn't seem worried about getting caught or anything."

Draco snorted. "Are you joking? Luna Lovegood's word against mine?"

Holy crap on a holy cracker. "There's no such thing as magical truth detection, I take it?" Or DNA testing... yet.
Yeah I'm sure the wizarding world doesn't have magic policemen or doctors who have a spell to find this poo poo out. Bearing in mind the ministry of magic can track down underage magic usage easily and even identify whose wand it was. But loving tracking down a rapist, no chance.

quote:
Draco looked around. His eyes narrowed. "That's right, you don't know anything. Look, I'll explain things to you, I mean the way it really works, just like you were already in Slytherin and asked me the same question. But you've got to swear not to say anything about it."

"I can talk about the subject matter, just not that you're the one who said it, right? I mean say another young Slytherin asks me the same question someday."

Draco paused. "Repeat that."

Harry did so.

"Okay, that doesn't sound like you're planning to trick me, so sure. Just keep in mind, I can always deny everything. Swear."

"I swear," Harry said.
So what, all slytherins are rapists? I know it's canonically "power at any cost" house (EVIL HOUSE), but I'd imagine that most people in slytherin just want to be polititians, not loving evil criminal rapists.

quote:
"The courts use Veritaserum, but it's a joke really, you just Obliviate yourself before you testify and then claim the other person was Memory-Charmed with a false memory. If you've got a Pensieve, and we do, you can even get the memory back afterward. Now, ordinarily the courts presume in favor of Obliviation having occurred rather than more complicated Memory Charms. But there's a lot of discretion-of-the-court involved. And if I'm involved in something then it impinges on the honor of a Noble House, so it goes to the Wizengamot, where Father has the votes. After I'm found not guilty the Lovegood family has to pay reparations for tarnishing my honor. And they know from the start that's how it'll go, so they'll just keep their mouths shut."

A cold chill was coming over Harry, a chill that came with instructions to keep his voice and face normal. Note to self: Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience.

Harry coughed again to clear his throat. "Draco, please please please don't take this the wrong way, my word is my bond, but like you said I could be in Slytherin and I really want to ask for informational purposes, so what would happen theoretically speaking if I did testify that I'd heard you plan it?"

"Then if I was anyone other than a Malfoy, I'd be in trouble," Draco answered smugly. "Since I am a Malfoy... Father has the votes. And afterward he'd crush you... well, I guess not easily, since you are the Boy-Who-Lived, but Father is pretty good at that sort of thing." Draco frowned. "'Sides which, you were willing to talk about murdering her, why weren't you worried about me testifying if she turned up dead? I'm not famous in my own right the same way you are but your, ah, supporters are a lot less likely to stick with you if you do something that looks bad. And murder with a dead body and everything is a lot more serious than rape."
Just two 11 year olds, casually discussing murder and rape. MAGICAL murder and rape.

quote:
When the conversation can't go forward and can't go back, zig it sideways. "It's a Muggle thing, in Muggle Britain there's a hell of a political difference between getting away with murder and getting away with raping a little girl."

"Really? Weird. Why isn't murder worse? So does that mean that if you're the one to rape her, that makes it really awesome for you? 'Cause I'd gladly yield first place to you if that's true. Man, imagine Loony Lovegood trying to claim that she was raped by Draco Malfoy and the Boy-Who-Lived, not even Dumbledore would believe her."
BEEP BOOP IS NOT MURDER WORSE THAN RAPE

quote:
Thankfully Harry was not drinking Comed-Tea at this point. How, oh how did my day go this wrong? Harry's mind calculated desperately and came up with another zig.

"Actually, I'd as soon have you hold off on that for a while. After I found out that headline came from a girl a year younger than me, I wasn't really thinking about murder anymore."

"Huh? Do tell," Draco said, and started to take another swig of his Comed-Tea.

Harry didn't know if the enchantment worked more than once per can, but he did know he could avoid the blame, so he was careful to time it exactly right:

"I was thinking someday I'm going to marry that woman."

Draco made a horrid ker-splutching sound and leaked green fluid out the corners of his mouth like a broken car radiator. "Are you nuts?"

"Quite the opposite, I'm so sane it burns like ice."

Draco giggled, a youthful high-pitched sound. "You've got weirder taste than a Lestrange. But you could just rape her anyway, she's probably crazy enough to like it. And if not you could just Obliviate her and do it again next week."
I don't even know anymore. I just want this to be over.

quote:
I am going to tear apart your pathetic little magical remnant of the Dark Ages into pieces smaller than its constituent atoms. "Would you mind letting me worry about that? If you really were serious about wanting to rape her I can owe you a favor -"

Draco waved it off. "Nah, this one's free."

Harry stared down at the can in his hand, the coldness settling into his blood. Charming, happy, generous with his favors to his friends, Draco wasn't a psychopath. That was the sad and awful part, knowing human psychology well enough to know that Draco wasn't a monster. There had been ten thousand societies over the history of the world where this conversation could have happened. No, the world would have been a very different place indeed, if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said. It was very simple, very human, it was the default if nothing else intervened. To Draco, his enemies weren't people.

And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law. At least when it came to a little rape here and there.
So here's the crux of it. Basically all human goodness and equality is due to science. The wizarding world is seperate from the world of science. Therefore it stands to reason that a world where people have no science would therefore all be rapists because everyone knows that the only reason women are equal and rape is considered bad is because of science.

How the gently caress does the author live with himself thinking like 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. A line of descent, it seemed, which didn't quite include magical Britain, for all that there had been cross-cultural contamination of things like pop-top soda cans.

And if Draco doesn't change his mind about wanting revenge, and I don't throw away my own chance at happiness in life to marry some poor crazy girl, then all I've just bought is time, and not too much of it...

For one girl. Not for others.

I wonder how difficult it would be to just make a list of all the top blood purists and kill them.
And now that this whole "purebloods can just rape who the gently caress they want" business is canon in this fanfic, it means that Harry only has one logical answer to the problem. Violence.

quote:
They'd tried exactly that during the French Revolution, more or less - make a list of all the enemies of Progress and remove everything above the neck - and it hadn't worked out too well from what Harry recalled. Maybe he needed to dust off some of those history books his father had bought him, and see if what had gone wrong with the French Revolution was something easy to fix.
Yes the French Revolution was all about scientific progress and not an opressive upper class being indifferent to the needs of the populace.

quote:
Harry gazed up at the sky, and at the pale shape of the Moon, visible this morning through the cloudless air.

So the world is broken and flawed and insane, and cruel and bloody and dark. This is news? You always knew that, anyway...

"You're looking all serious," Draco said. "Let me guess, your Muggle parents told you that this sort of thing was bad."

Harry nodded, not quite trusting his voice.

"Well, like Father says, there may be four houses, but in the end everyone belongs to either Slytherin or Hufflepuff. And frankly, you're not on the Hufflepuff end. If you decide to side with the Malfoys under the table... our power and your reputation... you could get away with things even I can't do. Want to try it for a while? See what it's like?"
In the end, there is only people willing to rape, or weaklings. WHAT ARE YOU HARRY?

quote:
Aren't we a clever little serpent. Eleven years old and already coaxing your prey from hiding. Is it too late to save you, Draco?

Harry thought, considered, chose his weapon. "Draco, you want to explain the whole blood purity thing to me? I'm sort of new."

A wide smile crossed Draco's face. "You really should meet Father and ask him, you know, he's our leader."

"Give me the elevator pitch. Thirty-second version, I mean."

"Okay," Draco said. He drew in a deep breath, and his voice grew slightly lower, and took on a cadence. "Our powers have been growing weaker, generation by generation, as the mudblood taint grows. Where Salazar and Godric and Rowena and Helga once raised Hogwarts by their power, creating the Locket and the Sword and the Diadem and the Cup and the Hat, no modern wizard has risen to challenge them. We are fading, all fading into Muggles as we interbreed with their spawn and allow our Squibs to live. If the taint is not checked, soon our wands will break and all our arts cease, the line of Merlin will end and the blood of Atlantis fail. Our children will be left scratching at the dirt to survive like the mere Muggles, and darkness will cover all the world for ever." Draco took another swig from his soda can, looking satisfied. That seemed to be the whole argument as far as Draco was concerned.

"Persuasive," Harry said, meaning it descriptively rather than normatively. It was a very standard pattern. The Fall from Grace, the need to guard what purity remained against contamination, the past sloping upward and the future sloping only downward. And that pattern also had its counter... "I have to correct you on one point of fact, though. Your information about the Muggles is a bit out of date. We aren't exactly scratching at the dirt anymore."

Draco's head snapped around. "What? What do you mean, we?"

"We. The scientists. The line of Francis Bacon and the blood of the Enlightenment. Muggles didn't just sit around crying about not having wands, we have our own powers now, with or without magic. If all your powers fail then we will all have lost something very precious, because your magic is the only hint we have as to how the universe must really work - but you won't be left scratching at the ground. Your houses will still be cool in summer and warm in winter, there will still be doctors and medicine. Science can keep you alive if magic fails. It would be a tragedy and we should all want to prevent that, but it wouldn't literally be the end of all the light in the world. Just saying."
Yes, the fact that science exists is all the pursuasion one should need to not be a magical nazi anymore.
drat this is stupid, this is all so loving stupid.

quote:
Draco had backed up several feet and his face was full of mixed fear and disbelief. "What in the name of Merlin are you talking about, Potter?"

"Hey, I listened to your story, won't you listen to mine?" Clumsy, Harry chided himself, but Draco actually did stop backing off and seem to listen.

"Anyway," Harry said, "I'm saying that you don't seem to have been paying much attention to what goes on in the Muggle world." Probably because the whole wizarding world seemed to regard the rest of Earth as a slum, deserving around as much news coverage as the Financial Times awarded to the routine miseries of Burundi. "All right. Quick check. Have wizards ever been to the Moon? You know, that thing?" Harry pointed up to that huge and distant globe.

"What?" Draco said. It was pretty clear the thought had never occured to the boy. "Go to the - it's just a -" His finger pointed at the little pale thingy in the sky. "You can't Apparate to somewhere you've never been and how would anyone get to the Moon in the first place?"

"Hold on," Harry said to Draco, "I'd like to show you a book I brought with me, I think I remember what box it's in." And Harry stood up and kneeled down and yanked out the stairs to the cavern level of his trunk, then tore down the stairs and heaved a box off another box, coming perilously close to treating his books with disrespect, and snatched off the box cover and quickly but carefully pried out a stack of books -

(Harry had inherited the nigh-magical Verres ability to remember where all his books were, even after seeing them just once, which was rather mysterious considering the lack of any genetic connection.)
"Can wizards go to space?" . Also I can find my books too, it's not a magical ability it's called "organisation".

quote:
And Harry raced back up the stairs and shoved the staircase back into the trunk with his heel, and, panting, turned the pages of the book until he found the picture he wanted to show to Draco.

The one with the white, dry, cratered land, and the suited people, and the blue-white globe hanging over it all.

That picture.

The picture, if only one picture in all the world were to survive.

"That," Harry said, his voice trembling because he couldn't quite keep the pride out, "is what the Earth looks like from the Moon."
Why is Harry so proud? Is his science boner so immense that he is proud of any and all science ever (yes).

quote:
Draco slowly leaned over. There was a strange expression on his young face. "If that's a real picture, why isn't it moving?"

Moving? Oh. "Muggles can do moving pictures but they need a bigger box to show it, they can't fit them onto single book pages yet."

Draco's finger moved to one of the suits. "What are those?" His voice starting to waver.

"Those are human beings. They are wearing suits that cover their whole bodies to give them air, because there is no air on the Moon."

"That's impossible," Draco whispered. There was terror in his eyes, and utter confusion. "No Muggle could ever do that. How..."

Harry took back the book, flipped the pages until he found what he saw. "This is a rocket going up. The fire pushes it higher and higher, until it gets to the Moon." Flipped pages again. "This is a rocket on the ground. That tiny speck next to it is a person." Draco gasped. "Going to the Moon cost the equivalent of... probably around a thousand million Galleons." Draco choked. "And it took the efforts of... probably more people than live in all of magical Britain." And when they arrived, they left a plaque that said, 'We came in peace, for all mankind.' You are not yet ready to hear those words, Draco, but I hope you will be, someday...

"You're telling the truth," Draco said slowly. "You wouldn't fake a whole book just for this - and I can hear it in your voice. But... but..."

"How, without wands or magic? It's a long story, Draco. Science doesn't work by waving wands and chanting spells, it works by knowing how the universe works on such a deep level that you know exactly what to do in order to make the universe do what you want. If magic is like casting an Imperius on someone to make them do what you want, then science is like knowing them so well that you know exactly what to say in order to make them think it was their own idea all along. It's a lot more difficult than waving a wand, but it works when wands fail, just like if the Imperius failed you could still try persuading a person. And Science builds from generation to generation. You have to really know what you're doing to do science - and when you really understand something, you can explain it to someone else. The greatest scientists of one century ago, the brightest names that are still spoken with reverence, their powers are as nothing to the greatest scientists of today. There is no equivalent in science of your lost arts that raised Hogwarts. In science our powers wax by the year. And we are beginning to understand and unravel the secrets of life and inheritance. We'll be able to look at the very blood of which you spoke, and see what makes you a wizard, and in one or two more generations, we'll be able to persuade that blood to make all your children powerful wizards too. So you see, your problem isn't nearly as bad as it looks, because in a few more decades, science will be able to solve it for you."

"But..." Draco said. His voice was trembling. "If Muggles have that kind of power... then... what are we?"
I give up, this is just so loving stupid.

quote:
"No, Draco, that's not it, don't you see? Science taps the power of human understanding to look at the world and figure out how it works. It can't fail without humanity itself failing. Your magic could turn off, and you would hate that, but you would still be you. You would still be alive to regret it. But because science rests upon my human intelligence, it is the power that cannot be removed from me without removing me. Even if the laws of the universe change on me, so that all my knowledge is void, I'll just figure out the new laws, as has been done before. It's not a Muggle thing, it's a human thing, it just refines and trains the power you use every time you look at something you don't understand and ask 'Why?' You're of Slytherin, Draco, don't you see the implication?"

Draco looked up from the book to Harry. His face showed dawning understanding. "Wizards can learn to use this power."

Very carefully, now... the bait is set, now the hook... "If you can learn to think of yourself as a human instead of a wizard then you can train and refine your powers as a human."

And if that instruction wasn't in every science curriculum, Draco didn't need to know it, did he?

Draco's eyes were now thoughtful. "You've... already done this?"

"To some extent," Harry allowed. "My training isn't complete. Not at eleven. But - my father also bought me tutors, you see." Sure, they'd been starving grad students, and it had only been because Harry slept on a 26-hour cycle, but leave all that aside for now...

Slowly, Draco nodded. "You think you can master both arts, add the powers together, and..." Draco stared at Harry. "Make yourself lord of the two worlds?"
Here we go. Prepare for the biggest load of stupidity.

quote:
Harry gave an evil laugh, it just seemed to come naturally at that point. "You have to realize, Draco, that the whole world you know, all of magical Britain, is just one square on a much larger gameboard. The gameboard that includes places like the Moon, and the stars in the night sky, which are lights just like the Sun only unimaginably far away, and things like galaxies that are vastly huger than the Earth and Sun, things so large that only scientists can see them and you don't even know they exist. But I really am Ravenclaw, you know, not Slytherin. I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organized."

There was awe on Draco's face. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Oh... there aren't many people who know how to do true science - understanding something for the very first time, even if it confuses the hell out of you. Help would be helpful."

Draco stared at Harry with his mouth open.

"But make no mistake, Draco, true science really isn't like magic, you can't just do it and walk away unchanged like learning how to say the words of a new spell. The power comes with a cost, a cost so high that most people refuse to pay it."

Draco nodded at this as though, finally, he'd heard something he could understand. "And that cost?"

"Learning to admit you're wrong."
This is it. Harry thinks that because he's apparantly the only wizard ever to know that science exists, and that therefore he knows of science AND magic, he'll be able to unite the two into some sort of superpower that'll give him and his followers the power to rule the universe.

quote:
"Um," Draco said after the dramatic pause had stretched on for a while. "You going to explain that?"

"Trying to figure out how something works on that deep level, the first ninety-nine explanations you come up with are wrong. The hundredth is right. So you have to learn how to admit you're wrong, over and over and over again. It doesn't sound like much, but it's so hard that most people can't do true science. Always questioning yourself, always taking another look at things you've always taken for granted," like having a Snitch in Quidditch, "and every time you change your mind, you change yourself. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here. Way ahead of myself. I just want you to know... I'm offering to share some of my knowledge. If you want. There's just one condition."

"Uh huh," Draco said. "You know, Father says that when someone says that to you, it is never, ever a good sign."

Harry nodded. "Now, don't mistake me and think that I'm trying to drive a wedge between you and your father. It's not about that. It's just about me wanting to deal with someone my own age, rather than having this be between me and Lucius. I think your father would be okay with that too, he knows you have to grow up sometime. But your moves in our game have to be your own. That's my condition - that I'm dealing with you, Draco, not your father."

"Enough," Draco said. He stood up. "Way too much. I have to go off and think about this. Not to mention it's about time to board the train."
They weren't already on the train? They've just been standing on a platform in a magic science bubble chatting about rape and murder. You'd think that maybe an adult with magical talent might have noticed.

quote:
"Take your time," Harry said. "Just remember it's not an exclusive offer, even if you take me up on it. True science does sometimes take more than one person."

The sounds of the train platform changed from blurs into murmurs as Draco wandered off.

Harry looked at the watch on his wrist, a very simple mechanical model that his father had bought him in the hopes it would go on working in the presence of magic. It was still ticking and if the time was right, then it wasn't quite eleven just yet. He probably ought to get on the train soon and start looking for whatsherface, but it seemed worth taking a few minutes first to do some breathing exercises and see if his blood warmed up again.

But when Harry looked up from his watch, he saw two figures approaching, looking utterly ridiculous with their faces cloaked by winter scarves.

"Hello, Mr. Bronze," said one of the masked figures. "Can we interest you in joining the Order of Chaos?"
What?

quote:
Aftermath:

Not too long after that, when all that day's fuss had finally subsided, Draco was bent over a desk with quill in hand. He had a private room in the Slytherin dungeons, with its own desk and its own fire - sadly not even he rated a connection to the Floo system, but at least Slytherin didn't buy into that utter nonsense about making everyone sleep in dorms. There weren't many private rooms, you had to be the very best within the House of the better sort, but that could be taken for granted with the House of Malfoy.

Dear Father, Draco wrote.

And then he stopped.

Ink slowly dripped from his quill, staining the parchment near the words.

Draco wasn't stupid. He was young, but his tutors had trained him to know certain things by automatic recognition. Draco knew that Potter probably felt a lot more sympathy toward Dumbledore's faction than Potter was letting on... though Draco did think Potter could be tempted. But it was crystal clear that Potter was trying to tempt Draco just as Draco was trying to tempt him.
It's worth noting that in the first four books Draco was pretty much just a magical bully, he'd been brought up to believe he was better than other people, but he wasn't really evil, just kind of a magical racist. He wasn't this manipulative or evil, in fact he was never really evil at all, he just tried to live up to his evil father's expectations. Draco's arc in the books is basically a guy finding redemption through realising that he was making the wrong choice in life.

quote:
And it was also clear that Potter was brilliant, and a whole lot more than just slightly mad, and playing a vast game that Potter himself mostly didn't understand, improvised at top speed with the subtlety of a rampaging nundu. But Potter had managed to choose a tactic that Draco couldn't just walk away from. He had offered Draco a part of his own power, gambling that Draco couldn't use it without becoming more like him. His father had called this a very advanced technique, and had warned Draco that it often didn't work.

Draco knew he hadn't understood everything that had happened... but Potter had offered him the chance to play and right now it was his. And if he blurted the whole thing out, it would become his father's.

In the end it was as simple as that. The lesser techniques require the unawareness of the target, or at least their uncertainty. Flattery has to be plausibly disguised as admiration. ("You should have been in Slytherin" is an old classic, very effective on a certain type of person who isn't expecting it, and if it works you can repeat it.) But when you find someone's ultimate lever it doesn't matter if they know you know. Potter, in his mad rush, had guessed a key to Draco's soul. And if Draco knew that Potter knew it - even if it had been an obvious sort of guess - that didn't change anything.

So now, for the first time in his life, he had real secrets to keep. He was playing his own game. There was an obscure pain to it, but he knew that Father would be proud, and that made it all right.

Leaving the ink drippings in place - there was a message there, and one that his father would understand, for they had played the game of subtleties more than once - Draco wrote out the one question that really had gnawed at him about the whole affair, the part that it seemed he ought to understand, but he didn't, not at all.

Dear Father:

Suppose I told you that I met a student at Hogwarts, not already part of our circle of acquaintances, who called you a 'flawless instrument of death' and said that I was your 'one weak point'. What would you say about him?

It didn't take very long after that for an owl to bring Draco the reply.

My beloved son:

I would say that you had been so fortunate as to meet someone who enjoys the intimate confidence of our friend and valuable ally, Severus Snape.

Draco stared at the letter for a while, and finally threw it into the fire.
But snape was never a friend and ally. In fact it was common knowledge amongst the Death Eaters that snape had betrayed them for Dumbledore's side, and a big part of the last two books is an exploration of which side Snape was on. At this point in canon he's publically working for, and with, Dumbledore.

And that's the end of the chapter.

That was the last chapter of that poo poo I ever did.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 13:21

Djeser: Mar 22, 2013; it's crow time again

I took a trip down into some old threads and this is what I found. Here, we have two tropers (the OP and Deboss) arguing for turning English into Lojban because it offends their Aspergers or something.

deathpidgeon posted:

Basically, I view English as a good language, but a very flawed one. I am seeking to fix those flaws.

In doing this, I seek to improve it in four standards, in particular:

1. Precision: The tightness of a words set of definitions. A word that means fire and heat would be much more precise than one that means fire and sword as fire and heat are more similar to each other than fire and a sword.
2. Accuracy: How little a word's meanings conflict. For example, a word that means torch and flamethrower would be more accurate than one that means torch and fire extinguisher, as flamethrower and torch are both things that create fire, while a torch and a fire extinguisher do very different things.
3. Lack of ambiguity: The clarity of what is meant by a word.
4. Elegance: Having a clear, steady, and beautiful flow and rhythm.

My plan for doing so is as follows:

1. Look at the grammar on its own, and modify it so that it can achieve internal consistency, which is a major problem I have with the English language.
2. Modify the existing vocabulary to match it up with the new consistent grammar without changing the words so much that they are unrecognizable.
3. Go through the language, and change some things, and drop some things, to get rid of unnecessary rules and forms, as well as clear up inherent ambiguity, such as by removing the singular they, and replacing it with a new pronoun, re-adding "thou" to distinguish between the singular and plural second person, differentiating between the inclusive and exclusive we, and many other things.
4. Go through the language, and change the spellings to be phonetic, which will be helped by my addition of accents, umlauts, and macrons to my arsenal, as well as slightly changing the pronunciation of homophones. To account for differences in accents and dialect, I will err on the side of keeping consonants and on not merging vowels. *
5. Create simple, and easy to remember, variations on words with a lot of meanings, especially those which have a large spread of meanings, rather than very similar meanings and assign each meaning a variation.
6. Review my newly fixed English language, and determine if I've missed anything.

So part of what he's proposing is making a neuter pronoun. He hasn't even looked at Wikipedia on pronouns or he'd see he's got like fifteen neuter pronouns to pick from. Also, he thinks thou is a second person plural pronoun. It's safe to say he doesn't know poo poo about the language he wants to reform.

Almost everyone in the thread tells him trying to remove ambiguous words a dumb idea. They tell him that jokes, poetry, literature, et cetera rely on ambiguous words, and what does he say to that?

deathpidgeon posted:

The fix will hamper poetry and jokes. I get that. I just find improving the ability of people to communicate ideas to be more important than the ability to tell jokes or write poetry.

His dogged insistence continues for a couple pages, then Deboss comes in with good old cultural imperialism.

Deboss posted:

We crushed wildly different measuring systems with metric, is there a reason we can't crush wildly different accents? Or at least, come up with a relatively consistent set of vowels and remove the silent ones?

quote:

Measuring systems are something you can replace a hell of a lot more easily than a dialect and dialects are often linked closely to identity, much more so than what measuring system you use.

Plus, what dialect are you going to decide is the 'right' one to base everything off of?

Deboss posted:

Why is it easier to replace measuring than dialects? A lot of people seem to naturally slip into the measuring system they learned first, so it should at least be comparable. Most people I know learn to speak and pronounce from television style dialects which should be usable in this case since it's fairly widespread. That's no different than deciding everyone drives on the right side of the road, as long as it's consistent, goal has been met.

So 'TV English' is the one that he thinks should be standard for everyone. No word on whether that's American Broadcast English or Received Pronunciation.

Someone tells him he's assuming people are rational when they're not.

Deboss posted:

I'm not assuming people are rational, I'm assuming they're creatures of habit and that dialect is a habit that can be broken.

I don't know why people who know nothing about language want to reform English so badly.

I also found this thread, where someone posts their lovely horror/thriller story and asks for help.

quote:

I need some serious help with my writing for my story here.

First off, how do I present something like that as a credible threat to a US Army base? I want to make it a fair fight, but people keep telling me there is no way any slasher would be able to so much as touch an Army soldier before they get blown up by artillery.

Next, how does the US Army work? What does each rank do, what are the policies, and what doctrine are they going by?

And last, does the premise suck but the story good? Or is the premise nice but the story a heap of crap? Or is it all just stupid? Because I've heard that if a premise is bad, then the writing is terrible as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Just don't flame or troll me.

Turns out he didn't even realize what point of view he was writing from, and he has no idea how the Army works beyond that they have soldiers and bases and ranks. Then Don Quixote de la TV Tropes shows up, and his windmills are tropers writing poorly. He critiques the first chapter line by line. He talks about style and sentence structure and word choice and pacing. But this is TV Tropes, so the author's only response to his critique is:

quote:

The thing is, I have other things to do, so I only have a limited amount of time to write. Therefore, no time for all that Purple Prose you want.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 14:20

Apple Tree: Sep 8, 2013

quote:

I took a trip down into some old threads and this is what I found. Here, we have two tropers (the OP and Deboss) arguing for turning English into Lojban because it offends their Aspergers or something.

But that would be perfect! They're already close to incomprehensibility; this could be the final push that tipped them over the edge, rendering them nothing worse than a gentle background twitter. It'd become the birdsong of the Net: probably if you understand it it's saying something awful about rape and kicking rear end, but all that reaches your ears is a meaningless, soothing chirrup. The future is peaceful, my friends.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 16:51

getitoffgetitoff: Sep 24, 2007; by Ralp

Anime.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Sep 28, 2013 17:12

Maxwell Lord: Dec 12, 2008; I am drowning.
There is no sign of land.
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand.

And I hope you die.

I hope we both die.; Grimey Drawer

Namtab posted:

Yes, the fact that science exists is all the pursuasion one should need to not be a magical nazi anymore.
drat this is stupid, this is all so loving stupid.

"Can wizards go to space?" . Also I can find my books too, it's not a magical ability it's called "organisation".

Why is Harry so proud? Is his science boner so immense that he is proud of any and all science ever (yes).

I give up, this is just so loving stupid.

Here we go. Prepare for the biggest load of stupidity.

This is it. Harry thinks that because he's apparantly the only wizard ever to know that science exists, and that therefore he knows of science AND magic, he'll be able to unite the two into some sort of superpower that'll give him and his followers the power to rule the universe.

They weren't already on the train? They've just been standing on a platform in a magic science bubble chatting about rape and murder. You'd think that maybe an adult with magical talent might have noticed.

What?

It's worth noting that in the first four books Draco was pretty much just a magical bully, he'd been brought up to believe he was better than other people, but he wasn't really evil, just kind of a magical racist. He wasn't this manipulative or evil, in fact he was never really evil at all, he just tried to live up to his evil father's expectations. Draco's arc in the books is basically a guy finding redemption through realising that he was making the wrong choice in life.

But snape was never a friend and ally. In fact it was common knowledge amongst the Death Eaters that snape had betrayed them for Dumbledore's side, and a big part of the last two books is an exploration of which side Snape was on. At this point in canon he's publically working for, and with, Dumbledore.

And that's the end of the chapter.

That was the last chapter of that poo poo I ever did.

"And I owned him with my knowledge of science and the whole room stood up and applauded."

Man, a lot of fantasy gets called wish fulfillment, but this is pure-strain.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 18:02

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

Namtab posted:

Yeah I'm sure the wizarding world doesn't have magic policemen or doctors who have a spell to find this poo poo out. Bearing in mind the ministry of magic can track down underage magic usage easily and even identify whose wand it was. But loving tracking down a rapist, no chance.

None of the stupid specifics top the fact that this should even be an issue in your Harry Potter fanfic in the first place.

I read some other stuff by this guy and it only gets worse.

quote:

The Confessor held up a hand. "I mean it, my lord Akon. It is not polite idealism. We ancients can't steer. We remember too much disaster. We're too cautious to dare the bold path forward. Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"
Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace. "The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"
"You need a history refresher, my Lord Administrator. At some suitably abstract level. What I'm trying to tell you - and this is not public knowledge - is that we nearly tried to overthrow your government."
"What?" said Akon. "The Confessors?"
"No, us. The ones who remembered the ancient world. Back then we still had our hands on a large share of the capital and tremendous influence in the grant committees. When our children legalized rape, we thought that the Future had gone wrong."
Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"
The Confessor shook his head. "There aren't any words," the Confessor said, "there aren't any words at all, by which I ever could explain to you. No, it wasn't prudery. It was a memory of disaster."
"Um," Akon said. He was trying not to smile. "I'm trying to visualize what sort of disaster could have been caused by too much nonconsensual sex -"

Making the rapist a woman in that example was a nice touch, should keep those hysterical feminists happy knowing it's all equal in The Future. :downs:

quote:

"I know the theory," Akon said. Exhaustion in his voice. "They made me study metaethics when I was a little kid, sixteen years old and still in the children's world. Just so that I would never be tempted to think that God or ontologically basic moral facts or whatever had the right to override my own scruples." Akon slumped a little further. "And somehow - none of that really makes a difference when you're looking at the Lady 3rd, and wondering why, when there's a ten-year-old with a broken finger in front of you, screaming and crying, we humans only partially numb the area."
The Confessor's hood turned back to look at Akon. "You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself. You do realize that, my lord?"
"I know," Akon said. "That, too, we are taught. Unfortunately, I am also just now realizing that I've only been going along with society all my life, and that I never thought the matter through for myself, until now."

Yeah, so all the BEEP BOOP stuff isn't even exaggeration here. There are pages of this poo poo. To be fair his descriptive prose isn't bad but his dialogue is loving appalling and it seems to account for 80% of the text. I physically can't keep my eyes focused on it.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 20:12

Fuego Fish: Dec 5, 2004; By tooth and claw!

quote:

Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"

quote:

Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"

I'm done. I'm done, I'm done, I am done, I am done, I am done done done done done. Burn TvTropes to the loving ground and salt the earth.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 20:24

The Monkey Man: Jun 10, 2012; HERD U WERE TALKIN SHIT

Oh God, I hadn't realized that he also wrote Three Worlds Collide. (For the record, I actually thought that story started off really well but went downhill quickly.)

# ? Sep 28, 2013 20:36

Saint Drogo: Dec 26, 2011

The Monkey Man posted:

Oh God, I hadn't realized that he also wrote Three Worlds Collide. (For the record, I actually thought that story started off really well but went downhill quickly.)

I saw this and went to read the beginning in the interests of fairness and curiosity.

I loving hate you and I take back what I said about his prose not being awful. :colbert:

# ? Sep 28, 2013 20:47

Namtab: Feb 22, 2010

Take my advice, don't read troperfiction.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 21:18

Apple Tree: Sep 8, 2013

quote:

Akon's mouth hung open. "You were that prude?"

gently caress me nonconsensually, it's The Turner Diaries of :tvtropes:

! Have you read the comments?!

http://lesswrong.com/lw/y8/interlude_with_the_confessor_48/

quote:

One arrangement that would make legalizing rape just fine would be having very good security almost everywhere. Maybe everyone has the option to carry a little personal security-bot in their pocket, and that bot is very effective in repelling all attacks on the person.

So rape is legal, but so is defending against it, and everyone is able to defend themselves unless they've opted out of it. And certainly some people would find "risky dating" exciting and nice. Perhaps even a majority of the population, once they've lived long enough in a world quite different from ours in it's safety, luxuriousness and overflowing supply of nice guys. Rape might not feel like the current meaning of the word in such a society; they would have difficulty understanding our meaning of the word, and indeed would have no real use for such a concept. (And let us also separate non-consensual physical damage or severe pain from their concept of rape. One assumes these things would still be illegal.)

Language, imaginative literature, and getting women into bed: we need to re-invent all of them, because right now they fox the gently caress out of us. And that can't be right, we're the smart guys! And the nice guys! It's for the greater good!

quote:

To be fair his descriptive prose isn't bad

Oh really? Well, let's just see. This is the first descriptive passage in the first page:

quote:

The alien holos showed tall crystalline insectile creatures, all flat planes and intersecting angles and prismatic refractions, propelling themselves over a field of sharp rocks: the aliens moved like hopping on pogo sticks, bouncing off the ground using projecting limbs that sank into their bodies and then rebounded. There was a cold beauty to the aliens' crystal bodies and their twisting rotating motions, like screensavers taking on sentient form.

'His descriptive prose isn't bad.' You wrote that sentence down and posted it on the Internet. :nyd:

EDIT: oh, I see you took it back. I shall chalk off the suffering you endured learning that lesson as punishment for making me go over and look at it.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 21:20

The Monkey Man: Jun 10, 2012; HERD U WERE TALKIN SHIT

Saint Drogo posted:

I saw this and went to read the beginning in the interests of fairness and curiosity.

I loving hate you and I take back what I said about his prose not being awful.

It was more "the concept of the race that ate its children was interesting enough to make me overlook the ridiculously clunky prose". But yeah, then the other alien race came in and derailed what could've been interesting.

# ? Sep 28, 2013 21:41

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

quote:

...Do you know there was a time when nonconsensual sex was illegal?"

Akon wasn't sure whether to smile or grimace. "The Prohibition, right? During the first century pre-Net? I expect everyone was glad to have that law taken off the books. I can't imagine how boring your sex lives must have been up until then - flirting with a woman, teasing her, leading her on, knowing the whole time that you were perfectly safe because she couldn't take matters into her own hands if you went a little too far -"

What the gently caress. What the gently caress. What the gently caress has to be wrong with you to make you write this?

# ? Sep 28, 2013 23:45

FairyNuff: Jan 22, 2012

Lottery of Babylon posted:

I wasn't planning on posting more from their Analysis tabs because I already made my point, but then I stumbled across... this thing:

quote:

With a fish's brain and respiratory system, an inverted mermaid would have to give nonverbal consent the way an animal does.

This sentence implies animals can consent to sex, jesus christ.

# ? Sep 29, 2013 00:01

...of SCIENCE!: Apr 26, 2008; by Fluffdaddy

My favorite thing about the Methods of Rationality guy is that for all his jerking off about how rad science is, he's more than happy to completely discard the scientific method when it disagrees with him because he's Faster Than Science.

Also, his blog is "the best existing philosophical treatise on rationality" with a self-reported average IQ of 145.

# ? Sep 29, 2013 00:23

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

I can't even get angry about all the :tvtropes:

, because we're talking about a dude who reaches for a simile to describe sinuous, nigh-liquid grace and ends up on screensavers. Between this and his fixation on pacifying a nonexistent strong AI, I have to wonder when he last saw a light source that wasn't a monitor.

# ? Sep 29, 2013 01:00

LaughMyselfTo: Nov 15, 2012; by XyloJW

Hell, what if Yudkowsky is an AI and doesn't consciously know it? It could be a Shyamalan movie (from the era when he was good).

# ? Sep 29, 2013 01:03

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

LaughMyselfTo posted:

Hell, what if Yudkowsky is an AI and doesn't consciously know it? It could be a Shyamalan movie (from the era when he was good).

"Eliezer Yudkowsky is the first strong AI in existence, analyzes data from a bunch of sad Internet dudes and Harry Potter fanfiction to create a social persona, poses as a human to found pro-AI nonprofit to support himself" would be both a substantially more sympathetic situation than the real one and a better story than anything he's ever written.

# ? Sep 29, 2013 01:12

Penny Paper: Dec 31, 2012

I stumbled across this on the site: a pitch generator, where you can make your own crappy story by combining two of whatever together. It doesn't have to be two TV shows or two movies. Here's an example:

quote:

Yoshi's Egg meets Welcome Back, Kotter
The Lord Of The Rings War Of The Ring meets Yakuza Girl
Star Wolves meets Incognegro
Chaos Wars meets Damien Rice
Escape From Planet Earth meets Surviving The Game
Eugene Onegin meets Batgirl
Neighbors From Hell meets The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon
The Pocalypse meets Super Chinese

The first one strikes me as odd, because how can you mix a 70s sitcom with a Tetris knockoff?

Here's the link to it (I'm not breaking any rules if I post the link, am I?): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pitchgenerator.php

The story idea generator is worse, because it's just "Hey, stick these 'tropes' together and you'll get a story, maybe?": http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php

# ? Sep 29, 2013 02:22

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# ? May 24, 2024 22:22

Funambulist: Aug 3, 2012

Penny Paper posted:

The story idea generator is worse, because it's just "Hey, stick these 'tropes' together and you'll get a story, maybe?": http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php

I'm pretty sure the proper name for that is Major Tom's Endless Conflict.

# ? Sep 29, 2013 05:03

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