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"

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Saw thread, was inspired to go back, apparently he's actually posting the final arc.

Yet another case of "reasonable concept Yud hosed up" - the Voldemort/Harry prophecy bit is kind of cool, in that Voldemort hosed up trying to overwrite Harry with Tom Riddle's personality, like the diary Horcrux, to kill him, and so the Marauder's Map shows them both as "Tom M. Riddle" and that's what's up with Harry's brain and poo poo... but, you know, handled incredibly poorly.

But then it's more jacking off, I think. I skipped a bunch. Some kind of exposition where they all tell each other how smart they are and poo poo. I really want all the time I spent actually reading this poo poo to pay off and I'm certain it won't

# ¿ Feb 23, 2015 02:38

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 19:19

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Added Space posted:

From the latest chapter:

Guys I don't think he likes us.

I prefer to believe he doesn't like himself.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2015 05:35

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

reignonyourparade posted:

The author claims to suffer from it (at least until his buddies in a "we'll look through really early stage medical research because you don't trust the mainstream opinion on your condition" service he was hawking figured out he should just take sleeping pills a couple hours earlier than the last time he'd tried taking sleeping pills.)

Oh man, I remember that service. Did they ever make a single dime?

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 21:34

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Vateke posted:

Until recently, I was a pretty big fan of MoR. Then I found this thread and read that guy's blog that went through ti chapter by chapter. It opened my eyes to a lot of the lovely stuff rampant throughout the story. I still think it has some pretty good moments, and Yud has decent writing ability, but, uh, yeah. I'm not as big of a fan as I was.

Then I binge read Harry Potter and the Natural 20, and I'm really hoping I'm not making the same mistake, because I freaking love it. It has one particular parallel to MoR that I found interesting. Milo (the D&D character) shares a trait with "rational" Harry: They both refer to unimportant people as "NPCs". However, Milo comes about it from a much less arrogant background (coming from a world where that's just literally how things work). And, more importantly, he has actual character development and gradually stops acting like the world solely exists for him to exploit. Whereas, after reading MoR, I can't think of any way in which Harry significantly grew, except for him explicitly saying he's learned a lesson somehow without actually demonstrating it.

Also, the central premise (character that functions according to D&D3.5 is stuck in Harry Potter land) actually pays off continually and in a satisfying way. The premise for MoR (apply science to magic!) barely pays off at all, and is basically dropped after only a handful of experiments.

I can also confess to enjoying Natural 20. Not least because the important Muggle character actually acts like a Muggle would. I keep expecting her plot to make me be like "no, you idiot", but she's been very rational and her reactions and plans have all made sense.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 18:33

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

was this the part where Harry figured out he should distract Mad-Eye Moody with a spell that makes a bunch of invisible lights because he can still see them with his magic eye

that was an actually clever bit of logic that I enjoyed

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 17:11

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Pvt.Scott posted:

What the even gently caress is hedonic awareness? Jizzing in your pants because you�re just so smart and observant? I guess Stephen King was right; write what you know.

gotta remember it's Big Yud Gibberish(tm)

it's probably being aware of the things that modify your hedonic levels, i.e. figuring out what is making you happy/unhappy and why

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:38

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Stroth posted:

Sati is part of a religion and therefore ~~retarded~~ not rational.

This is obviously totally different because Yud said so.

this is what I was implying yes

# ¿ Apr 19, 2018 21:49

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Cardiovorax posted:

It's rather amazing how that actually ends up making Voldemort the hero of the story, seeing how it has been mentioned multiple times that the end of the story apparently involves Voldie making Harriezer swear not to destroy the world. It's like this story is a deconstruction of itself and never even noticed.

not only does he make him swear an Unbreakable Vow to not destroy the world, it literally comes up like one day later in-universe that he would have almost done it

# ¿ May 2, 2018 22:02

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Tunicate posted:

https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/994385777248296960

this owns so hard

now Weird Al should release a Roko's Basilisk-themed Grimes parody

(please don't Weird Al I have too much respect for you but also would not be surprised if you were a goon)

# ¿ May 11, 2018 20:16

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

...well, I didn't know Yud hadn't gone to high school. I just assumed he had half a B.A. in Business or something under his belt.

# ¿ May 16, 2018 20:48

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Jazerus posted:

if you count dying of old age and then being revived by mormon space magic, anyway

wait, was that peter? i can't recall really

Eoth, Ender like, splits off via Mormon space magic into a young version of each and then withers away and dies or something.

# ¿ May 22, 2018 12:54

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Dabir posted:

my dude have you seen today

The last two words of that post are "tried to". Like, even with the failures of actual denazification in Western Germany the Death Eaters still reintegrated into regular wizard society way more.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2018 20:27

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Ichabod Sexbeast posted:

Mostly because nobody wants to read Harry Potter and the Treaty of Wizard Maastricht.

it's me I wanna read that

Cardiovorax posted:

I must admit, I have wondered sometimes just how the occasional German exchange student (or merely immigrant) would feel about all those British wizard Himmlers and G�rings running around freely while their spawn can freely pontificate about the racial failings of the Unterwizard in a public schol that's purportedly equally open to everyone.

Well, Krum gets mad enough to be rude about A Literal Swastika on Xenophilius Lovegood's hat (even though it's also the symbol of the Deathly Hallows), so presumably it's exactly like America pre-2016 where the actual symbol is gauche but the rear end in a top hat racists are just good ol' boys.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 01:31

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

21 Muns posted:

If I recall correctly, his whole "for the greater good" slogan meant that he had a sort of White Man's Burden approach to Muggles, where wizards needed to reign over Muggles for their own good. I also think he was propping up the Nazi regime - probably not out of sympathy to their ideology, but as an expedient approach to destabilizing the Muggle world and getting its power conglomerated in a single place that could easily be taken over by wizards.

It's strongly implied he was (because Dumbledore beat him in '45)

He also built an inescapable magic prison (although we don't know anyone who's locked in Nurmengard except Grindelwald himself) but the documentation in the books proper is thin about him.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2018 22:57

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Cardiovorax posted:

They're very much treated as parallels to each other, but I think Rowling has better taste than to make Grindelwald literally responsible for Hitler. It's disrespectful to reduce the greatest atrocity in living human history to something the people who perpetrated it weren't even really responsible for, because wizards mind-controlled them or something.

Personally, I got the impression that Grindelwald is more an amalgamation of early 20th-century fascism as per Franco, Mussolini and Hitler in equal measure. He happened at the same time as the rest because the same social and economic issues were hitting the wizards for much the same reasons.

I don�t think he was actively responsible, just a strong supporter. Honestly, if Rowling had ever bothered to go into it I bet there would have been things like ties to the Thule Society and existing crazy Nazi esotericism and all that.

But I don�t think your second paragraph is necessarily true. The wizard economy in modern Britain is completely decoupled from the Muggle economy. Who�s to say if the worldwide depression had any impact at all on people who can summon (though not create) food and fly across countries and so on? Wizards hardly do poo poo all day at their actual jobs that we see, maybe the unemployment rate is pushing zero even in crisis.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2018 18:50

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Crimpolioni posted:

She never said this, but it's kinda interesting how it's survived as a 'fact' for years and years because people enjoy the idea that she must have done , and keep repeating it

I figure people misremember the scene from 3 where they say they told the public that Sirius Black has a gun, a �kind of Muggle wand�, and human memory does the rest.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2018 09:17

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Dalris Othaine posted:

Men'o'war?

Mans�o�war?

# ¿ Aug 19, 2018 15:46

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Tiggum posted:

The Voldemort persona was supposed to be a trial run for his real plan, but people are just so dumb and so goddamn crazy that he ended up being ridiculously successful and had to move his plans forward. And Voldemort kept winning because of how dumb everyone else is.

In a very minor defense of Big Yud, this part right here makes complete sense.

Voldemort is dumb as gently caress and should not have had half the success he had, etc.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 00:46

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Given what Ron does with parseltongue in canon, sure, why not.

Doesn't he just try various ways of mimicing what Harry said to open the Chamber until it's close enough to correct that the Chamber opens?

(clearly Salazar Slytherin expected there to be a descendant with an accent)

# ¿ Mar 27, 2019 14:24

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Yeah, which is why the idea of some built-in autocorrect makes sense from a certain point of view.

Oh! You meant the autocorrect was in Parseltongue itself rather than the Chamber's entrance enchantment. I instinctively thought "well Ron doesn't speak actual Parseltongue, so it's the Chamber cutting him a break".

# ¿ Mar 29, 2019 12:11

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Liquid Communism posted:

I mean, you have Moody stumping around with magical prosthetics that are effective upgrades.

Why didn't Moody get himself a second magic eye? I mean, constant vigilance! Literally constant!

# ¿ Apr 8, 2019 14:14

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Someone should link it to spare the rest of us having to dig for it, though :v:

# ¿ Apr 18, 2019 03:17

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

I, too, desire to be friends with the magical boy.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2019 01:51

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Jazerus posted:

lockhart did it to himself, but he was literally a master of memory modification even if he sucked real bad at everything else

Also Lockhart did it by accident, with a wand exploding in his face, so even if it's possible presumably it requires a combination of talent and a lot of raw uncontrolled magical power that nobody's going to willingly experiment with.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2019 14:32

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Cardiovorax posted:

"An extraordinarily complicated and impractical way to do something very simple" seems to describe most of his ideas, really.

and his sex life heyoooo

# ¿ Jun 9, 2019 12:02

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Anil Dasharez0ne posted:

A subject I dearly wish I knew less about.

I was fully prepared for this spoiler to not be nearly as funny as it was, oh my god that's literally perfect

# ¿ Jun 20, 2019 12:34

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Stroth posted:

I mean, the whole thing was kicked off in support of a woman who killed herself with the express intent of using her suicide as a weapon against sexual abusers in the rationalist community.

Maybe a little respect.

Man, every loving time I read this I start off feeling really bad about the community (which will not make me not laugh at a well timed math pets joke because I am a horrible person) and then like, halfway through it morphs into feeling really bad she didn't get help, because she actively killed herself because, basically, she wasn't willing to get therapy and reject the cesspool. And sure, she dressed that up in fancy words like "nepethe" that I had to google, but the narrative is literally that therapy didn't work for her so she stopped trying and got burned out and was not willing to be a SJW. And that's a verbatim quote on that last one, she literally said "social justice warrior" and how hosed up is it that she thought fighting against Big Yud and co was a loving politicized issue?

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 12:20

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Cardiovorax posted:

Almost as sad as the fact that there are people in the world who would say "I would literally rather be abused and kill myself than not be a chud" and mean it.

Exactly. I just... like, what she did was, from her perspective, rational, and that is all it takes for me to reject the rationalist movement without reading a word from every one of those idiots that I've read far too many words from.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 12:26

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

I have to admit, the idea that the Defense Against The Dark Arts Professor position is cursed so you learn from them and then the students teach themselves is kind of clever. That could be good in the right authorial hands.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 02:01

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Doctor Spaceman posted:

It's what happens in the 5th book with Dumbledore's Army.

Unless

half the joke, half that JKR also isn't really the right hands

(but mostly :thejoke:

because Yud never read the books)

# ¿ Jul 3, 2019 13:47

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

is "kismesis" the act of creating kismet, or what

edit: wait, best novel Hugo? not some category like "best fanfiction"?!

DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Aug 19, 2019

# ¿ Aug 19, 2019 11:57

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

I did not like Worm but everyone who isn't me seems to, should I give it another shot when the author is done with the remastered-or-whatever edition

like it had some okay ideas but in general the execution felt lacking and the buildup to the climax made no sense

# ¿ Aug 19, 2019 12:55

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Dabir posted:

Yud didn't come up with that, sex pest Roko did. Yud just uncritically bought into it and banned all discussion of it from his cult to stop it "infecting" people.

excuse me if you know anything about timeless decision theory you'll know that Yud knowing it in the future is the only way Roko invented it in the past

please god tell me this joke was close enough to true to work so I don't have to do any more research

# ¿ Aug 19, 2019 20:51

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

* - in a world where a multi-dimensional god-creature whose name nobody paid enough attention to pronounce correctly and a nigh-omnipotent Illuminati basically work together to make everyone act out comic book tropes.

sorry had to add a bit there because it makes me laugh every time I remember that there was a genuine plot point that it was Zion, not Scion or whatever

# ¿ Aug 20, 2019 12:09

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 19:19

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

at least it'll always do what you tell it

# ¿ Sep 13, 2019 11:08

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