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

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

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Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I can't wait until we find out Quirrel is just a Hard Man who makes Hard Choices and sees in Harry a kindred spirit.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 08:43

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:41

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

SolTerrasa posted:

Yudkowsky once said he'd be willing to get a PhD from a prestigious institution if they'd allow him to skip all classes and tests and just defend a dissertation.

I would love to see that dissertation defense. I think he'd kill his committee with the laughter.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 09:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I don't know, it would involve finishing something AND submitting it to people who aren't cultists that will shower him with acclaim. He'd never do that.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 22:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

JosephWongKS posted:

If you are going to break so many rules of the canon for your narrative convenience, why not just create a new setting altogether?

Because then it wouldn't be as useful as a cult tract, because Harry Potter Fanfiction has a huge built in audience and is easy to get wide exposure with.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 04:29

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

"Well, of course she might be better than me at learning, but I can still make the Hard Choices and she can't, so I'm still the prodigy." :smuggo:

That's what I'm getting from this poo poo.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2015 18:12

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

JosephWongKS posted:

I�m not sure if Quirrell�s public highlighting of Malfoy�s manipulativeness is doing Malfoy�s reputation any good.

Remember that in this story, being manipulative consists entirely of going 'Hello, I am very intelligent and I am extremely clever and manipulative. Look how manipulated you are.' And then another character going 'Oh no! He's manipulating me! I better manipulate back!'

# ¿ Oct 22, 2015 08:50

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I mean, Draco isn't nearly as smart or good at reading people as the story thinks he is. No-one is. The idea that the super clever nerd can make everyone do whatever he wants is a huge fantasy for guys like Yud.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2015 20:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

JosephWongKS posted:

Wasn�t Eliezarry complaining earlier this chapter that �There couldn't possibly be anything he could master on the first try which would baffle Hermione, and if there was and it turned out to be broomstick riding instead of anything intellectual, Harry would just die�? Why is he now taking pride in being athletic or being good at physical activities?

What matters to him is being good at it. He didn't expect to be good with a broom so he pre-soured those grapes. If he thinks he's good at anything, even if it's something he poo poo on earlier, he'll strut like crazy.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 03:19

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think by 'held him off' Dumbledore is referring to leading the fight against Voldemort and trying to defend Britain from his onslaught, not to the literal battle that killed him.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2015 08:41

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tunicate posted:

Magical ability is canonically a dominant gene, as well.

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

I always figured Quidditch was how it was to make it perfect for a YA novel sports scene, which would also be a perfectly acceptable explanation as well.

This one is way better, though. Where did you find it?

# ¿ Jan 8, 2016 19:15

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

It's pretty hilarious that fanfiction is what he thinks of as 'grown up'. :allears:

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 01:51

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

JosephWongKS posted:

Why does Eliezarry make so many references to gaming terminology? Didn�t he spend all his free time reading books? Was it mentioned earlier on that he was a regular CRPG player on top of being an avid reader?

He mentioned he never got to play (that would have involved social activity) but loved reading the sourcebooks.

Also, when thinking about the hilarious naivety of his Slytherin voice, remember this is the story where manipulation is done by going 'Well hello, I am going to manipulate you now! I am so very clever.' and responded to with 'Oh my gosh, he's so dangerous and clever! But I'm being manipulated!'

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 06:06

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Pvt.Scott posted:

I've heard 40 YO dudes getting paid barely more than minimum wage working three jobs to keep their kids fed tell me about the evils of unions and welfare programs. Hearing anti-union stuff from a kid might be refreshing because I can at least pretend their ignorance comes from lack of experience.

poo poo, when I got hired at Walmart, the first thing they made me do was watch a video about the evils of unions, after which they made it clear that even talking about unions in any capacity while employed by Walmart was grounds for immediate termination. In an at-will employment state, this was not an idle threat.

Did they actually hire Pinkertons to come in and smash up your workspace a little if you talk about such things? As a warning? Because that's some gilded age poo poo.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 15:08

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Plus, guys like Yud look at the explanations for the world that older peoples came up with and go 'Oh how stupid' instead of being able to put themselves in those peoples' shoes. Coming up with an explanation for phenomena or learning your way around a complex or dangerous lifestyle at all is still a sign of reasoning and intelligence, even if it turns out that people with 2000 years of hindsight and generations upon generations of people building on doing what you're doing can say you were incorrect. The ancients were just as smart as we were. And just as dumb. Because they were human.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 17:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Don't forget he believes we'll find a way around thermodynamics solely because he really, really wants to believe he'll be immortal.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 16:12

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I thought it was his brother who died suddenly and tragically and probably gave him his thanatophobia?

I can't help but pity the guy often. I make fun of his terrible ideas and I hate that he cons people out of their money, but it's got to be a sad life to be so terribly, terribly afraid of death at all moments.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 16:35

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Zonekeeper posted:

Don't know if it was intentional, but this is pretty much word for word Dumbledore's attitude toward Voldemort in the actual books.

Given a certain plot twist that happens later in the story involving his self insert, this is oddly poetic.

I stopped at like book 4 so it's not intentional, but that's hilarious.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2016 16:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

uncleskeleton posted:

How does Eliezarry suddenly know the intricacies of Malfoy/Snape and Malfoy/Dumbledore's relationship?

The same way the 'supersmart' guy in every lovely sci-fi novel does: The author gave him the script ahead of time.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 14:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Xander77 posted:

I get that Yud has really weird ideas about what science is, but how and why would Harriezer - the son of an actual scientist - would grow up thinking that science "started" during the Enlightenment?

Isn't Yud ALSO the son of an actual scientist, while still having his insane ideas?

# ¿ Jan 3, 2017 20:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cavelcade posted:

He appeals to some smart people by giving them an internal justification for feeling superior to those around them. He's also pretty good at arguing a point if you don't know much about the subject matter. And from there it's a cult - sorry, phyg - of personality where people talk about the intellectual biases of others while ignoring the way they commit them themselves. It's not particularly interesting, but it is pretty funny.

Edit: To be fair, calling it a cult might be slightly unfair. It has cultlike attributes but I don't think that straightup makes it a cult.

I mean we prefer to use the term 'emerging religion' now rather than Cult because it's considered too pejorative in a modern context but once you've got a firm vision of apocalypse, resurrection of the dead, eternal life, salvation, and even damnation in among your belief system it's fine to call it a religion.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 15:33

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Qwertycoatl posted:

Of course, Harry's super transfiguration power works fine with his pop-sci understanding of physics. No need to actually put in the effort learning how to solve the equations (or even to know what the equations are).

It's not an isolated incident - later on in the fic he gets another superpower because magic rewards ~rationality~ without requiring him to actually know how to do anything.

Yud really, really wants this to be true and so writes a fictional world where it is, I think.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 01:45

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Stanfield posted:

If I remember from having read Quidditch Through the Ages over a decade ago, it started with just trying to catch the Snitch and they added all the other stuff later. And since wizards in Harry Potter are staunch traditionalists, it was never changed.

I mean this sincerely: One of the most charming things about the wizards of Harry Potter is that they are incredible dumbasses.

Just endless bumbling and shuffling into fascist regimes and all.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2017 05:59

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Pvt.Scott posted:

If I learned anything from the Men in Black movie and tabletop RPG, it's that the hot sheets (tabloids) are the thing to watch for real news. The nonsense poo poo is a smokescreen and pays the bills. Isn't it the National Enquirer known for a pretty flawless record of breaking huge affair scandals before anyone else even got a whiff of it?

It did this exactly once but it likes to say it has that thing, yes.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 22:15

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Exercu posted:

Like previously, the explanation for, say, earthquakes, would have been "Probably Hephaestus smithing again". Thales had his own explanation (the earth is a disc encased in water, and waves in that water sometimes rocks the earth). While it's absurdly wrong by our standards, what's notable is that it's an explanation that CAN be wrong, because it's naturalistic.

The thing is, Yud basically believes a sufficiently intelligent person will arrive at brilliant ideas instantly and a-priori. He talks a big game about the scientific method, but at heart he believes ~rationalism~ with a sufficiently intelligent character or person will just get things right immediately most of the time. So to him what would matter is that this was wrong, not that it could be wrong and that that represented a big step forward in the explanation of natural phenomena.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 14:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cavelcade posted:

The cult of Bayes - Bayesfu? something like that - short story he wrote is the ultimate condensed version of this. His characters talk about how much Einstein sucked to not just come up with the correct formulation for Quantum Relativity - he should have just assumed it was possible and then done it.

God he's annoying.

It has a really obvious source, of course.

That's how bad sci-fi and fantasy authors write Smart Characters; they have the next 15 pages of the script, are conversant and masterful in every academic discipline, and are never, ever wrong. So that's what Yud thinks smart looks like.

# ¿ Mar 21, 2017 19:10

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Mazerunner posted:

cause Harry's a goober who just does the minimum, Hermione's an over-achiever who looked ahead for useful or neat things

Elizarry should be like Hermione, just gobbling up every spell and tidbit of information he can get his hands on, but he'd prefer to wank off over how smart he is.

To him, someone who has to work at it isn't actually smart.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2017 01:33

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Xander77 posted:

Now now. We all know that wizards have no sense of right and wrong, and adults in the HP-verse endanger children constantly.

I mean, wasn't that meant to be part of the point of the books? That the adults have all these wise assurances that 'no no, wizard hitler won't be back' but at the end of the day most of them roll right over for him for the same reasons they did the last time, and once again leave it to children to be in horrible danger to save their sorry asses?

# ¿ Jul 9, 2017 15:04

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:41

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tiggum posted:

Slytherin himself seems to have basically agreed with the other founders of Hogwarts except on the issue of Muggle-borns being allowed in. So the "blood purity" thing was in there right from the beginning, but it's not the only thing Slytherin cared about and it stopped being an official criterion when he left. Otherwise the house basically favours leadership traits. Basically he wanted to foster strong leaders for the magical community and he just happened to think that "pure blood" was one of the things a good leader needed. Also, there are several canon examples of good guys who are/were in Slytherin and bad guys who aren't/weren't.

So, Wizard KKK from the start, then.

# ¿ May 17, 2018 19:19

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

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