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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JosephWongKS posted:

So why was Harry so reluctant to trust McGonagall or the other adults in the previous chapters?

Because now he's recruiting lackies. Helping Neville find his toad in some trivial fashion doesn't reduce HIS power or position. It might gain him a flunky.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2015 05:46

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 04:37

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Pavlov posted:

I room with a chinese guy, and he could never figure out what flavor oriental was trying to be.

I think it was going for a soy sauce ramen kind of thing.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2015 19:18

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"I wouldn't get offended if they said I was an Occidental. Why are they offended over Oriental?"

# ¿ Apr 5, 2015 06:24

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Once again we receive the lesson that the Rationalist thing to do is seek for power and the suppression of your enemies (and the latter is really just a form of power). It would seem that rationally speaking, scientific inquiry is a waste of time, save when it serves the quest for Power.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2015 18:40

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SSNeoman posted:

This doesn't seem rational or scientific.

What would be rational would be to extort the maximal information possible out of the Hat and then destroy it. Surely once he's rationally determined the nature of magic, Harry can either create a new one, or a giant computer that does it through Bayesian reasoning. You also cut off a supporting trunk of this horrible irrational society, making them vulnerable - weaker, more easily suborned to his will. His rational, Enlightenment will.

I suppose it might be polite to set the hat up to break after the sorting concludes. That would both hide his tracks and would avoid creating dreadful enemies with everyone whose last name comes after Potter.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2015 20:50

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I wonder if he's done something snotty to the effect of 'the fanfic is always better than the original anyway'

# ¿ Apr 10, 2015 17:37

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It is interesting, in a way, that this version of Harry - who did not grow up being, at best, neglected and belittled - is a shitload more prone to threaten and blackmail people. Like, not even dark or generalized ones, or threatening to never be someone's friend or whatever.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 18:20

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Night10194 posted:

I'm not seeing why he shouldn't be in Slytherin. He's much more interested in power and leverage than knowledge. Knowledge is a means to an end for him, nothing more.

Yeah if he's trying to get across the idea that a life based entirely on Rational Inquiry (tm, c) makes you a weirdo with delusions of grandeur, he is succeeding wildly.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 20:47

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Night10194 posted:

He's not, though. He has the inclination, but not the ability.

Hufflepuff would actually give him the most terrifying power to unleash his personally vaunted 'potential.' He might not have some theoretical maximum of academic excellence but he could learn how to manipulate and lead people.

Gryffindor probably also same deal, but he's likely going to go "ew jocks, lol sportsball."

He'd probably be insufferable in Ravenclaw. Slytherin would probably be the best option as he'd become a useless piece of self-congratulating wank, playing silly buggers with Draco Malfoy etc. until Voldemort showed up and enslaved him or whatever.

He will probably go to Gryffindor because that's how the original book went though.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 05:28

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Thanks to wrestling I keep envisioning Adrian Neville, the wrestler guy, as the one who Harry picked on.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2015 17:49

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Good call for the hat, he's more likely to climb up his own rear end in a top hat and never emerge in Ravenclaw whereas in Griffindor he'd possibly abuse people into following him.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2015 07:28

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Pavlov posted:

"What! Humans would be a horrible power source! Don't these machines even know the basic laws of physics?"
"And where did you learn about physics Neo?"
"In... the Matrix. gently caress."

Yeah, I'm going to give Yud this: that particular little snippet was an authentically good piece of micro-fiction.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 17:34

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Hilari-tea. Where's my scam sauce fanfic money, internet?

# ¿ May 3, 2015 20:00

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You laugh but there do seem to be a bunch of people who obsessively read lousy fanfiction just because it's there. I'm not sure if it's the price point being low or the fact that it's more of their Favorite Thing, but that's a story for another day really.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2015 03:15

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I hope it's Fred and George loving with this total weirdo Ron told them he saw.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 08:33

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chrisoya posted:

That isn't nearly stupid enough for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Right, it's a sensible and logical evolution of the characters and setting which could perhaps lead in interesting directions, so obviously it's going to be the ghost of Bayes or some poo poo.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2015 09:33

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I wouldn't compare MIRI to Scientology. Scientologists raided the FBI and cut an album - they may be maniacs but they have courage. What has MIRI done besides ask Silicon Valley for money?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2015 19:52

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And so, Harry Potter learned the same lesson Master did after Blaster's death.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2015 07:54

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The Time Dissolver posted:

Hitler's paintings weren't any good though so you still shouldn't profess to enjoy them.

If only Hitler had been pulled out of school and put on a 26-hour sleep schedule while mainlining pure rationality!

# ¿ Jul 12, 2015 21:08

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While he's executing it poorly I will give some credit to the idea of a well-read, bright child encountering various Life Lesson Moments and finding out that the solutions may work, but have to be earned, not just willed. You could probably do something with that. It's a sort of double twist.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2015 10:18

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Night10194 posted:

We're going to get into that kind of stuff more in this later, but a common theme in his work is that super smart people should hide all dangerous ideas from the simple, normal folk, as if scientists were a cabal of secret wizards.

And I'm guessing it's more in the way of "THIS DARK ART MUST BE HIDDEN, SAVE FROM THE BEISU-TSUKAI" rather than "Maybe this revolutionary new innovation should be kinda dribbled out over a few years, so we can see if it's going to gently caress things up and to avoid putting a million people out of work by next Friday."

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 18:44

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Dabir posted:

I shall choose to believe McGonagall is being really sarcastic, there's a drat good reason why Time Turners are so fragile and she doesn't feel like explaining it to the most annoying 11 year old in history.

Well that would suggest she or other wizards came to a sensible conclusion based on experience and that is impossible because she is not The Product of an Enlightenment Culture, despite having the privilege of not being, you know, a Dum-Blood.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 08:54

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pentyne posted:

On that wiki article there isn't a single link to medical blog or any reputable medical journal. That should be a good indication of it as a sham.

Sounds like you've been brainwashed by the legacy medical system. Perhaps we could interest you in some nootropics?

# ¿ Jul 29, 2015 22:45

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Hyper Crab Tank posted:

The anthropic thing is basically just a refutation of the admittedly inane answer that "I would have remembered hearing about that." The chance of time turners destroying the world could be enormous - it might be that there are a million universes lying in ruin because of irresponsible time turner usage for every universe that is still in one piece - and you still wouldn't know for sure because according to the anthropic principle, your universe has to be one of the ones that haven't been destroyed no matter how likely or unlikely the event is, because you're here having this conversation about it. Not having heard about the universe blowing up is not, on its own, not reassuring.

But it's still pretty dumb, because you have to assume people have been using time-turners before in this universe more than a few times. In fact, if you're giving them out to children, it's reasonable to assume they've been in active use by non-children for much longer, so there is (presumably) a pile of supporting evidence that time-turnerss don't, in fact, destroy the world, and Harry just doesn't possess the evidence required to reject McGonagall's assertions about them. Besides which, why are we jumping straight to universe-destroying cataclysms anyway? Surely there's a spectrum of potential ill effects. We don't have to assume the worst straight away.

I would call Harry's tendency to freak out over poorly-understood magical phenomena a deliberate character flaw, except I don't think it ever gets addressed in any way.

I think it makes perfect sense but not in the way Big Yud intends. Harry is essentially, in this story, a young but very clever child who has been taught scientific knowledge as a sort of received wisdom, which is no less the received wisdom for having been derived from experimental observation, gently digested into scientific literature. As such, when he sees McGonagall turn into a cat, his reaction isn't "That's impossible! How the hell did you do that?" - nor was it skepticism that she'd actually done it, if I remember (which couldn't be sustained forever, but would be justified in the face of one or two magic tricks.)

No, he acts like he's just found out Jesus didn't die on the cross, and instead went to France and knocked up Mary Magdalene, because to him it is a similar faith-shattering revelation.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2015 02:31

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So what happened to the kid who got the top sixth-grader SAT score?

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 19:55

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I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2015 18:19

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anilEhilated posted:

Just pointing out that giving money to a charity that gives a share of it to MIRI is a stupid idea when there's lots of uncontaminated ones around.

I think he's saying more "this population of people include some who give to MIRI but far more who give to malaria" rather than referring to a single charitable trust or something.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2015 10:44

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anilEhilated posted:

Makes one wonder what is it that forces fanfiction authors to write books you can clobber cows with. I guess they just don't plan the whole story beforehand so they keep extending it?

Lack of editing, enjoying what they're doing... if you knock out a thousand words in a night, they soon mount up, sir. They soon mount up.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2015 10:23

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Qwertycoatl posted:

It comes up now and again in his other writing. Eliezer really loves the idea that science should be a super-secret mystery cult. Apparently it would make everyone respect it much more. (And it wouldn't slow down progress, because apparently a Rationalist Bayes-fu Master could invent relativity in a couple of weeks)

It's funny isn't it how all these people's visions of society tend to put themselves or people in their fields in charge? I mean the only ideology I can think of where it isn't explicit is various strains of Marxism and even there it did happen in practice. But at least they weren't advertising it as a loving feature

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 22:28

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my dad posted:

Battlefield Earth felt the same way to me. It wasn't until I first heard about Scientologists that I realized the writer was being serious.

You know, there's quite a bit of similarity between Yud and Ron Hubbard. Or, I guess, any other cult of the writer egomaniac.

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

# ¿ Sep 1, 2015 23:31

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So what the gently caress can you use this stupid dire doomspell for, then? I mean Jesus.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 09:06

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Night10194 posted:

I think reading a ton of fanfiction about the books to be able to write a cult tract is actually notably worse than just reading some fantasy novels for fun.

But what if it's fanfics... for mature audiences :smugdog:

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 17:42

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Cingulate posted:

This does not follow.

Why not? Grownups shouldn't be reading books for kids, right? Presumably this means the adult authors of those books are whatever terms of abuse you want to heap on 'em.

I mean I'd think someone who was reading kiddie Scholastic books as an adult, and was neither learning English nor reading to their children nor working in the industry, would be kind of strange. However the Potter books seem to be on the same level as other elftomes, perhaps even more complex to follow than murder mysteries or literary hits.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2015 21:03

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Furia posted:

I'll never understand the AI in a box scenario. Just how does the AI manage to get enough information to simulate me (and by extension the entire universe) accurately if it is leashed? What can it gain by being released?

Also, it just goes to show how petty the God machines are in the Less Wrong community, which I guess reflects on the community itself. The AI is capable of simulating a million universes which are allegedly no different from reality, and in none of them the AI is capable of simulating things so that it is free.

Maybe the idea is that it would do this once it gets out and goes "FOOM" and now Earth is made of computronium.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2015 23:06

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Apparently if they don't learn it at this point, they'd be crippled approaching it later in life though? I still don't even know what the hell all this garbage is good for. You can temporarily turn a solid thing into another solid thing, but it's horribly dangerous?

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 22:58

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And if they can't change the laws of physics in this reality, they'll create a new universe in which to do all their maths, which does not contain the second law of thermodynamics.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 23:30

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Is there some range with this? I apparently taught myself to read at some point to the point where I never remember not being able to read, and I read pretty quick, if not "ridiculous speed reader fast." Definitely "people occasionally don't believe I actually read that whole book" fast.

I'm pretty clever but I'd hardly call myself a genius. Perhaps white noise posting instead of shitposting. :v:

# ¿ Sep 19, 2015 00:02

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Well this is, I believe, all three of theirs first day of school. Presumably they were tutored beforehand. One wonders why it's axiomatic somehow that they wouldn't have, like, had little lovely richie-rich play dates beforehand of course, but I guess House Elves can mind your spawn for you.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2015 05:26

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Piell posted:

Not quite that bad (Aurors were allowed to use it at one point during the first war against Voldemort), but literally the only people ever seen casting the Killing Curse in the book are Death Eaters. Also it's an automatic life sentence in Azkaban if you use it on a person.

I think at one point in the movies Harry fires it off and misses, but this happens immediately after the murder of his godfather and surrogate parent so I don't think anyone held it against him, if they saw him.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 09:31

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 04:37

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Yeah the House points thing seems to be about collective discipline and encouragement (i.e. if Ron won't stop yelling about Bitcoin he loses house points for Gryffindor until some mixture of shame and being beaten by his colleagues makes him stop) while this system seems to be about cultivating a personal army of magical schoolchildren.

Surely Harry will realize he's been irrationally tempted by the allure of a demagogue, though, right?

# ¿ Oct 12, 2015 19:23

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

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