
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - lobo_tuerto
http://hpmor.com/
======
anatoly
Worm by Wildbow is also very much worth a try:
[http://parahumans.wordpress.com/](http://parahumans.wordpress.com/)

Not a fan fiction, like HPMoR, but rather a lengthy novel about superheroes
and supervillains that takes the subject seriously and with an incredible
amount of inventiveness. It may sound lame, but just try it for a chapter or
two.

~~~
ramidarigaz
Honestly Worm is probably one of the best superhero stories I've ever read.
Wildbow made a really cool world with some crazy superpowers, and then managed
to put an amazing story in it. Fair warning, it's ~1.75 million words. It took
me a solid month to read.

Another good scifi web fic is Ra: [http://qntm.org/ra](http://qntm.org/ra).
It's about a world in which 'magic' was discovered in 1972 by an Indian
physicist. The story largely revolves around the search for what 'magic'
really is.

~~~
cousin_it
Fine Structure, the story Sam Hughes wrote before Ra, is also really good:
[http://qntm.org/structure](http://qntm.org/structure)

~~~
danielweber
Fine Structure was fun. However, it seemed to take several weird turns without
warning, but acted like they weren't weird turns, just completely normal. Like
brain-uploading suddenly appearing in the middle of one chapter. It felt a lot
like the author had proven to himself previously that brain-uploading was
logically inevitable in the real world and so there was no need to foreshadow
it at all.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Transhumanists tend to share… uncommon assumptions. I for one don't feel that
mind-uploading is weird. If we don't blow up ourselves before, its eventual
rise is near certain.

The lack of foreshadowing probably wouldn't have shocked me. I'd be very
excited about how the author deals with the implications, though: while mind-
uploading is relatively mundane, its consequences are _huge_.

------
TeMPOraL
What people complaining about "insufferable tone", "author inserts", etc. seem
to miss is that HPMOR is not a completely stand-alone story. Eliezer is trying
to get across some ideas about rationality, game theory and bayesian
statistics he previously described at lenght in his non-fiction writings[0],
and he often indirectly refers to them. Having read those posts before
discovering HPMOR I very much enjoyed the first chapters and didn't find any
"insufferable tone", but I can understand how some of the text can be
confusing to people who haven't read Eliezer's blog posts before.

[0] -
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences)

~~~
saraid216
I didn't read the Sequences (mostly, it must be said, because they were
boring), enjoyed the first few chapters, didn't mind the insufferable tone,
and just ignore the unsubtle preaching. I'm more bothered by That Major Story
Event in the 90s chapters than his authorial quality, really.

~~~
loup-vaillant
What worries me most about that last arc is the possibility that _we_ have to
solve the plot before it turns into a sad ending. Eliezer has mentioned the
possibility before, and even has _done_ something similar before.

We may want to read HPMOR _again_ before the last arc goes out, in the hope of
gleaning that crucial piece of information that may save the plot.

------
sirsar
For those put off by the first few chapters, I highly recommend you try to
stick with it, or skip the first 10 chapters. This story starts out with a
rather insufferable tone, but after that, it becomes a lot of fun. It's what
the author calls "rational fiction", meaning that there are mysteries in it
that you _can_ solve, given enough thought (unlike most of the mystery genre).

~~~
not_a_test_user
I disagree. It starts with a rather insufferable tone and then, somehow, it
manages to get worse.

~~~
asuffield
If you do not value rationality and believe in the primary of the truth, you
will hate it. This is not an apolitical story, it is in many ways a manifesto.

~~~
nemo
I am very sure you could value rationality and still hate the writing. Terms
like 'valuing rationality' or believing in the primacy of truth (I think
that's what you meant) don't have universally accepted definitions.

A rational person might readily find the novel to an Eliezer Yudkowsky's
propaganda-novel along the lines of an Ayn Rand novel, and not find it a well
written or enjoyable story. The number of parallels between Rand and Yudkowsky
are really fascinating to me, Rand and Yudkowsky really seem to be birds of a
feather.

~~~
kbenson
Nobody has said that if you _do_ value truth and rationality you _will_ like
it, so I'm not really sure who you are arguing here.

~~~
nemo
OP stated that a person person who did not value reason would hate the
writing.

I just stated the converse, that person who valued reason might easily hate
the writing too.

~~~
kbenson
The converse of the original statement is that if you hate the writing, you
don't value rationality and truth. You didn't state the converse, you seem to
have taken it as a starting point and disproved it. But nobody was arguing the
converse was true, which was my point.

~~~
nemo
You are right, I stated the alternate case of those who value rationality and
truth as opposed to those who do not, rather than the converse. Sorry, I was
being too loose with my language there.

As to what the other was arguing, I was chiming in, not posing a critique, so
your point is peripheral. In discussions one is permitted to add thoughts that
are related without it being some kind of intellectual sparring. If I were
sparring I'd have debated the claim that those who don't value rationality and
truth would dislike the book (which is a hard claim to justify), but that
would have been a pointless exercise since I don't really care. I did care to
point out that rational, truth-seeking people could find that the book was
unbearable, since that was my experience and something I thought was worth
noting. If you disagree, then please feel free to explain, I'd be interested
to learn how rational people must agree that it was a well written piece of
fan fiction.

~~~
kbenson
I don't disagree. I just thought your comment, when taken as an individual
statement, was obvious enough that it didn't need to be said (at least not
again). I chose to interpret it as a refutation, which was my mistake.

------
MPSimmons
Is it done yet? I refuse to read it again until it is. It has, so far, sucked
in a week of my time twice, because I had to re-read all of it to remember how
the new chapters came about.

It's really great writing (as sirsar says, after a while) - at least, I
enjoyed it. But it does keep going well after you think it would.

~~~
nbouscal
Not yet. He's working on the last set of updates, and is hoping to be done by
the end of the year.

------
JoshTriplett
There's also a well-done podcast version at
[http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/](http://www.hpmorpodcast.com/) .
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053802))

------
logfromblammo
The "what if" concept is an interesting one, but you can really only keep that
up for a few chapters, to show how all the obvious consequences will pan out.

After that, the author has to create additional divergences to justify an
original story line, particularly with respect to Quirrell. There is a bit too
much emphasis on deconstructing the very powerful, yet somehow mysteriously
unimportant, plot devices from the source material, particularly the time
turners.

Yes, a device that allows you to travel backwards in time that is somehow
available to barely competent wizarding students probably would not have been
used once as a plot device and discarded forevermore. But there is such a
thing as the MST3K rule: it's just a book; I should really just relax. We
purposefully ignore more details like the fact that spacecraft drive systems
powerful enough to not be boring must necessarily be powerful enough to
completely demolish whatever interesting plot we had in mind, simply because
it gets in the way of the story. If you look at Star Wars, you know in your
rational mind--from the first moment a hyperdrive engages--that Death Stars
are not the best way to destroy planets, but you throw popcorn at that part of
your brain and scream at it to shut up and watch the movie.

HPMoR doesn't throw that popcorn. It enthusiastically joins in, and spoils the
suspension of disbelief for everyone.

But there is that one little bit of the very first original HP book that
justifies the premise. It didn't even make it into the film version. Prof.
Snape protects the MacGuffin with a logic puzzle, rather than magic, because
the vast majority of wizards are completely unfamiliar with common sense.

But you can't have a hyperrational wizard among cloudcuckoolander wizards, in
the same way that you can't have an interstellar hyperdrive that doesn't
destroy planets. Because then you end up with an undestroyable horcrux and a
first-year wizarding student who performs tasks nearly without assistance that
a full caper crew of adults might find insurmountable. Your suspension of
disbelief just has to attach to the chassis at a different point.

~~~
Steuard
From where I'm sitting, this is an inappropriate level of spoilers to include
in a comment here. Could you perhaps edit (or cut) your next to last sentence?

~~~
Jach
Or just prefix with a spoiler warning. However I think they are appropriate.
Some people need a little more incentive to start reading or watching
something besides a link to it, or an empty recommendation from a friend or
community, and the "spoilers" often found in some reviewer's blurb on a back
of a book/movie box serve that purpose well. And anyway, those "spoilers" from
the perspective of the whole story are really just cool little blurbs about
what you might expect without spoiling the actually interesting parts of how,
why, and the aftermath.

A succinct blurb about what to expect plot-wise could be something like
"covers many of the events of the actual series, but all in the first year and
more rationally". If someone has read the canon HP books, they can probably
infer Azkaban, Horcruxes, Polyjuice, portkeys, Quidditch, and so on will make
an appearance in some fashion. They might not think about the time turner
though, and if you're trying to get someone to read the book, and that someone
knows about NP problems, mentioning the author addresses possibly solving NP
problems with time travel, that's such a small spoiler but can pique the
interest enough that someone may read it who otherwise wouldn't have. (Can you
get talk about NP problems in fiction outside of sci-fi? Would you expect it
from a Harry Potter fanfic?)

------
shinigami
Warning: the (real world) point of the fanfic is to recruit people into a cult
whose goal is to prevent evil artificial intelligence from taking over the
world.

Seriously.

~~~
nemo
My favorite event in their utterly credulous certainty in the inevitability of
a friendly AI was the response to 'Roko's Basilisk.'

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk)

No rational person could describe that groupthink madness as a cult. :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Funny there's always this one little thing one can bring up to point that a
non-mainstream group is definitely a cult and thus are a bunch of loons :).

I used to be involved with a religious group many outsiders consider to be a
cult. There was always this event that everyone outside kept bringing up -
that one little prediction 40 years ago that some people took too seriously
and ended up making stupid life decisions. (I'm not close to that group
anymore, but I still value those people as the most honest and consistent in
their thinking folks I ever met)

Yes, people who extrapolate things from their beliefs to guide their life
decisions can and do make mistakes. They will reach stupid conclusions and
believe them until they figure out that those conclusions are stupid and
rethink things again. I still respect them more than the usual crowd (both in
religious and non-religious groups) who claim to believe (or believe that they
believe) one thing and actually believe something else. I value consistency in
thinking.

EDIT:

Disclaimer, before I get labelled as a cult priest for replying in the cult
thread for the fourth time: I have my pet peeve with cult accusations, because
I've been close with many groups accused of cultishness - both religious and
secular, and I know how this is an impossible accusation to defend from. If
you try to tell "hey, it's not a cult, because X" then it's _definitely a
cult_ , because _that 's obviously what a cult member would say_.

Also, you want to see real cults? Try political parties ;).

~~~
swombat
There's some pretty salient characteristics of an actual cult that make it
different from just a group of very devoted followers. Namely:

\- Cults usually employ a number of heavy-handed psychological manipulation
techniques, often together (e.g. 12-hour conference sessions; speakers that
drone on at at about 50 beats per minute; loud, lengthy chanting that exhausts
your brain's oxygen and makes you less critical; preying on people who are
desperate for some reason)

\- It's not enough for a cult to have you as a member - they also have to
remove the influence of other movements from your life, lest you might realise
who stupid it all is and break off. So part of a cult's mode of control will
involve breaking off your relationships with other groups important in your
life: family, religion, work... and replacing them with social ties within the
cult.

\- Cults generally require escalating levels of contribution. At first maybe
you just need to donate a bit of money, but by the end your entire life is at
the service of the cult.

If the accused cult doesn't fit any of these criteria, it's probably not a
cult, just a bunch of very devoted zealots. If it fits even one of these
criteria, start to worry. If it fits more than one, it's almost certainly a
"bad" cult.

Source: my dad's a psychologist and studied cults, but this is just from
memory.

------
Indyan
I'm a fan of this fanfic. I gave up due to the glacial pace of updates. But,
this fanfic has been discussed on HN several times.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898783)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2429034](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2429034)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385932)

------
StavrosK
I love this, it is one of the best things I've read, and I think it made me a
better person by changing the way I think.

Here's an ebook version I made:

[https://leanpub.com/hpmor](https://leanpub.com/hpmor)

It should be mostly-current (I'll update it again now).

------
chromaton
I had skipped the first few chapters (as had been suggested by others) and
then started reading. I really liked the bits where Harry tried to figure out
the nature of magic by using the scientific method (do wizards call upon
magical power directly? or are their magic words and gestures simply controls
for a sort of machine which unleashes the real power? Does magical ability
follow Mendelian genetics? What kinds of materials can we make using magic?)

Later on, it got bogged down in an intra-school magic battle and Hermione and
her crew attempting to be recognized as heroes, and that's where I stopped. It
just seemed like the author gave up the whole "Methods of Rationality" thing
and decided to write straight fanfic: stories and situations in which he'd
like to see the characters. I gave up on it.

------
aaronem
Ye gods. It's everything I could've possibly imagined from a Harry Potter
fanfic written by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

~~~
davidtanner
And then some.

------
Houshalter
People seem to either love this book or vocally hate it with passion. There
doesn't seem to be much middle ground, or at least those people never speak
up.

~~~
erichocean
I suspect it's because the world itself breaks along those lines.

It's a bit like how Republicans and Democrats look to a non-statist a hell of
a lot like how Protestants and Catholics look to an atheist: they agree on
far, far more fundamental things than their actual disagreements, which are
mostly at the edges, not at the core.

Similarly, whenever Randian-style "reason" is promoted as it is in Methods (to
a degree), the world breaks strongly on people who really, REALLY like that
sort of thing, and people who truly, absolutely hate it with a passion.

(Funny anecdote: a friend of ours in college—a mild, sweet, good-tempered
female—tried to read Any Rand's "Anthem" in the school library one day and
physically threw the book against the wall she was so upset by it!)

~~~
saraid216
Actually, I like the Harry Potter takedowns he does, but I find the
zomgrationality bits boring and just skip the preaching.

As fanfiction, it is surprisingly good prose. But you know, it's still
fanfiction, namely Harry Potter fanfiction, and thus has trouble actually
rising above that. I like Darths and Droids for the same reason.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think that the divide might stem from the fact that initially, HPMOR was
mostly "zomgrationality preaching" in the form of fan-fic, not the other way
around. Maybe this changed recently; I haven't read the last 20 or so
chapters.

------
zyxley
MoR? Bleh. It's basically a half-inch away from a self-insert story, with
every Doylist weakness in the narrative brutally exploited in a Watsonian
manner and every other character made into a drooling moron so that Harry can
be a genius by comparison.

I much prefer stories like Applied Cultural Anthropology, which takes the
informed attributes of characters and runs with them to better flesh out the
background and to give every character, including the villains, more Doylist
competence.

Edit: link is [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9238861/1/Applied-Cultural-
Anth...](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9238861/1/Applied-Cultural-Anthropology-
or) (thanks, Groxx)

~~~
zephjc
I don't think that's a fair analysis of the characters as the story progresses
(except maybe for Ron, but who likes Ron anyway?) How far into HPMOR did you
get?

~~~
nikbackm
I haven't read much of this, but I recall a scene where Dumbledore was
portrayed in a very unflattering light at least.

(Something about trying to avoid dying I think)

~~~
crpatino
Yeah, I did not like that one either. Though claiming that Dumbledore is
portrayed as a "drooling moron" there (or anywhere else for the matter) is not
precisely correct.

~~~
swombat
Read on. Dumbledore is clearly one of the smartest characters in the book, not
a drooling moron at all. He puts on a pretence of being completely bonkers to
confuse his enemies, but he's very smart and thinks fifteen steps ahead (just
one short of Harry...) and is one of the few characters in the book who's an
Agent rather than an NPC.

As for the other characters, their level of agency varies, but at the very
least Quirrel, Hermione and Draco are also agents (i.e. smart enough to be
capable of driving the story in a meaningful way), and the other characters
are portrayed fairly accurately given their stupidity in the original books.

In the original book, ALL the characters are stupid. In HP:MoR, 5 characters
are not stupid. I think that's an improvement.

~~~
crpatino
You are right of course. I just did not want to give out too many details.

------
tzs
Another interesting take along these lines (although intended as just a story
rather than as educational material) is "A Study In Magic" [1]. It's a Harry
Potter/BBC's Sherlock crossover. The Dursley's were killed (in a Moriarty
plot), and Holmes and Watson end up adopting Harry. He has learned a lot from
Holmes and Watson, and brings this knowledge to Hogwarts. Holmes takes quite
an interest in the criminal aspects of the wizarding world.

[1] [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7578572/1/A-Study-in-
Magic](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7578572/1/A-Study-in-Magic)

~~~
mrfusion
Dumb question: is there a way to load that onto the kindle?

~~~
tzs
Not that I know of, other than grabbing each chapter with something like curl
or wget (change the /1/ in the URL to /n/ to get chapter n), processing it to
extract the text, and concatenating them, and then sending that to your Kindle
over USB or by mailing it to your Amazon "send to my Kindle" address.

If you change the www in the URL to m, you get the mobile version, which has
less complicated HTML, which might make extracting the text easier.

You could also try reading it online in the Kindle browser. I have not tried
reading anything from fanfiction.net there, so I don't know how well that
works.

------
mcguire
" _' I don't see why it wouldn't be,' Harry said. 'A buckytube is just a
graphite sheet wrapped into a circular tube, basically, and graphite is the
same stuff used in pencils -'_"

Well, technically....

~~~
sp332
They're naturally occurring in soot
[http://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1782](http://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1782)
and I suppose pencil lead as well.

~~~
mcguire
Graphite is used in pencils by being mixed with clay and compressed, then
heated in a kiln. It's essentially a ceramic. Diamonds, pure graphite,
buckminsterfullerenes, etc., are pure carbon.

------
imranq
Reminds me of Why's Poignant Guide to Ruby...another story-driven "technical"
book.

I imagine if all my technical books were written like that, I'd quickly have
to check in to a mental institution.

------
jonmrodriguez
I love the story, and am currently waiting for the next installment.

One very tiny nitpick is about the title; the story is (at least currently)
intended for web-based distribution, and in Chrome (Mac), Chrome (Windows),
and Firefox (Mac), the title when rendered in the tab bar is truncated to
"Harry Potter and the Meth", which frankly I'm embarrassed to have on my
screen. A simple change such as using "&" instead of "and" would fix this.

------
ajaimk
I've been reading this on and off over the past few years. The skill level of
some fan fiction writers is indeed amazing.

------
ender89
I tried reading this, and I found that I wasn't a fan for two very specific
reasons: First, Harry is imbued with a level of knowledge you'd be hard
pressed to find at the world's top universities, and that always takes me out
of a story. Its not his intelligence that bothers me, but the fact that he's a
veritable walking scientific encyclopedia. Secondly, by adding rationality to
Harry, the author also seems to have added a healthy dose of irrational fears.
There's a moment that is the polar opposite of the original stories where
harry decides that "voldemort" is a terrifying name and should be replaced
with with "He-who-must-not-be-named". Which is silly and a clear
misunderstanding of what drives harry potter and a clear misunderstanding of
what "rationality" means.

------
swombat
Dear Eliezer Yudkowsky,

I beg you, please continue writing this awesome stuff.

Thanks,

Almost Everyone Who's Read This

~~~
crpatino
Also, I hate to bring this on, but is it possible to set a dead man switch to
distribute your unedited notes on the final arc... just in case you get hit by
a bus over the next couple of months/years?

------
elevenfist
I really enjoyed reading this, although after satirizing how contrived the
original harry potter is, in the later chapters the story itself becomes
somewhat contrived.

[spoilers, sort of]

I dropped it after the author effective "fridged"
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators),
or
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFri...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge))
one of the main characters for the sole purpose of galvanizing another
character's development.

~~~
Houshalter
Seriously? Characters aren't allowed to die just because they are female?

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I read a few dozen chapters of this while I was laid up sick a few years ago
and after the first few it was with increasing revulsion and curiosity of just
how terrible it would get.

(The answer is: pretty terrible).

