JosephWongKS posted:

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

Deptfordx posted:

So i've been reading this, this weekend. Second to endorse this. If you have any knowledge of Dnd, especially 3rd editon this is a genuinally fun read.

quote:

His left hand rose and touched his scar.

What... exactly...

"You're a full wizard now," said Professor McGonagall. "Congratulations."

quote:

Harry nodded.

"And what do you think of the wizarding world?" said she.

"It's strange," Harry said. "I ought to be thinking about everything I've seen of magic... everything that I now know is possible, and everything I now know to be a lie, and all the work left before me to understand it. And yet I find myself distracted by relative trivialities like," Harry lowered his voice, "the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing." There didn't seem to be anyone nearby, but no point tempting fate.

Professor McGonagall ahemmed. "Really? You don't say."

Harry nodded. "Yes. It's just... odd. To find out that you were part of this grand story, the quest to defeat the great and terrible Dark Lord, and it's already done. Finished. Completely over with. Like you're Frodo Baggins and you find out that your parents took you to Mount Doom and had you toss in the Ring when you were one year old and you don't even remember it."

quote:

Professor McGonagall's smile had grown somewhat fixed.

"You know, if I were anyone else, anyone else at all, I'd probably be pretty worried about living up to that start. Gosh, Harry, what have you done since you defeated the Dark Lord? Your own bookshop? That's great! Say, did you know I named my child after you? But I have hopes that this will not prove to be a problem." Harry sighed. "Still... it's almost enough to make me wish that there were some loose ends from the quest, just so I could say that I really, you know, participated somehow."

"Oh?" said Professor McGonagall in an odd tone. "What did you have in mind?"

"Well, for example, you mentioned that my parents were betrayed. Who betrayed them?"

"Sirius Black," the witch said, almost hissing the name. "He's in Azkaban. Wizarding prison."

"How probable is it that Sirius Black will break out of prison and I'll have to track him down and defeat him in some sort of spectacular duel, or better yet put a large bounty on his head and hide out in Australia while I wait for the results?"

Professor McGonagall blinked. Twice. "Not likely. No one has ever escaped from Azkaban, and I doubt that he will be the first."

Harry was a bit sceptical of that "no one has ever escaped from Azkaban" line. Still, maybe with magic you could actually get close to a 100% perfect prison, especially if you had a wand and they did not. The best way to get out would be to not go there in the first place.

"All right then," Harry said. "Sounds like it's been nicely wrapped up." He sighed, scrubbing his palm over his head. "Or maybe the Dark Lord didn't really die that night. Not completely. His spirit lingers, whispering to people in nightmares that bleed over into the waking world, searching for a way back into the living lands he swore to destroy, and now, in accordance with the ancient prophecy, he and I are locked in a deadly duel where the winner shall lose and the loser shall win -"

Professor McGonagall's head swivelled, and her eyes darted around, as though to search the street for listeners.

"I'm joking, Professor," Harry said with some annoyance. Sheesh, why did she always take everything so seriously -

quote:

A slow sinking sensation began to dawn in the pit of Harry's stomach.

JosephWongKS posted:

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

fanfiction.net posted:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
By: Less Wrong
Petunia married a biochemist, and Harry grew up reading science and science fiction. Then came the Hogwarts letter, and a world of intriguing new possibilities to exploit. And new friends, like Hermione Granger, and Professor McGonagall, and Professor Quirrell... Ch. 117, Something to Protect: Minerva McGonagall.
Rated: Fiction T - English - Drama/Humor - Hermione G., Tom R. Jr. - Chapters: 117 - Words: 632,920 - Reviews: 28,811 - Favs: 15,540 - Follows: 14,292 - Updated: 13h ago - Published: Feb 28, 2010 - id: 5782108

quote:

Professor McGonagall looked at Harry with a calm expression. A very, very calm expression. Then a smile was put on. "Of course you are, Mr. Potter."

Aw crap.

If Harry had needed to formalise the wordless inference that had just flashed into his mind, it would have come out something like, 'If I estimate the probability of Professor McGonagall doing what I just saw as the result of carefully controlling herself, versus the probability distribution for all the things she would do naturally if I made a bad joke, then this behavior is significant evidence for her hiding something.'

But what Harry actually thought was, Aw crap.

Harry turned his own head to scan the street. Nope, no one nearby. "He's not dead, is he," Harry sighed.

"Mr. Potter -"

"The Dark Lord is alive. Of course he's alive. It was an act of utter optimism for me to have even dreamed otherwise. I must have taken leave of my senses, I can't imagine what I was thinking. Just because someone said that his body was found burned to a crisp, I can't imagine why I would have thought he was dead. Clearly I have much left to learn about the art of proper pessimism."

quote:

"Mr. Potter -"

"At least tell me there's not really a prophecy..." Professor McGonagall was still giving him that bright, fixed smile. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

"Mr. Potter, you shouldn't go inventing things to worry about -"

"Are you actually going to tell me that? Imagine my reaction later, when I find out that there was something to worry about after all."

quote:

Her fixed smile faltered.

Harry's shoulders slumped. "I have a whole world of magic to analyse. I do not have time for this."

Then both of them shut up, as a man in flowing orange robes appeared on the street and slowly passed them by; Professor McGonagall's eyes tracked him, unobtrusively. Harry's mouth was moving as he chewed hard on his lip, and someone watching closely would have noticed a tiny spot of blood appear.
When the orange-robed man had passed into the distance, Harry spoke again, in a low murmur. "Are you going to tell me the truth now, Professor McGonagall? And don't bother trying to wave it off, I'm not stupid."

"You're eleven years old, Mr. Potter!" she said in a harsh whisper.

"And therefore subhuman. Sorry... for a moment there, I forgot."

"These are dreadful and important matters! They are secret, Mr. Potter! It is a catastrophe that you, still a child, know even this much! You must not tell anyone, do you understand? Absolutely no one!"

quote:

As sometimes happened when Harry got sufficiently angry, his blood went cold, instead of hot, and a terrible dark clarity descended over his mind, mapping out possible tactics and assessing their consequences with iron realism.

Point out that you have a right to know: Failure. Eleven-year-old children do not have rights to know anything, in McGonagall's eyes.

Say that you will not be friends any more: Failure. She does not value your friendship sufficiently.

Point out that you will be in danger if you do not know: Failure. Plans have already been made based on your ignorance. The certain inconvenience of rethinking will seem far more unpalatable than the mere uncertain prospect of your coming to harm.

Justice and reason will both fail. You must either find something you have that she wants, or find something you can do which she fears...

Ah.

"Well then, Professor," Harry said in a low, icy tone, "it sounds like I have something you want. You can, if you like, tell me the truth, the whole truth, and in return I will keep your secrets. Or you can try to keep me ignorant so you can use me as a pawn, in which case I will owe you nothing."

McGonagall stopped short in the street. Her eyes blazed and her voice descended into an outright hiss. "How dare you!"

"How dare you! " he whispered back at her.

"You would blackmail me?"

petrol blue posted:

That or the author isn't very good at rationality :v:

Killstick posted:

Honest question: If the author had been someone else without the baggage of Less Wrong, would you still think harry was being portrayed as always being right and an author insert, or just as a flawed character?

anilEhilated posted:

Yes. Because he's trying to pull off a ten year old kid that understands Bayes without being affected by it in other ways. The author isn't making any effort to portray him as flawed - or sufficiently advanced in his area. Child prodigies exist but this one just comes out as halfassed.

Killstick posted:

Isn't he wrong about a bunch of things though, according to this thread? I don't actually know what Bayes theory is so it all goes over my head anyway, but i always figured that he had all this book-learned technical knowledge about a bunch of theories that he was more or less hopeless at applying to anything because he wasn't as smart as he thought. Hm, that does remind me of someone. I guess i can see the author insert point of view.

Mikl posted:

Maybe I missed something: what are McGonagall's secrets that Harry is threatening not to keep? Is there something specific, or is just "If I find out your secrets, I won't be under any obligation to not blab them around"?

my dad posted:

Huh, another Let's Read by JWKS, I wonder what this one is abou...

I don't think I'll be doing dramatic readings this time.

JosephWongKS posted:

It seems rather out of character for strict “rationalist” Harry to read the Lord of the Rings. Why would he deign to read a novel, one that’s not even sci-fi? What could this brilliant scientific child prodigal possibly learn from it?

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.

reignonyourparade posted:

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.

quote:

Harry's lips twisted. "I am offering you a favor. I am giving you a chance to protect your precious secret. If you refuse I will have every natural motive to make inquiries elsewhere, not to spite you, but because I have to know! Get past your pointless anger at a child who you think ought to obey you, and you'll realise that any sane adult would do the same! Look at it from my perspective! How would you feel if it was YOU? "

quote:

Harry watched McGonagall, observed her harsh breathing. It occurred to him that it was time to ease off the pressure, let her simmer for a while. "You don't have to decide right away," Harry said in a more normal tone. "I'll understand if you want time to think about my offer... but I'll warn you of one thing," Harry said, his voice going colder. "Don't try that Obliviation spell on me. Some time ago I worked out a signal, and I have already sent that signal to myself. If I find that signal and I don't remember sending it..." Harry let his voice trail off significantly.

McGonagall's face was working as her expressions shifted. "I... wasn't thinking of Obliviating you, Mr. Potter... but why would you have invented such a signal if you didn't know about -"

"I thought of it while reading a Muggle science-fiction book, and said to myself, well, just in case... And no, I won't tell you the signal, I'm not dumb."

quote:

"I hadn't planned to ask," McGonagall said. She seemed to fold in on herself, and suddenly looked very old, and very tired. "This has been an exhausting day, Mr. Potter. Can we get your trunk, and send you home? I will trust you not to speak upon this matter until I have had time to think. Keep in mind that there are only two other people in the whole world who know about this matter, and they are Headmaster Albus Dumbledore and Professor Severus Snape."

So. New information; that was a peace offering. Harry nodded in acceptance, and turned his head to look forward, and started walking again, as his blood slowly began to warm over once more.

"So now I've got to find some way to kill an immortal Dark Wizard," Harry said, and sighed in frustration. "I really wish you had told me that before I started shopping."

_________________________________________________________


The trunk shop was more richly appointed than any other shop Harry had visited; the curtains were lush and delicately patterned, the floor and walls of stained and polished wood, and the trunks occupied places of honor on polished ivory platforms. The salesman was dressed in robes of finery only a cut below those of Lucius Malfoy, and spoke with exquisite, oily politeness to both Harry and Professor McGonagall.

Harry had asked his questions, and had gravitated to a trunk of heavy-looking wood, not polished but warm and solid, carved with the pattern of a guardian dragon whose eyes shifted to look at anyone nearing it. A trunk charmed to be light, to shrink on command, to sprout small clawed tentacles from its bottom and squirm after its owner. A trunk with two drawers on each of four sides that each slid out to reveal compartments as deep as the whole trunk. A lid with four locks each of which would reveal a different space inside. And - this was the important part - a handle on the bottom which slid out a frame containing a staircase leading down into a small, lighted room that would hold, Harry estimated, around twelve bookcases.

If they made luggages like this, Harry didn't know why anyone bothered owning a house.

One hundred and eight golden Galleons. That was the price of a good trunk, lightly used. At around fifty British pounds to the Galleon, that was enough to buy a second-hand car. It would be more expensive than everything else Harry had ever bought in his whole life all put together.

Ninety-seven Galleons. That was how much was left in the bag of gold Harry had been allowed to take out of Gringotts.

Professor McGonagall wore a look of chagrin upon her face. After a long day's shopping she hadn't needed to ask Harry how much gold was left in the bag, after the salesman quoted his price, which meant the Professor could do good mental arithmetic without pen and paper. Once again, Harry reminded himself that scientifically illiterate was not at all the same thing as stupid.

i81icu812 posted:

LotR: Words: 455,125
Atlas Shrugged: Words: 561,996
War and Peace: Words: 587,287
All seven Harry Potter books: 1,084,170 Words

quote:

Adults don't respect me enough to really talk to me. And frankly, even if they did, they wouldn't sound as smart as Richard Feynman, so I might as well read something Richard Feynman wrote instead. I'm isolated, Professor McGonagall. I've been isolated my whole life. Maybe that has some of the same effects as being locked in a cellar. And I'm too intelligent to look up to my parents the way that children are designed to do.

Einander posted:

I'm really not getting how "this is a tract on the author's philosophy" and "Harry is a flawed and occasionally very dumb kid (with Mysterious Things that make him sometimes not act eleven)" are incompatible, which seems to be the working assumption here. He can talk the talk and still be poo poo at walking the walk--it's easy to know about blindspots, but that doesn't mean yours go away. This is a crazy common weakness among smart kids! Harry strikes me as kind of deliberately insufferable, and from reading later on, yeah, there's character development, so it's intentional. Right now a lot of this is just "Man, that Yud, so crazy" and "Wow, this is supposed to be a role model?" which is getting kind of repetitive. We know, man. We know.

Maybe just mostly stick to what's on the page and ignore the rest of it? It's actually fairly enjoyable if you do that. The author is pretty good at absurdist humor.

And I'm gonna defend that one particular freakout about her thinking Harry's parents might be abusive. I mean, it simultaneously
a) establishes that Harry's occasional not-eleven moments are totally intentional,
b) while also serving as a good example of him still being a stupid kid (that is one hell of a freakout),
c) establishes that Harry really does love his parents (important, considering his continual irritation at how adults never take him seriously),
and d) illustrates that McGonagall takes the welfare of her students very seriously.

That's not bad writercraft.

It'd all be better without the Teaching Moments grafted onto it, but this story is okay.

akulanization posted:

Except this whole chapter just makes me loath this stupid "kid." The problem is that Harry hasn't demonstrated at this point that he is actually a person to be respected, and every time he demands that everyone recognize his genius or whatever it just drives in how little I like or respect this character. Going and threatening an adult who has been nothing but kind to him and has demonstrated that she cares about his wellbeing is the action of a sociopath; this character doesn't have a bit of charisma, or an ounce of wonder or fun that would make me tolerate what a slimy pile of poo poo he is.

Also, I think you're wrong. Harry's not-eleven moments are widely divided into two types, his "cold rage" or whatever and the times where he simply fails to act like a kid or even a scientist. There is no wonder or discovery in this child getting a vista into a world that fundamentally alters what he knows about reality. A child would be amazed, and a scientist would probably be trying to get help figuring out a way to unify the two perspectives. The thing about Harry is that he is an arrogant, asocial, joyless, petty, lying, manipulative, self absorbed prick to the point I think he needs to be locked away; not all of that can be laid at the feet of a plot twist. In fact I bet that the author doesn't see most of those qualities, Harry in this scene is supposed to come across as righteous, if overzealous, and also competent. I don't see him that way, it feels like he pulled something about memory tampering that he should have had no knowledge of before today out of his rear end, and I hate how he's trying to bully someone because they don't instantly recognize he's the bestest, smartest eleven year old in history.

Me? No, I love monkeys, why do you ask? posted:

Harlow et al. reported that partial isolation resulted in various abnormalities such as blank staring, stereotyped repetitive circling in their cages, and self-mutilation. These monkeys were then observed in various settings.

Added Space posted:

This story is crap and and our hero is an insufferable douchebag.

petrol blue posted:

To be exactingly fair: this Harry is closer to a real Rationalist than Rowling's Harry is to someone kept in a cupboard under the stairs:



Yud doesn't accept your argument that Rowling was writing a kids' adventure story and not a torture/horror story.

Eliezer Yudkowsky posted:

I would like any readers who think that HPMOR deserves it sufficiently, and who are attending or supporting the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcon, to next year, nominate Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos. Whether you then actually vote for HPMOR as Best Novel is something I won’t request outright, since I don’t know what other novels will be competing in 2016. After all the nominees are announced, look over what’s there and vote for what you think is best.

I decided long ago that once HPMOR was fully written and published, I would try to get in touch with J. K. Rowling to see if HPMOR could be published in book form, maybe as HJPEV and the Methods of Rationality, with all profits accruing to a UK charity. I’m not getting my hopes up, but I do have a rule telling me to try rather than automatically giving up and assuming something can’t be done. If any reader thinks they can put me in touch with J. K. Rowling, or for that matter Daniel Radcliffe, regarding this matter, I do hereby ask them to contact me at yudkowsky@gmail.com.

Cryophage posted:

Night10194 posted:

Ahahahahahahaha! I'd love to see what a normal editor would do to his insane shitpile, let alone the copyright clusterfuck.

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.

Cryophage posted:

Cryophage posted:

petrol blue posted:

Again, having not been exposed to LW, the second paragraph seems pretty decent to me: "I did a big thing that a ton of nerds love, lets see if we can raise some charity cash with it" is a statement I find hard to mock.

It's like Yud has the same sudden shifts Harry does, lurching from 'rationalist' joyless ubermensch to kinda-decent-dork. Funny that.