Foreword

su3su2u1’s tumblr site was deleted on 2016-02-26. A few intrepid readers salvaged some of his posts, documented in a post on the current placeholder site.

Because I found su3su2u1’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality series of posts so well-put, I’ve taken the time to copy and reformat the salvaged posts relating to Methods on this page in chronological order, and cleaned up the formatting a little bit. While su3su2u1 didn’t specify an license for copying the posts, he did write:

slatestarscratchpad:

[…]

@su3su2u1, somervta, nothingismere, do I have permission to copy/paste/quote the things you’ve been saying, with attribution?

[…]

Feel free. This is the internet, I sort of assumed permission was implicit.

It’s not clear how to attribute su3su2u1 anymore now that his tumblr is gone, but I hope this is acceptable.

Editor’s notes are indicated by [Ed. …] blocks.

---

HPMOR Chapter 1

While at lunch, I dug into the first chapter of HPMOR. A few notes:

This isn’t nearly as bad as I remember, the writing isn’t amazing but its serviceable.. Either some editing has taken place in the last few years, or I’m less discerning than I once was.

There is this strange bit, where Harry tries to diffuse an argument his parents are having with:

"”Mum,” Harry said. “If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There’s a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. “

This seems especially out of place, because no one is arguing about what science is. Otherwise, this is basically an ok little chapter. Harry and Father are skeptical magic could exist, so send a reply letter to Hogwarts asking for a professor to come and show them some magics.

Chapter 2, in which I remember why I hated this

This chapter had me rolling my eyes so hard that I now I have quite the headache. In this chapter, Professor McGonagall shows up and does some magic, first levitating Harry’s father, and then turning into a cat. Upon seeing the first, Harry drops some Bayes, saying how anticlimatic it was ‘to update on an event of infinitesimal probability,’ upon seeing the second, Hariezer Yudotter greets us with this jargon dump: “You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That’s not just an arbitrary rule, it’s implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling!”

First, this is obviously atrocious writing. Most readers will get nothing out of this horrific sentence. He even abbreviated faster-than-light as FTL, to keep the density of understandable words to a minimum.

Second, this is horrible physics for the following reasons:

-the levitation already violated conservation of energy,which you found anticlimactic fuck you Hariezer

-the deep area of physics concerned with conservation of energy is not quantum mechanics, its thermodynamics. Hariezer should have had a jargon dump about perpetual motion machines. To see how levitation violates conservation of energy, imagine taking a generator like the Hoover dam and casting a spell to levitate all the water from the bottom of the dam back up to the top to close the loop. As long as you have wizard to move the water, you can generate power forever.

Exercise for the reader- devise a perpetual motion machine powered by shape changers (hint:imagine an elevator system of two carts hanging over a pully. On one side, an elephant, on the other a man. Elephant goes down, man goes up. At the bottom, the elephant turns into a man and at the top the man turns into an elephant. What happens to the pulley over time?)

-the deeper area related to conservation of energy is not unitarity, as is implied in the quote. There is a really deep theorem in physics, due to Emmy Noether, that tells us that conservation of energy really means that physics is time translationaly invariant. This means there aren’t special places in time, the laws tomorrow are basically the same as yesterday and today. (tangential aside- this is why we shouldn’t worry about a lack of energy conservation at the big bang, if the beginning of time was a special point, no one would expect energy to be conserved there).

Unitarity in quantum mechanics is basically a fancy way of saying probability is conserved. You CAN have unitarity without conservation of energy. Technical aside- its easy to show that if the unitary operator is time-translation invariant, there is an operator that commutes with the unitary operator, usually called the hamiltonian. Without that assumption, we lose the hamiltonian but maintain unitarity.

-None of this has much to do at all with faster than light signalling, which would be the least of our concern if we had just discovered a source of infinite energy.

I used to teach undergraduates, and I would often have some enterprising college freshman (who coincidentally was not doing well in basic mechanics) approach me to talk about why string theory was wrong. It always felt like talking to a physics madlibs book. This chapter let me relive those awkward moments.

Sorry to belabor this point so much, but I think it sums up an issue that crops up from time to time in Yudkowsky’s writing, when dabbling in a subject he doesn’t have much grounding in, he ends up giving actual subject matter experts a headache.

Summary of the chapter- McGonagall visits and does some magic, Harry is convinced magic is real, and they are off to go shop for Harry’s books.

Never Read Comments

I read the comments on an HPMOR chapter, which I recommend strongly against. I wish I could talk to several of the commentators, and gently talk them out of a poor financial decision.

Poor, misguided random internet person- your donation to MIRI/LessWrong will not help save the world. Even if you grant all their (rather silly) assumptions MIRI is a horribly unproductive research institute- in more than a decade, it has published fewer peer reviewed papers than the average physics graduate student does while in grad school. The majority of money you donate to MIRI will go into the generation of blog posts and fan fiction. If you are fine with that, then go ahead and spend your money, but don’t buy into the idea that this money will save the world.

Chapter 2, in which I remember why I hated this

nostalgebraist:

Yeah this all seems correct and fair to me.

Yudkowsky is aware of Noether’s Theorem and its relevance in its context (see here), but he doesn’t explain there why Harry mentioned unitarity, which is not really relevant here, rather than time-translation invariance, which is the important thing.

If you haven’t heard this before, something that may help you (a tiny bit) on this descent into your personal hell is that EY has said he’s writing Harry as an adolescent version of himself, not as his current self. So, according to him, he’s writing a kid who’s read the Feynman Lectures and is really impressed with himself for doing so — perhaps realistically in this case.

(Of course, one doesn’t have to take him on faith about this. Also, EY being EY, he’s also claimed that if Harry knew all the ~advanced rationality techniques~ that EY currently knows, his life would be too easy and it’d break the story — that’s on the same page I linked above.)

So I kind of think the whole “Harry is an immature kid” thing allows EY to have it both ways. Anytime something comes off as twerpish, it can be waved away as Hariezer’s immaturity, but we aren’t supposed to doubt the received wisdom from Hariezer sprinkled throughout the chapters, even though it comes from the same immature source. Readers impressed with the Feynman reference and the jargon dumps can pat Yud on the back, and readers who realize it widely misses the mark can chalk it up to youthful arrogance and say how well-realized the character is (and pat Yud on the back).

It reminds me of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which is a book loaded with imprecise metaphors and allusions (that often contradict the actual scene being described). It feels like the author wants us to say ‘what a clever bit of writing’ when it works, and to say ‘what a pretentious narrating character’ when it fails.

HPMOR Chapter 3, uneventful, inoffensive

This chapter is worse than the previous chapters. As Hariezer (I realize this portmanteau isn’t nearly as clever as I seem to think it is, but I will continue to use it) enters diagon alley, he remarks

“It was like walking through the magical items section of an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rulebook (he didn’t play the game, but he did enjoy reading the rulebooks). “ For reasons not entirely clear to me, the line filled me with rage.

As they walk McGonagall tells Hariezer about Voldemort, noting that other countries failed to come to Britain’s aid. This prompts Hariezer to immediately misuse the idea of the Bystander Effect (an exercise left to the reader- do social psychological phenomena that apply to individuals also apply to collective entities, like countries? Are the social-psychological phenomena around failure to act in people likely to also explain failure to act as organizations?)

Thats basically it for this chapter. Uneventful chapter- slightly misused scientific stuff, a short walk through diagon alley, standard Voldemort stuff. The chapter ends with some very heavy handed foreshadowing:

“(And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry’s art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.)”

If Harry had only attended more CFAR workshops…

nostalgebraist: (Also I added …

nostalgebraist:

(Also I added something to that post since you reblogged it — I’m confused about why Harry things conservation of energy is being violated when there are forms of energy that aren’t necessary perceptible?)

Given the style of story, I have no doubt that both the levitation and the cat thing will eventually fit into some sort of laws-of-magic. In that case, we could append the laws of magic to the laws of physics, and instead of energy conservation being violated, we’ll have some new forms of magical energy. Its actually part of the story I’ll probably enjoy, when/if I make it there.

Anon Asks

Anon points out that I’m “unfairly” beating up on Yudkowsky, who is an autodidact without the the benefits of a formal education.

So a few points:

-I don’t think I’m beating up on Yudkowsky at all. I am instead discussing a story he wrote with a critical eye. In particular, HPMOR is explicitly supposed to be pedagogical, its supposed to teach the reader things. Therefore, we should keep on eye on what it is teaching.

-I will probably occasionally also criticize the sequences for similar reasons. Nothing is more frustrating than getting a student in an introductory quantum mechanics class who thinks they’ve learned it all in the LessWrong sequences (this has happened to me twice). I fear one of the (erroneous) lessons the sequences implicitly teach is that you can know as much (or MORE) as physicists about the proper way to do quantum mechanics simply by reading a few dozen pages.

The key here is that this is about ideas, and writing, not about the man himself. Its important to keep those things separate.

Chapter 4 - In which, for the first time, I wanted the author to take things further

So first, I actually like this chapter more than the previous few, because I think its beginning to try to deliver on what I want in the story. And now, my bitching will commence:

A recurring theme of the LessWrong sequences that I find somewhat frustrating is that (apart from the Bayesian Rationalist) the world is insane. This same theme pops up in this MOR chapter, where the world is created insane by Yudkowsky, so that Hariezer can tell you why.

Upon noticing the wizarding world uses coins of silver and gold, Hariezer asks about exchange rates, and asks the bank goblin how much it would cost to get a big chunk of silver turned into coins, the goblin says he’ll check with his superiors, Hariezer asks him to estimate, and the estimate is that the fee is about 5% of the silver.

This prompts Hariezer to realize that he could do the following:

1. Take gold coins and buy silver with them in the muggle world
2. bring the silver to Gringots and have it turned into coins
3. convert the silver coins to gold coins, ending up with more gold than you started with, start the loop over until the muggle prices make it not profitable

(of course, the in-story explanation is overly-jargon filled as usual)

This is somewhat interesting, and its the first look at what I want in a story like this- the little details of the wizarding world that would never be covered in a children’s story. Stross wrote a whole book exploring money/economics in a far future society (Neptune’s Brood, its only ok), there is a lot of fertile ground for Yudkowsky here.

In a world where wizards can magic wood into gold, how do you keep counterfeiting at bay? Maybe the coins are made of special gold only goblins know how to find (maybe the goblin hordes hoard (wordplay!) this special gold like De beers hoards diamonds).

Maybe the goblins carefully magic money into and out of existence in order to maintain a currency peg. Maybe its the perfect inflation- instead of relying on banks to disperse the coins every and now and then the coins in people’s pockets just multiply at random.

Instead, we get a silly, insane system (don’t blame Rowling either- Yudkowsky is more than willing to go off book, AND the details of this simply aren’t discussed, for good reason, in the genre Rowling wrote the books in), and rationalist Hariezer gets an easy ‘win’. Its not a BAD section, but it feels lazy.

And a brief note on the writing style- its still oddly stilted, and I wonder how good it would be at explaining ideas to someone unfamiliar. For instance, Hariezer gets lost in thought McGonagall says something, Hariezer replies:

“Hm?” Harry said, his mind elsewhere. “Hold on, I’m doing a Fermi calculation.”

“A what? ” said Professor McGonagall, sounding somewhat alarmed.

“It’s a mathematical thing. Named after Enrico Fermi. A way of getting rough numbers quickly in your head…”

Maybe it would feel less awkward for Hariezer to say “Hold on, I’m trying to estimate how much gold is in the vault.” And then instead of saying “its a math thing,” we could follow Hariezer’s thoughts as he carefully constructs his estimate (as it is, the estimate is crammed into a hard-to-read paragraph).

Its a nitpick, sure, but the story thus far is loaded with such nits.

Chapter summary- Harry goes to gringots, takes out money.

Chapter 5 - In which the author assures us repeatedly this chapter is funny

This chapter is, again, mostly inoffensive, although there is a weird tonal shift. The bulk of this chapter is played broadly for laughs. There is actually a decent description of the fundamental attribution error, although its introduced with this twerpy bit of dialogue

Harry looked up at the witch-lady’s strict expression beneath her pointed hat, and sighed. “I suppose there’s no chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you’d have any idea what that meant.”

This sort of thing seems like awkward pedagogy. If the reader doesn’t know it, Hariezer is now exasperated with the reader as well as with whoever Yudkowsky is currently using as a foil.

Now, the bulk of this chapter involves Hariezer being left alone to buy robes, where he meets and talks to Draco Malfoy. Hariezer, annoyed at having people say to him “OMG, YOU ARE HARRY POTTER!” upon meeting and learning Malfoy’s name, exclaims “OMG, YOU ARE DRACO MALFOY!”. Malfoy accepts this as a perfectly normal reaction to his imagined fame, and a mildly amusing conversation occurs. Its a fairly clever idea.

Unfortunately, its marred by the literary equivalent of a sitcom laugh track. Worried that the reader isn’t sure if they should be laughing, Yudkowsky interjects phrases like these throughout:

Draco’s attendant emitted a sound like she was strangling but kept on with her work

One of the assistants, the one who’d seemed to recognise Harry, made a muffled choking sound.

One of Malkin’s assistants had to turn away and face the wall.

Madam Malkin looked back silently for four seconds, and then cracked up. She fell against the wall, wheezing out laughter, and that set off both of her assistants, one of whom fell to her hands and knees on the floor, giggling hysterically.

The reader is constantly told that the workers in the shop find it so funny they can barely contain their laughter. It feels like the author constantly yelling GET IT YOU GUYS? THIS IS FUNNY!

As far as the writing goes, the tonal shift to broad comedy feels a bit strange and happens with minimal warning (there is a brief conversation earlier in the chapter thats also played for a laugh), and everything is as stilted as its always been. For example, when McGonagall walks into the robe shop in time to hear Malfoy utter some absurdities, Harry tells her

“He was in a situational context where those actions made internal sense -“

Luckily, Hariezer gets cut off before he starts explaining what a joke is. Chapter summary- Hariezer buys robes, talks to Malfoy.

Chapter 6- Yud lets it all hang out

The introduction suggested that the story really gets moving after chapter 5. If this is an example of what “really moving” looks like, I fear I’ll soon stop reading. Apart from my rant about chapter 2, things had been largely light, and inoffensive up until this chapter. Here, I found myself largely recoiling. We shift from the broad comedy of the last chapter to a chapter filled with weirdly dark little rants.

As should be obvious by now, I find the line between Eliezer and Harry to be pretty blurry (hence my annoying use of Hariezer). In this chapter, that line disappears completely as we get passages like this

Harry had always been frightened of ending up as one of those child prodigies that never amounted to anything and spent the rest of their lives boasting about how far ahead they’d been at age ten. But then most adult geniuses never amounted to anything either. There were probably a thousand people as intelligent as Einstein for every actual Einstein in history. Because those other geniuses hadn’t gotten their hands on the one thing you absolutely needed to achieve greatness. They’d never found an important problem.

There are dozens of such passages that could be ripped directly from some of Hariezer’s friendly AI writing and pasted right into MOR. Its a bit disconcerting, in part because its forcing me to face just how much of Eliezer’s other writing of wasted time with.

The chapter begins strongly enough, Hariezer starts doing some experiments with his magic pouch. If he asks for 115 gold coins, it comes, but not if he asks for 90+25 gold coins. He tries using other words for gold in other languages, etc. Unfortunately, it leads him to say this:

“I just falsified every single hypothesis I had! How can it know that ‘bag of 115 Galleons’ is okay but not ‘bag of 90 plus 25 Galleons’? It can count but it can’t add? It can understand nouns, but not some noun phrases that mean the same thing?…The rules seem sorta consistent but they don’t mean anything! I’m not even going to ask how a pouch ends up with voice recognition and natural language understanding when the best Artificial Intelligence programmers can’t get the fastest supercomputers to do it after thirty-five years of hard work,”

So here is the thing- it would be very easy to write a parser that behaves exactly like what Hariezer describes with his bag. You would just have a look-up table with lots of single words for gold in various languages. Nothing fancy at all. Its behaving oddly ENTIRELY BECAUSE ITS NOT DOING NATURAL LANGUAGE. I hope we revisit the pouch in a later chapter to sort this out. I reiterate, its stuff like this that (to me at least) were the whole premise of this story- flesh out the rules of this wacky universe.

Immediately after this, the story takes a truly bizarre turn. Hariezer spots a magic first aid kit, and wants to buy it. In order to be a foil for super-rationalist Harry, McGonagall then immediately becomes immensely stupid, and tries to dissuade him from purchasing it. Note, she doesn’t persuade him by saying “Oh, there are magical first aid kits all over the school,” or “there are wizards watching over the boy who lived who can heal you with spells if something happens” or anything sensible like that, she just starts saying he’d never need it.

This leads Harry to a long description of the planning fallacy, and he says to counter it he always tries to assume the worst possible outcomes. (Note to Harry and the reader: the planning fallacy is a specific thing that occurs when people or organizations plan to accomplish a task. What Harry is trying to overcome is more correctly optimism bias.).

This leads McGonagall to start lightly suggesting (apropos of nothing) that maybe Harry is an abused child. Hariezer responds with this tale:

“There’d been some muggings in our neighborhood, and my mother asked me to return a pan she’d borrowed to a neighbor two streets away, and I said I didn’t want to because I might get mugged, and she said, ‘Harry, don’t say things like that!’ Like thinking about it would make it happen, so if I didn’t talk about it, I would be safe. I tried to explain why I wasn’t reassured, and she made me carry over the pan anyway. I was too young to know how statistically unlikely it was for a mugger to target me, but I was old enough to know that not-thinking about something doesn’t stop it from happening, so I was really scared.”

…

I know it doesn’t sound like much,” Harry defended. “But it was just one of those critical life moments, you see? … That’s when I realised that everyone who was supposed to protect me was actually crazy, and that they wouldn’t listen to me no matter how much I begged them

So we are back to the world is insane, as filtered through this odd little story.

Then McGonagall asks if Harry wants to buy an owl, and Harry says no he’d be too worried he’d forget to feed it or something. Which prompts McGonagall AGAIN to suggest Harry had been abused, which leads Harry into an odd rant about how false accusations of child abuse ruin families (which is true, but seriously, is this the genre for this rant? What the fuck is happening with this chapter?)

This ends up with McGonagall implying Harry must have been abused because he is so weird, and maybe some cast a spell to wipe his memory of it (the spell comes up after Harry suggests repressed memories are BS pseudoscience, which again, is true, BUT WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN THIS STORY?)

Harry uses his ‘rationalist art’ (literally “Harry’s rationalist skills begin to boot up again”) to suggest an alternative explanation

“I’m too smart, Professor. I’ve got nothing to say to normal children. 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. My parents love me, but they don’t feel obliged to respond to reason, and sometimes I feel like they’re the children - children who won’t listen and have absolute authority over my whole existence. I try not to be too bitter about it, but I also try to be honest with myself, so, yes, I’m bitter.

After that weird back and forth the chapter moves on, Harry goes and buys a wand, and then from conversation begins to suspect that the Voldemort might still be alive. When McGonagall doesn’t want to tell him more, “a terrible dark clarity descended over his mind, mapping out possible tactics and assessing their consequences with iron realism.”

This leads Hariezer to blackmail McGonagall- he won’t tell people Voldemort is still alive if she tells him about the prophecy. Its another weird bit in a chapter absolutely brimming with weird bits.

Finally they go to buy a trunk, but they are low on gold (note to the reader: here would have been an excellent example of the planning fallacy). But luckily Hariezer had taken extra from the vault. Rather than simply saying “oh, I brought some extra”, he says

So - suppose I had a way to get more Galleons from my vaultwithout us going back to Gringotts, but it involved me violating the role of an obedient child. Would I be able to trust you with that, even though you’d have to step outside your own role as Professor McGonagall to take advantage of it?

So he logic-chops her into submission, or whatever, and they buy the trunk.

This chapter for me was incredibly uncomfortable. McGonagall behaves very strangely so she can act as a foil for all of Hariezer’s rants, and when the line between Hariezer and Eliezer fell away completely, it felt a bit oddly personal.

Oh, right, there was also a conversation about the rule against underage magic

“Ah,” Harry said. “That sounds like a very sensible rule. I’m glad to see the wizarding world takes that sort of thing seriously.”

I can’t help but draw parallels to the precautions Yud wants with AI.

Summary: Harry finished buying school supplies(I hope).

[Ed. This is between where the wayback archive finished archiving, and before the feedly archive begins, so there is a large gap here with a few (parts of) posts salvaged.]

A few Observations Regarding Hariezer Yudotter

[Ed. Full post salvaged from cinnimonipod’s tumblr.]

After drunkenly reading chapters 8,9 and 10 last night (I’ll get to the posts soon, hopefully), I was flipping channels and somehow settled on an episode of that old TV show with Steve Urkel (bear with me, this will get relevant in a second).

In the episode, the cool kid Eddie gets hustled at billiards, and Urkel comes in and saves the day because his knowledge of trigonometry and geometry makes him a master at the table.

I think perhaps this is a common dream of the science fetishist- if only I knew ALL OF THE SCIENCE I would be unstoppable at everything. Hariezer Yudotter is a sort of wish fulfillment character of that dream. Hariezer isn’t motivated by curiosity at all really, he wants to grow his super-powers by learning more science. Its why we can go 10 fucking chapters without Yudotter really exploring much in the way of the science of magic (so far I count one lazy paragraph exploring what his pouch can do, in 10 chapters). Its why he constantly describes his project as “taking over the world.” And its frustrating, because this obviously isn’t a flaw to be overcome its part of Yudotter’s “awesomeness.”

I have a phd in a science, and it has granted me these real world super-powers-

1. I fix my own plumbing, do my own home repairs,etc.

2. I made a robot of legos and a raspberry pi that plays connect 4 incredibly well (my robot sidekick, I guess)

3. Via techniques I learned in the sorts of books that in fictional world Hariezer uses to be a master manipulator, I can optimize ads on webpages such that up to 3% of people will click on them (that is, seriously, the power of influence in reality. Not Hannibal Lector but instead advertisers trying to squeeze an extra tenth of a percent on conversions), for which companies sometime pay me

4. If you give me a lot of data, I can make a computer find patterns in it, for which companies sometimes pay me.

Thats basically it. Back when I worked in science, I spent nearly a decade of my life calculating various background processes related to finding a Higgs boson, and I helped design some software theorists now use to calculate new processes quickly. These are the sorts of projects scientists work on, and most days its hard work and total drudgery, and there is no obvious ‘instrumental utility’- BUT I REALLY WANTED TO KNOW IF THERE WAS A HIGGS FIELD.

And thats why I think the Yudotter character doesn’t feel like a scientist- he wants to be stronger, more powerful, take over the world, but he doesn’t seem to care what the answers are. Its all well and good to be driven, but most importantly, you have to be curious.

Chapter 8 - Back to the Inoffensive Chapters of Yesteryear

[Ed. Full (?) post salvaged from kai-skia’s tumblr.]

[…]

And Yudkowsky knows enough that his tone is off-putting to point to it. So I wonder- is this story ACTUALLY teaching people things? Or is it just a way for people who already know some of the material to feel superior to Hariezer’s many foils? Do people go and read the sequences so that they can move from Hariezer-foil, to Hariezer’s point of view? (these are not rhetorical questions, if anyone has ideas on this).

[…]

As for the rest of the chapter- its good to see Hermione merits as human, unlike Ron. There is a strange bit in the chapter where Neville asks a Gryffindor prefect to find his frog, and the prefect says no (why? what narrative purpose does this serve?).

[…]

Chapters 9 and 10

[Ed. Full (?) post salvaged from thinkingornot’s tumblr.]

Alright, the lagavulin is flowing, and I’m once more equipped to pontificate.

These chapters are really one chapter split in two. I’m going to use them to argue against Yudkowsky’s friendly AI concept a bit. There is this idea, called ‘orthgonality’ that says that an AIs goals can be completely independent of its intelligence. So you can say ‘increase happiness’ and this uber-optimizer can tile the entire universe with tiny molecular happy faces, because its brilliant at optimizing but incapable of evaluating its goals. Just setting the stage for the next chapter.

In this chapter, Harry gets sorted. When the sorting hat hits his head, Harry wonders if its self-aware, which because of some not-really-explained magical hat property, instantly makes the hat self-aware. The hat finds being self aware uncomfortable, and Hariezer worries that he’ll destroy an intelligent being when the hat is removed. The hat assures us that the hat cares only for sorting children. As Hariezer notes

It [the hat] was still imbued with only its own strange goals…

Even still, Hariezer manages to blackmail the hat- he threatens to tell all the other kids to wonder if the hat is self-aware. The hat concedes to the demand.

So how does becoming self-aware over and over effect the hat’s goals of sorting people? It doesn’t. The blackmail should fail. Yudkowsky imagines that the minute it became self-aware, the hat couldn’t help but pick up some new goals. Even Yudkowsky imagines that becoming self-aware will have some effects on your goals.

This chapter also has some more weirdly personal seeming moments when the line between Yudkowsky’s other writing and HPMOR breaks down completely.

summary- Harry gets sorted into ravenclaw.

I am immensely frustrated that I’m 10 chapters into this thing, and we still don’t have any experiments regarding the rules of magic.

Chapter 18 - What?

[Ed. partially recovered via kai-skai’s tumblr post]

[…]

This leads to a meeting with the headmaster where Hariezer THREATENS TO START A NEWSPAPER CAMPAIGN AGAINST SNAPE (find a newspaper interested in the ‘some students think professor too hard on them, for instance he asked Hariezer Yudotter 3 hard questions in a row’ story)

[…]

Nowhere in this chapter does Hariezer consider that he deprived other students of the damn potions lesson. In his ruminations about why Snape keeps his job, he never considers that maybe Snape knows a lot about potions/is actually a good potions teacher.

[…]

Ideas Around Chapter 19

In light of the recent anon, I’m going to attempt to give the people (person?) what they want. Also, I went from not caring if people were reading this, to being a tiny bit anxious I’ll lose the audience I unexpectedly picked up. SELLING OUT.

If we ignore the literal child abuse of the chapter, the core of the idea is still somewhat malignant. Its true throughout that Hariezer DOES have a problem with “knowing how to lose,” but the way you learn to lose is by losing, not by being ordered to take a beating.

Quirrell could have challenged Hariezer to a game of chess, he could have asked questions Hariezer didn’t know the answer to (as Snape did, which prompted the insane chapter 18), etc. But the problem is the author is so invested in Hariezer being the embodiment of awesome that even when he needs to lose for story purposes, to learn a lesson, Yudkowsky doesn’t want to let Hariezer actually lose at something. Instead he gets ordered to lose, and he isn’t ordered to lose at something in his wheel house, but in the “jock-stuff” repeatedly sneered at in the story (physical confrontation)

Chapter 20- Why is this chapter called Bayes Theorem?

A return to what passes for “normal.” No child beating in this chapter, just a long, boring conversation.

This chapter opens with Hariezer ruminating about how much taking that beating sure has changes his life. He knows how to lose now, he isn’t going to become dark lord now! Quirrell quickly takes him down a peg:

“Mr. Potter,” he said solemnly, with only a slight grin, “a word of advice. There is such a thing as a performance which is too perfect. Real people who have just been beaten and humiliated for fifteen minutes do not stand up and graciously forgive their enemies. It is the sort of thing you do when you’re trying to convince everyone you’re not Dark, not -“

Hariezer protests, and we get

There is nothing you can do to convince me because I would know that was exactly what you were trying to do. And if we are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is barely possible that perfectly good people exist even though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable that someone would be beaten for fifteen minutes and then stand up and feel a great surge of kindly forgiveness for his attackers. On the other hand it is less improbable that a young child would imagine this as the role to play in order to convince his teacher and classmates that he is not the next Dark Lord. The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable

How does Hariezer take this? Does he point out “if no evidence can sway your priors, your priors are too strong?” or some other bit of logic-chop Bayes-judo? Nope, he drops some nonsensical jargon:

Harry blinked. He’d just had the dichotomy between the representativeness heuristic and the Bayesian definition of evidence explained to him by a wizard.

Where is Quirrell using bayesian evidence? He isn’t, he is neglecting all evidence because all evidence fits his hypothesis. Where does the representativeness heuristic come into play? It doesn’t.

The representative heuristic is making estimates based on how typical of a class something is. i.e. show someone a picture of a stereotypical ‘nerd’ and say “is this person more likely an english or a physics grad student?” The representative heuristic says “you should answer physics.” Its a good rule-of-thumb that psychologists think is probably hardwired into us. It also leads to some well-known fallacies I won’t get into here.

Quirrell is of course doing none of that- Quirrell has a hypothesis that fits anything Hariezer could do, so no amount of evidence will dissuade him.

After this, Quirrell and Hariezer have a long talk about science (because of course Quirrell too has a fascination with space travel). This leads to some real Less Wrong stuff.

Quirrell tells us that of course muggle scientists are dangerous because

There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can’t resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you do not share with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves!

And of course, Hariezer agrees

This was a rather different way of looking at things than Harry had grown up with. It had never occurred to him that nuclear physicists should have formed a conspiracy of silence to keep the secret of nuclear weapons from anyone not smart enough to be a nuclear physicist

Which is a sort of weirdly elitist position- after all lots of nuclear physicists are plenty dangerous. Its not intelligence that makes you less likely to drop a bomb. But this fits the general Yudkowsky/AI fear- an open research community is less important than hiding dangerous secrets. This isn’t necessarily the wrong position, but its a challenging one that merits actual discussion.

Anyone who has done research can tell you how important the open flow of ideas is for progress. I’m of the opinion that the increasing privatization of science is actually slowing us down in a lot of ways by building silos around information. How much do we retard progress in order to keep dangerous ideas out of people’s hands? Who gets to decide what is dangerous? Who decides who gets let into “the conspiracy?” Intelligence alone is no guarantee someone won’t drop a bomb, despite how obvious it seems to Quirrell and Yudotter.

After this digression about nuclear weapons, we learn from Quirrell that he snuck into NASA and enchanted the Pioneer gold plaque that will “make it last a lot longer than it otherwise would.” Its unclear to me what that wear and tear Quirrell is protecting the plaque from. Hariezer suggest that Quirrell might have snuck a magic portrait or a ghost into the plaque, because nothing makes more sense then dooming an (at least semi) sentient being to a near eternity of solitary confinement.

Anyway, partway through this chapter, Dumbledore bursts in angry that Quirrell had Hariezer beaten. Hariezer defends him, etc. The resolution is that its agreed Hariezer will start learning to protect himself from mind readers.

Chapter summary- long, mostly boring conversation, peppered with some existential risk/we need to escape the planet rhetoric. Its also called Bayes theorem despite that theorem making no appearance whatsoever.

And a note on the really weird pedagogy- we now have Quirrell who in the books is possessed by Voldemort acting as a mouthpiece for the author. This seems like a bad choice, because at some point I assume we’ll there will be a reveal, and it will turn out the reader should have trusted Quirrell.

Chapter 20- Why is this chapter called Bayes Theorem?

more-whales:

su3su2u1:

After this digression about nuclear weapons, we learn from Quirrell that he snuck into NASA and enchanted the Pioneer gold plaque that will “make it last a lot longer than it otherwise would.” Its unclear to me what that wear and tear Quirrell is protecting the plaque from. Hariezer suggest that Quirrell might have snuck a magic portrait or a ghost into the plaque, because nothing makes more sense then dooming an (at least semi) sentient being to a near eternity of solitary confinement.

oh I think you’ll like the author’s notes for this one assuming you don’t mind spoilers https://www.evernote.com/pub/adelenedawner/Eliezer#b=90390ce2-1356-4522-959e-a300957704c5&st=p&n=dd273d9e-ec3a-429f-a6f5-65aa6518b67d

Its unclear to me why turning the pioneer plaque into a horcrux is a good idea. How do the horcrux’s work? Did Voldemort doom a copy of himself to eternal solitary confinement?

I sort of thought the whole point of a horcrux was that if you died, there is a copy of you out there that can posses some poor sod like Quirrell if he got to close. What good is a horcrux that can never find another human?

Chapter 21- Secretive Science

So this chapter begins quite strangely- Hermione is worried that she is “bad” because she is enjoying being smarter than Hariezer. She then decides that she isn’t “bad”, its a budding romance. Thats the logic she uses. But because she won the book-reading contest against Hariezer (he doesn’t flip out, it must be because he learned “how to lose”), she gets to go on a date with him. The date is skipped over.

Next we find Hariezer meeting Malfoy in a dark basement, discussing how they will go about doing science. Malfoy is written as uncharacteristically stupid, in order to be a foil once more for Hariezer, peppering the conversation with such gems as:

Then I’ll figure out how to make the experimental test say the right answer!

“You can always make the answer come out your way,” said Draco. That had been practically the first thing his tutors had taught him. “It’s just a matter of finding the right arguments.”

We get a lot of platitudes from Hariezer about how science humbles you before nature. But then we get the same ideas Quirrell suggested previously, because “science is dangerous”, they are going to run their research program as a conspiracy.

“As you say, we will establish our own Science, a magical Science, and that Science will have smarter traditions from the very start.” The voice grew hard. “The knowledge I share with you will be taught alongside the disciplines of accepting truth, the level of this knowledge will be keyed to your progress in those disciplines, and you will share that knowledge with no one else who has not learned those disciplines. Do you accept this?”

And the name of this secretive scienspiracy?

And standing amid the dusty desks in an unused classroom in the dungeons of Hogwarts, the green-lit silhouette of Harry Potter spread his arms dramatically and said, “This day shall mark the dawn of… the Bayesian Conspiracy.”

Of course. I mentioned in the previous chapter, anyone who has done science knows that its a collaborative process that requires an open exchange of ideas.

And see what I mean about the melding of ideas between Quirrell and Hariezer? Its weird to use them both as author mouthpieces. The Bayesian Conspiracy is obviously an idea Yudkowsky is fond of, and here Hariezer gets the idea largely from Quirrell just one chapter back.

Chapter 22- Science!

This chapter opens strongly enough. Hariezer decides that the entire wizarding world has probably been wrong about magic, and don’t know the first thing about it.

Hermione disagrees, and while she doesn’t outright say “maybe you should read a magical theory book about how spells are created” (such a thing must exist), she is at least somewhat down that path.

To test his ideas, Hariezer creates a single-blind test- he gets spells from a book, changes the words or the wrist motion or what not and gets Hermione to cast them. Surprisingly, Hariezer is proven wrong by this little test. For once, the world isn’t written as insane as a foil for our intrepid hero.

It seemed the universe actually did want you to say ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ and it wanted you to say it in a certain exact way and it didn’t care what you thought the pronunciation should be any more than it cared how you felt about gravity.

There are a few anti-academic snipes, because it wouldn’t be HPMOR without a little snide swipe at academia:

But if my books were worth a carp they would have given me the following important piece of advice…Don’t worry about designing an elaborate course of experiments that would make a grant proposal look impressive to a funding agency.

Weird little potshots about academia (comments like “so many bad teachers, its like 8% as bad as Oxford,” “Harry was doing better in classes now, at least the classes he considered interesting”) have been peppered throughout the chapters since Hariezer arrived at Hogwarts. Oh academia, always trying to make you learn things that might be useful, even if they are a trifle boring. So full of bad teachers, etc. Just constant little comments attacking school and academia.

Anyway, this chapter would be one of the strongest chapters, except there is a second half. In the second half, Hariezer partners with Draco to get to the bottom of wizarding blood purity.

Harry Potter had asked how Draco would go about disproving the blood purist hypothesis that wizards couldn’t do the neat stuff now that they’d done eight centuries ago because they had interbred with Muggleborns and Squibs.

Here is the thing about science, step 0 needs to be make sure you’re trying to explain a real phenomena. Hariezer knows this, he tells the story of N-rays earlier in the chapter, but completely fails to understand the point.

Hariezer and Draco have decided, based on one anecdote (the founders of Hogwarts were the best wizards ever, supposedly) that wizards are weaker today than in the past. The first thing they should do is find out if wizards are actually getting weaker. After all, the two most dangerous dark wizards ever were both recent, Grindelwald and Voldemort. Dumbledore is no slouch. Even four students were able to make the marauders map just one generation before Harry. (Incidentally, this is exactly where neoreactionaries often go wrong- they assume things are getting worse without actually checking, and then create elaborate explanations for non-existent facts).

Anyway, for the purposes of the story, I’m sure it’ll turn out that wizards are getting weaker, because Yudkoswky wrote it. But this would have been a great chance to teach an actually useful lesson, and it would make the N-ray story told earlier a useful example, and not a random factoid.

Anyway, to explain the effect they come up with a few obvious hypotheses:

1. Magic itself is fading.
2. Wizards are interbreeding with Muggles and Squibs.
3. Knowledge to cast powerful spells is being lost.
4. Wizards are eating the wrong foods as children, or something else besides blood is making them grow up weaker.
5. Muggle technology is interfering with magic. (Since 800 years ago?)
6. Stronger wizards are having fewer children. (Draco = only child? Check if 3 powerful wizards, Quirrell / Dumbledore / Dark Lord, had any children.)

They miss some other obvious ones (there is a finite amount of magic power, so increasing populations = more wizards = less power per wizard, for instance. Try to come up with your own, its easy and fun).

They come up with some ways to collect some evidence- find out what the first year curriculum was throughout Hogwarts history, and do some wizard genealogy by talking to portraits.

Still, finally some science, even if half of it was infuriating.

Chapter 23- Wizarding genetics made (way too) simple

Alright, I need to preface this: I have the average particle physicists knowledge of biology (a few college courses, long ago mostly forgotten). That said, the lagavulin is flowing, so I’m going to pontificate as if I’m obviously right, so please reblog me with corrections if I am wrong.

In this chapter, Hariezer and Draco are going to explore what I think of as the blood hypothesis- that wizardry is carried in the blood, and that intermarriage with non-magical types is diluting wizardry.

Hariezer gives Draco a brief, serviceable enough description of DNA (more like pebbles than water), He lays out two models- there are lots of wizarding genes, and the more wizard genes you have, the more powerful the wizard you are. In this case, Hariezer reasons, as powerful wizards marry less powerful wizards, or non-magical types, the frequency of the magical variant of wizard genes in the general population becomes diluted. In this model, two squibs might rarely manage to have a wizard child, but they are likely to be weaker than wizard-born wizards. Call this model 1.

The other model Hariezer lays out is that magic lies on a single recessive gene. He reasons squibs have one dominant, non-magical version, and one recessive magical version of the gene. So of kids born to squibs, 1/4 will be wizards. In this version, you either have magic or you don’t, so if wizards married the non-magical, wizards themselves could become more rare, but the power of wizards won’t be diluted. Call this model 2.

The proper test between model 1 and 2, suggests Hariezer, is to look at the children born to two squibs. If about one fourth of them are wizards, its evidence of model 2, otherwise, evidence of model 1.

There is a huge problem with this. Do you see it? Here is a hint, What other predictions does model 2 make? While you are thinking about it, read on.

Before I answer the question, I want to point out that Hariezer ignores tons of other plausible models. Here is one I just made up. Imagine, for instance, a single gene that switches magic on and off, and a whole series of other genes that make you a better wizard. Maybe some double-jointed-wrist gene allows you to move your wand in unusually deft ways. Maybe some mouth-shape gene allows you to pronounce magical sounds no one else can. In this case, magical talent can be watered down as in model 1, and wizard inheritance could still look like Mendel would suggest, as in model 2.

Alright, below I’m going to answer my query above. Soon there will be no time to figure it for yourself.

Squibs are, by definition, the non-wizard children of wizard parents. Hariezer’s model 2 predicts that squibs cannot exist. It is already empirically disproven.

Hariezer, of course, does not notice this massive problem with his favored model, and Draco’s collected genealogy suggests about 6 out of 28 squib born children were wizards, so he declares model 2 wins the test.

Draco flips out, because now that he “knows” that magic isn’t being watered down by breeding he can’t join the death eaters and his whole life is ruined,etc. Hariezer is happy that Draco has “awakened as a scientist.” (I hadn’t complained about the stilted language in awhile, just reminding you that its still there), but Draco lashes out and casts a torture spell and locks Hariezer in the dungeon. After some failed escape attempts, he once against resorts to the time turner, because even now that its locked down, its the solution to every problem.

One other thing of note- to investigate the hypothesis that really strong spells can’t be cast anymore, Hariezer tries to look up a strong spell and runs into “the interdict of Merlin” that strong spells can’t be written down, only passed from wizard to wizard.

Its looking marginally possible that it will turn out that this natural secrecy is exactly whats killing off powerful magic- its not open so ideas aren’t flourishing or being passed on. Hariezer will notice that and realize his “Bayesian Conspiracy” won’t be as effective as an open science culture, and I’ll have to take back all of my criticisms around secretive science (it will be a lesson Hariezer learns, and not an idea Hariezer endorses). It seems more likely given the author’s existential risk concerns, however, that this interdict of Merlin will be endorsed.

Chapter 23- Wizarding genetics made (way too) simple

more-whales:

I think he just wasn’t aware of how squibs work in canon (relevant author’s notes, in which he also mentions that he hasn’t read all the books, and points out the other scientific mistakes he thinks Harry is making). This is a more interesting account of how magical inheritance could fit with canon along with JKR’s comment that it’s a single dominant gene.

What else could a squib be though? I wasn’t aware of exactly what a squib was, I figured out in from context (in this case, the context of HPMOR!, plus whatever background cultural knowledge is kicking around in my head).

If a squib is just a muggle who knows about the magical world, then the test is meaningless because there is no way of knowing what gene pattern they have.

Reading that author’s note is actually pretty infuriating. Yudkowsky tells us:

What Harry is mainly thinking about at this point is manipulating Draco!

Which goes back to an earlier post of mine- the Harry of this story is not a scientist at all. He is a manipulator who thinks science is another means to an end. He doesn’t care about the actual answer, he cares about manipulating Draco. He isn’t actually curious about magic, he wants to increase his magic power.

He also says this:

I realize this is going to sound odd, but Harry is not supposed to know all that much science. He’s eleven.

Which goes back to another post I’ve made before- when Yudkowsky gets it right, the praise goes to Yudkowsky. When he gets it wrong, its because Harry is eleven and doesn’t know that much science.

Some more notes regarding HPMOR

There is a line in the movie Clueless (if you aren’t familiar, Clueless was an older generation’s Mean Girls) where a woman is described as a “Monet”- in that like the painting, it looks good from afar but up close is a mess.

So I’m now nearly 25 chapters into this thing, and I’m starting to think that HPMOR is this sort of a monet- if you let yourself get carried along, it seems ok-enough. It references a lot of things that a niche group of people,myself included, like (physics! computational complexity! genetics! psychology!). But as you stare at it more, you start noticing that it doesn’t actually hang together, its a complete mess.

The hard science references are subtly wrong, and often aren’t actually explained in-story (just a jargon dump to say ‘look, here is a thing you like’).

The social science stuff fairs a bit better (its less wrong ::rimshot::), but even when its explanation is correct, its power is wildly exaggerated- conversations between Quirrell/Malfoy/Potter seem to follow scripts of the form

“Here is an awesome manipulation I’m using against you”

“My, that is an effective manipulation. You are a dangerous man”

“I know, but I also know that you are only flattering me as an attempt to manipulate me.”

“My, what an effective use of Bayesian evidence that is!”

Other characters get even worse treatment, either behaving nonsensically to prove how good Harry is at manipulation (as in the chapter where Harry tells off Snape and then tries to blackmail the school because Snape asked him questions he didn’t know), OR acting nonsensically so Harry can explain why its nonsensical (“Carry this rock around for no reason.” “Thats actually the fallacy of privileging the hypothesis.”) The social science/manipulation/marketing psychology stuff is just a flavoring for conversations.

No important event in the story has hinged on any of this rationality- instead basically every conflict thus far is resolved via the time turner.

And if you strip all this out, all the wrongish science-jargon and the conversations that serve no purpose but to prove Malfoy/Quirrell/Harry are “awesome” by having them repeatedly think/tell each other how awesome they are, the story has no real structure. Its just a series of poorly paced (if you strip out the “awesome” conversations, then there are many chapters where nothing happens), disconnected events. There is no there there.

Chapter 24- Evopsych Rorschach test

Evolutionary psychology is a field that famously has a pretty poor bullshit filter. Satoshi Kanazawa once published a series of articles that beautiful people will have more female children (because beauty is more important for girls) and engineers/mathematicians will have more male children (because only men need the logic-brains). The only thing his papers proved was that he is bad at statistics (in fact, Kanazawa made an entire career out of being bad at statistics, such is the state of evo-psych).

One of the core criticisms is that for any fact observed in the world, you can tell several different evolutionary stories, and there is no real way to tell which, if any is actually true. Because of this, when someone gives you an evopsych explanation for something, its often telling you more about what they believe then it is about science or the world (there are exceptions, but they are rare).

So this chapter is a long, pretty much useless conversation between Draco and Hariezer about how they are manipulating each other and Dumbledore or whatever, but smack in the middle we get this rumination:

In the beginning, before people had quite understood how evolution worked, they’d gone around thinking crazy ideas like human intelligence evolved so that we could invent better tools.

The reason why this was crazy was that only one person in the tribe had to invent a tool, and then everyone else would use it…the person who invented something didn’t have much of a fitness advantage, didn’t have all that many more children than everyone else. [SU comment- could the inventor of an invention perhaps get to occupy a position of power within a tribe? Could that lead to them having more wealth and children?]

It was a natural guess… A natural guess, but wrong.

Before people had quite understood how evolution worked, they’d gone around thinking crazy ideas like the climate changed, and tribes had to migrate, and people had to become smarter in order to solve all the novel problems.

But human beings had four times the brain size of a chimpanzee. 20% of a human’s metabolic energy went into feeding the brain. Humans were ridiculously smarter than any other species. That sort of thing didn’t happen because the environment stepped up the difficulty of its problems a little…. [SU challenge to the reader- save this climate change evolutionary argument with an ad-hoc justification]

Ending up with that gigantic outsized brain must have taken some sort of runawayevolutionary process…And today’s scientists had a pretty good guess at what that runaway evolutionary process had been….

[It was] Millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other - an evolutionary arms race without limit - [that] had led to… increased mental capacity.

What does his preferred explanation for the origin of intelligence (people evolved to outwit each other) say about the author?

Chapter 24/25/26 - Mangled Narratives

This chapter is going to be entirely about the way the story is being told in this section of chapters. There is a big meatball of a terrible idea, but I’m getting sick of that low hanging fruit, so I’ll only mention it briefly in passing.

I’m a sucker for stories about con artists. In these stories, there is a tradition of breaking with the typical chronological order of story telling- instead they show the end result of the grand plan first, followed by all the planning that went into it (or some variant of that). In that way, the audience gets to experience the climax first from the perspective of the mark, and then from the perspective of the clever grifters. Yudkowsky himself successfully employs this pattern in the first chapter with the time turner.

In this chapter, however, this pattern is badly mangled. The chapter is setting up an elaborate prank on Rita Skeeter (Draco warned Hariezer that Rita was asking questions during one of many long conversations), but jumbling the narrative accomplishes literally nothing.

Here are the events, in the order laid out in the narrative

1. Hariezer tells Draco he didn’t tell on him about the torture, and borrows some money from him

2. (this is the terrible idea meatball) Using literally the exact same logic that Intelligent Design proponents use (and doing exactly 0 experiments), Hariezer decides while thinking over breakfast:

Some intelligent engineer, then, had created the Source of Magic, and told it to pay attention to a particular DNA marker.

The obvious next thought was that this had something to do with “Atlantis”.

1. Hariezer meets with Dumbledore, and refuses to tell on Draco, says getting tortured is all part of his manipulation game.

2. Fred and George Weasley meet with a mysterious man named Flume and tells him the-boy-who-lived needs the mysterious man’s help. There is a Rtia Skeeter story mentioned that says Quirrell is secretly a death eater and is training Hariezer to be the next dark lord, a story Flume says was planted by the elder Malfoy.

3. Quirrell tells Rita Skeeter he has no dark mark, Rita ignores him.

4. Hariezer hires Fred and George (presumably with Malfoy’s money) to perpetuate a prank on Rita Skeeter- to convince her of something totally false.

5. Hariezer has lunch with Quirrell, reads a newspaper story with the headline

HARRY POTTER
SECRETLY BETROTHED
TO GINEVRA WEASLEY

This is the story the Weasley’s planted apparently (the prank), and apparently there was a lot of supporting evidence or something, because Quirrell is incredulous it could be done. And then Quirrell after speculating that Rita Skeeter could be capable of turning to a small animal, crushes a beetle.

So whats the problem with this narrative order? First, there is absoltuely no payoff to jumbling the chronology. The prank is left until the end, and its exactly what we expected- a false story was planted in the newspaper. It doesn’t even seem like that big a deal- just a standard gossip column story (of course, Harry and Quirrell react like its a huge, impossible-to-have-done prank, to be sure the reader knows its hard.)

Second, most of the scenes are redundant, they contain no new information whatsoever and they are therefore boring- the event covered in 3 (talking with Dumbledore) is covered in full in 1 (telling Malfoy he didn’t tell on him to Dumbledore). The events of 6 (Hariezer hiring the Weasley’s to prank for him) are completely covered in 4 (when the Weasley’s hire Flume, they tell him its for Hariezer). This chapter is twice as long as it should be, for no reason.

Third, the actual prank is never shown from either the marks or the grifter’s perspective. It happens entirely off-stage so to speak. We don’t see Rita Skeeter encountering all this amazing evidence about Hariezer’s betrothal and writing up her career making article. We don’t see Fred and George’s elaborate plan (although if I were a wizard and wanted to plant a false newspaper story, I’d just plant a false memory in a reporter).

What would have been more interesting, the actual con happening off-stage, or the long conversations about nothing that happen in these chapters? These chapters are just an utter failure. The narrative decisions are nonsensical, and everything continues to be tell, tell, tell, never show.

Also of note- Quirrell gives Hariezer Roger Bacon’s diary of magic, because of course thats a thing that exists.

Some more notes regarding HPMOR

nostalgebraist:

I think this “Monet” idea may go some way to explaining why HPMOR strikes different people very differently.

I get the sense that HPMOR falls into a certain category of web fiction that is typically very long, very complicated, often not very well executed on the micro level, but (arguably) impressive or interesting on the macro level. (Another example is Worm, which seems to have major fan overlap with HPMOR, and which I have also tried to read but just didn’t enjoy on the micro level. Although I may not have given it enough of a chance)

Anecdotally, I think the people who like this stuff are often fast readers who are able to ignore micro-level flaws and quickly “vacuum up” all of the interesting or worthwhile parts of a story. Personally, I’m a slow reader, so I have a hard time getting into this stuff, and gravitate to things that are either fast-paced with many intriguing mysteries (so that I read faster than is “natural” for me) or things that are “literary” in the sense that they strive to be interesting on the micro level, down to things like word choice and sentence structure.

If you were closer to the ideal HPMOR reader, you wouldn’t be posting critiques of the science and plotting in each chapter, you would already be on like chapter 67 or something and would have found something in the story you thought was legitimately good and focused on that element (or elements) while effortlessly passing over the flaws. (Not to imply that this would be better than what you are doing!)

I haven’t read much internet or fan fiction, not because I’m high-brow or above it (no one who has wasted as much time as I have spent blogging about HPMOR should ever feel they are above anything), but because I’m a member of that last generation that didn’t grow up with internet, but rather started encountering it in highschool and college. It just never occurred to me to seek out fiction on the internet, until people started recommending HPMOR.

That said, as an adolescent I read probably hundreds of absolutely terrible fantasy books, and as an adult I’ve read twice as many absolutely terrible thrillers, and they are always full of terrible prose, ridiculous dialogue, and the plots are incredibly formulaic. But things happen. If anything the pacing is awful because its way too fast- plot is the afterthought needed to move from one action sequence to the next. In HPMOR, or at least 25 chapters of it, on the other hand, people talk about things happening. Almost everything is tell,tell,tell never show.

I sort of wonder if people who read much faster are processing the book differently. If they don’t mind that the book is all tell, because everything to them seems like tell. It would be interesting to poll people about their experience of reading, if someone less lazy than me wants to take this sort of initiative.

A Question Regarding Chapter 27 ?

Does anyone know if this is true:

But then human beings only understood each other in the first place by pretending. You didn’t make predictions about people by modeling the hundred trillion synapses in their brain as separate objects. Ask the best social manipulator on Earth to build you an Artificial Intelligence from scratch, and they’d just give you a dumb look. You predicted people by telling your brain to act like theirs. You put yourself in their place. If you wanted to know what an angry person would do, you activated your own brain’s anger circuitry, and whatever that circuitry output, that was your prediction. What did the neural circuitry for anger actually look like inside? Who knew? The best social manipulator on Earth might not know what neurons were, and neither might the best Legilimens.

Anything a Legilimens could understand, an Occlumens could pretend to be. It was the same trick either way - probably implemented by the same neural circuitry in both cases, a single set of control circuits for reconfiguring your own brain to act as a model of someone else’s.

Not the bits about magic, obviously, the bits about whether to understand people we “reconfigure our own brain to act as a model of someone else’s?”

Its not clear to me how you would test that. Its also not clear to me that we have that level of understanding of what sort of brain activity makes up a “thought.” I don’t think its what it “feels” like when I try to empathize with or “predict” someone. I don’t even know enough to know how I could look this up. Would anyone with some relevant knowledge like to weigh in?

Chapter 27- Answers from a psychologist

In order to answer last night’s science question, I spent today slaving on the streets, polling professionals for answers (i.e. I sent one email to an old college roommate who did a doctorate in experimental brain stuff). This will basically be a guest post.

Here is the response:

The first thing you need to know, this is called “the simulation theory of empathy.” Now that you have a magic google phrase, you can look up everything you’d want, or read on my (not so) young padawan.

You are correct that no one knows how empathy works, its too damn complicated, but what we can look at is motor control, and in motor control the smoking gun for simulation is mirror neurons. Rizzolatti and collaborators discovered the certain neurons in macaque monkey’s inferior frontal gyrus that related to the motor-vocabulary activate not only when they do a gesture, but also when they see someone else doing that same gesture. So maybe, says Rizzolatti, the same neurons responsible for action are also responsible for understanding action (action-understanding). This is not the only explanation, it could be a simple priming effect. This would be big support for simulation explanations of understanding others. Unfortunately, its not the only explanation for action-understanding. There are other areas of the macaque brain (in particular the superior temporal sulcus) that aren’t involved in action, but do appear to have some role in action/understanding [Ed. modified “[” to “/” to render correctly in markdown].

It is not an understatement to say that this discoveryy of mirror neurons caused the entire field to lose their collective shit. For some reason, motor explanations for brain phenomena are incredibly appealing to large portions of the field, and always have been. James Woods (the old dead behaviorist, not the awesome actor) had a theory that thought itself was related to the motor-neurons that control speech. Its just something that the entire field is primed to lose their shit over. Some philosophers of the mind made all sorts of sweeping pronouncements (“mirror-neurons are responsible for the great leap forward in human evolution”, pretty sure thats a direct quote)

The problem is that the gold standard for monkey tests is to see what a lesion in that portion of the brain does. Near as anyone can tell, lesions in F5 (portion of the inferior frontal gyrus where the mirror neurons on) does not impair action-understanding.

The next, bigger problem for theories of human behavior is that there is no solid evidence of mirror neurons in humans. A bunch of fmri studies showed a bit of activity in one region, and then meta-studies suggested not that region, maybe some other region,etc. fmri studies are tricky Google dead salmon fmri.

But even if mirror neurons are involved in humans, there is really strong evidence they can’t be involved in action-understanding. The mirror proponents suggest speech is a strong trigger for suggested mirror neurons. For instance, in the speech system, we’ve known since Paul Broca (really old French guy) that lesions can destroy your ability to speak without understanding your ability to understand speech. This is a huge problem for models that link action-understanding to action, killing those neurons should destroy both.

Also,suggested human mirror neurons do not fire in regards to pantomime actions. Also in autism spectrum disorders, action-understanding is often impaired with no impairment to action.

So in summary, the simulation theory of empathy got a big resurgence after mirror neurons, but there is decently strong empirical evidence against a mirror-only theory of action-understanding in humans. That doesn’t mean mirror neurons have no role to play (though if they aren’t found in humans, it does mean they have no role to play), it just means that the brain is complicated. I think the statement you quoted to me would have been something you could read from a philosopher of mind in the late 80s or early 90s, but not something anyone involved in experiments would say. By the mid 2000s, a lot of that enthusiasm had pittered a bit. Then I left the field.

So on this particular bit of science, it looks like Yudkowsky isn’t wrong he is just presenting conjecture and hypothesis as settled science. Still I learned something here, I’d never encountered this idea before. I’ll have an actual post about chapter 27 tomorrow.

Chapter 27 - Mostly Retreads

This is another chapter where most of the action is stuff that has happened before, we are getting more and more retreads.

The new bit is that Hariezer is learning to defend himself from mental attacks. The goal, apparently, is to perfectly simulate someone other than yourself, in that way the mind reader learns the wrong things. This leads in to the full-throated endorsement of the simulation theory of empathy that was discussed by a professional in my earlier post. Credit where credit is due- this was an idea I’d never encountered before, and I do think HPMOR is good for some of that- if you don’t trust the presentation and google ideas as they come up, you could learn quite a bit.

We also find out Snape is a perfect mind-reader. This is an odd choice- in the original books Snape’s ability to block mind-reading was something of a metaphor for his character- you can’t know if you can trust him because he is so hard to read, his inscrutableness even fooled the greatest dark wizard ever, etc. It was, fundamentally, hid cryptic dodginess that helped the cause, but it also fermented the distrust that some of the characters in the story felt toward him.

Now for the retreads-

More pointless bitching about quidditch. Nothing was said here that wasn’t said in the earlier bitching about quidditch.

Snape enlists Hareizer’s help to fight anti-slytherin bullies (for no real reason, near as I can tell), the bullies are fought once more with con-artist style cleverness (much like in the earlier chapter with the time turner and invisitbility cloak. In this chapter, its just with an invisibility cloak).

Snape rewards Hariezer’s rescue with a conversation about Hariezer’s parents, during which Hariezer decides his mother was shallow, which upsets Snape. Its an odd moment, but the odd moments in HPMOR dialogue have piled up so high its almost not worth mentioning.

And the chapter culminates when the bullied slytherin tells Hariezer about Azkaban, pleading with Hariezer to save his parents. Of course, Hariezer can’t (something tells me he will in the near future), and we get this:

“Yeah,” said the Boy-Who-Lived, “that pretty much nails it. Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can’t answer, I feel guilty about not being God.”

…

The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God.

So another retread- Hariezer is once more making clear his motives aren’t curiosity, they are power. This was true after chapter 10, its still true now.

This is the only real action for several chapters now, unfortunately all the action feels like its already happened before in other chapters.

Chapter 28- Hacking Science/Map-territory

Finally we get back to some attempts to do magi-science, but its again deeply frustrating. Its more transfiguration- the only magic we have thus far explored, and it leads to a discussion of map vs. territory distinctions that is horribly mangled.

At the opening of hte chapter, instead of using science to explore magic, the new approach is to treat magic as a way to hack science itself. To that end, Hariezer tries (and fails) to transfigure something into “cure for Alzheimer’s,” and then tries (successfully) to transfigure a rope of carbon nanotubes. I guess the thought here is he can then give these things to scientists to study? Its unclear, really.

Frustrated with how useless this seems, Hermione make this odd complaint:

“Anyway,” Hermione said. Her voice shook. “I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t believe children can do things that grownups can’t, that’s only in stories.”

Poor Hermione- thats the feeblest of objections, especially in a story where every character acts like they are in their late teens or twenties. Its almost as if the author was looking for some knee jerk complaint you could throw out that everyone would write-off as silly on its face.

So Hariezer decides he needs to do something adults can’t to appease Hermione. To do this, he decides to attack the constraints he knows about magic, starting with the idea that you can only transfigure a whole object, and not part of an object (a constraint I think was introduced just for this chapter?).

So Hariezer reasons: things are made out of atoms. There isn’t REALLY a whole object there,so why can’t I do part of an object? This prompted me to wonder- if you do transform part of an object, what happens at the interface? Does this whole-object constraint have something to do with the interface? I mentioned in the chapter 15 section that magicking in a lot large gold molecule into water could cause steric mismatches (just volume constraints really) with huge energy differences, hence explosions. What happens at the micro level when you take some uniform crystalline solid and try to patch on some organic material like rubber at some boundary? If you deform the (now rubbery) material, what happens when it changes back and the crystal spacing is now messed up? Could you partially transform something if you carefully worked out the interface?

It will not surprise someone who has read this far that none of these questions are asked or answered.

Instead, Hariezer thinks really hard about how atoms are real, in the process we get ruminations on the map and the territory:

But that was all in the map, the true territory wasn’t like that, reality itself had only a single level of organization, the quarks, it was a unified low-level process obeying mathematically simple rules.

This seems innocuous enough, but a fundamental mistake is being made here. For better or for worse, physics is limited in what it can tell you about the territory, it can just provide you with more accurate maps. Often it provides you with multiple, equivalent maps for the same situation with no way to choose between them.

For instance, quarks (and gluons) have this weird property- they are well defined excitations at very high energies, but not at all well-defined at low energies, where bound states become fundamental excitations. There is no such thing as a free-quark at low energy. For some problems, the quark map is useful, for many, many more problems the meson/hadron (proton,neutron,kaon,etc) map is much more useful. The same theory at a different energy scale provides a radically different map (renormalization is a bitch, and a weak coupling becomes strong).

Continuing in this vein, he keeps being unable to transform only part of an object, so he keeps trying different maps, and making the same map/territory confusion culminating in:

If he wanted power, he had to abandon his humanity, and force his thoughts to conform to the true math of quantum mechanics.

There were no particles, there were just clouds of amplitude in a multiparticle configuration space and what his brain fondly imagined to be an eraser was nothing except a gigantic factor in a wavefunction that happened to factorize,

(Side note: for Hariezer its all about power, not about curiosity, as I’ve said dozens of time now. Also, I know as much physics as anyone, and I don’t think I’ve abandoned my humanity.)

This is another example of the same problem I’m getting at above. There is no “true math of quantum mechanics.” In non-relativistic, textbook quantum mechanics, I can formulate one version of quantum mechanics on 3 space dimension 1 time dimension, and calculate things via path integrals. I can also build a large configuration space (Hilbert space) with 3 space dimensions, and 3 momentum dimensions per particle, (and one overall time dimension) and calculate things via operators on that space. These are different mathematical formulations, over different spaces, that are completely equivalent. Neither map is more appropriate than the other. Hariezer arbitrarily thinks of configuration space as the RIGHT one.

This isn’t unique to quantum mechanics, most theories have several radically different formulations. Good old newtonian mechanics has a formulation on the exact same configuration space Hariezer is thinking of.

The big point here is that the same theory has different mathematical formulations. We don’t know which is “the territory” we just have a bunch of different, but equivalent maps. Each map has its own strong suits, and its not clear that any one of them is the best way to think about all problems. Is quantum mechancis 3+1 dimensions (3 space, 1 time) or is it 6N+1 (3 space and 3 momentum + 1 time dimension)? Its both and neither (more appropriately, its just not a question that physics can answer for us).

What Hariezer is doing here isn’t separating the map and the territory, its reifying one particular map (configuration space)!

(Less important: I also find it amusing, in a physics elitist sort of way (sorry for the condescension) that Yudkowsky picks non-relativistic quantum mechanics as the final, ultimate reality. Instead of describing or even mentioning quantum field theory, which is the most low-level theory we (we being science) know of, Yudkowsky picks non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the most low-level theory HE knows.)

Anyway, despite obviously reifying a map, in-story it must be the “right” map, because suddenly he manages to transform part of an object, although he tells Hermione

Quantum mechanics wasn’t enough,” Harry said. “I had to go all the way down to timeless physics before it took.

So this is more bad pedagogy: timeless physics isn’t even a map, its the idea of a map. No one has made a decent formulation of quantum mechanics without a specified time direction (technical aside: its very hard to impose unitarity sensibly if you are trying to make time emerge from your theory, instead of being inbuilt). Its pretty far away from mainstream theory attempts, but here its presented as the ultimate idea in physics. It seems very odd to just toss in a somewhat obscure ideas as the pinnacle of physics.

Anyway, Hariezer shows Dumbledore and McGonagall his new found ability to transfigure part of an object, chapter ends.

bartlebyshop: I suspect this is …

bartlebyshop:

I suspect this is the beginning of an attempt to backdoor Timeless Decision Theory (Yudkowsky’s completely fucked up and wrong idea of how causailty/decision theory/anything works) into this fic.

Oh, its already made a small appearance. In my post “Chapter 14 continued- Comed Tea, Newcomb’s Problem, Science”, [Ed. This post is lost, so no useful link.] I mentioned that Yudkowsky was using his “comed-tea” magical invention as a backdoor future-causes-the-past idea. I’d bet a lifetime of scotch timeless decision theory shows up before this thing is done.

Chapter 29- Not Much Here

Someone called Yudkowsky out on the questionable decision to include his pet theories as established science, so chapter 29 opens with this (why didn’t he stick this disclaimer on the chapters where the mistakes were made?):

Science disclaimers: Luosha points out that the theory of empathy in Ch. 27 (you use your own brain to simulate others) isn’t quite a known scientific fact. The evidence so far points in that direction, but we haven’t analyzed the brain circuitry and proven it. Similarly, timeless formulations of quantum mechanics (alluded to in Ch. 28) are so elegant that I’d be shocked to find the final theory had time in it, but they’re not established yet either.

He is still wrong about timeless formulations of quantum though, they aren’t more elegant, they don’t exist.

The rest of this chapter seems like its just introductory for something coming later- Hariezer, Draco and Hermione are all named as heads of Quirrell’s armies and are all trying to manipulate each other. Some complaints from Hermione that broomstick riding is jock-like and stupid, old hat by now.

There, is however, one exceptionally strange bit- apparently in this version of the world, the core plot of Prisoner of Azkaban (Scabbers the rat was really Peter Petigrew) was just a delusion that a schizophrenic Weasley brother had. Just a stupid swipe at the original book for no real reason.

Chapter 30-31 - Credit Where Credit is Due

So credit where credit is due- these two chapters are pretty decent. We finally get some action in a chapter, there is only one bit of wrongish science, and the overall moral of the episode is a good one.

In these chapters, three teams, “armies” lead by Draco, Hariezer and Hermione, compete in a mock-battle, Quirrell’s version of a team sport. The action is more less competently written (despite things like having Neville yell “special attack”), and its more-or-less fun and quick to read. It feels a bit like a lighter-hearted version of the beginning competitions of Ender’s game (which no doubt inspired these chapters.

The overall “point” of the chapters is even pretty valuable- Hermione, who is written off as an idiot by both Draco and Hariezer splits her army and has half attack Draco and half attack Hariezer. She is seemingly wiped out almost instantly. Draco and Hariezer then fight each other nearly to death, and out pops Hermione’s army- turns out they only faked defeat. Hermione wins, and we learn that unlike Draco and Hariezer, Hermione delegated and collaborated with the rest of her team to develop strategies to win the fight. There is a (very unexpected given the tone of everything thus far) lesson about teamwork and collaboration here.

Thats said- I still have nits to pick. Hariezer’s army is organized in quite possibly the dumbest possible way:

Harry had divided the army into 6 squads of 4 soldiers each, each squad commanded by a Squad Suggester. All troops were under strict orders to disobey any orders they were given if it seemed like a good idea at the time, including that one… unless Harry or the Squad Suggester prefixed the order with “Merlin says”, in which case you were supposed to actually obey.

This might seem like a good idea, but anyone who has played team sports can testify- there is a reason that you work out plays in advance, and generally have delineated roles. I assume the military has a chain of command for similar reasons, though I have never been a solider. I was hoping to see this idea for a creatively-disorganized army bite Hariezer, but it does not. There seems to be no confusion at all over orders, etc. Basically, none of what you’d expect would happen from telling an army “do what you want, disobey all orders” happens.

And it wouldn’t be HPMOR without potentially bad social science, here is today’s reference:

There was a legendary episode in social psychology called the Robbers Cave experiment. It had been set up in the bewildered aftermath of World War II, with the intent of investigating the causes and remedies of conflicts between groups. The scientists had set up a summer camp for 22 boys from 22 different schools, selecting them to all be from stable middle-class families. The first phase of the experiment had been intended to investigate what it took to start a conflict between groups. The 22 boys had been divided into two groups of 11 -

• and this had been quite sufficient.

The hostility had started from the moment the two groups had become aware of each others’ existences in the state park, insults being hurled on the first meeting. They’d named themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers (they hadn’t needed names for themselves when they thought they were the only ones in the park) and had proceeded to develop contrasting group stereotypes, the Rattlers thinking of themselves as rough-and-tough and swearing heavily, the Eagles correspondingly deciding to think of themselves as upright-and-proper.

The other part of the experiment had been testing how to resolve group conflicts. Bringing the boys together to watch fireworks hadn’t worked at all. They’d just shouted at each other and stayed apart. What had worked was warning them that there might be vandals in the park, and the two groups needing to work together to solve a failure of the park’s water system. A common task, a common enemy.

Now, I readily admit to not having read the original Robber’s Cave book, but I do have two textbooks that reference it, and Yudkowsky gets the overall shape of the study right, but fails to mention some important details. (If my books are wrong, and Yudkowsky is right, which seems highly unlikely given his track record please let me know)

Both descriptions I have suggest the experiment had 3 stages, not two. The first stage was to build up the in-groups, then the second stage was to introduce them to each other and build conflict, and then the third stage was to try and resolve the conflict. In particular, this aside from Yudkowsky originally struck me as surprising insightful:

They’d named themselves the Eagles and the Rattlers (they hadn’t needed names for themselves when they thought they were the only ones in the park)

Unfortunately, its simply not true- during phase 1 the researchers asked the groups to come up with names for themselves, and let the social norms for the groups develop on their own. The “in-group” behavior developed before they met their rival groups.

While tensions existed from first meeting, real conflicts didn’t develop until the two groups competed in teams for valuable prizes.

This stuff matters- Yudkowsky paints a picture of humans diving so easily into tribes that simply setting two groups of boys loose in the same park will cause trouble. In reality, taking two groups of boys, encouraging them to develop group habits, group names, group customs, and then setting the groups to directly competing for scarce prizes (while researchers encourage the growth of conflicts) will cause conflicts. This isn’t just a subtlety.

Chapter 32- Interlude

Chapter 32 is just a brief interlude, nothing here really, just felt the need to put this in for completeness.

Chapter 33- it worked so well the first time, might as well try it again

This chapter has left me incredibly frustrated. After a decent chapter, we get a terrible retread of the same thing. For me, this chapter failed so hard that I’m actually feeling sort of dejected, it undid any good will the previous battle chapter had built up.

This section of chapters is basically a retread of the dueling armies just a brief section back. Unfortunately, this second battle section flubs completely a lot of the things that worked pretty well in the first battle section. There is a lot to talk about here that I think failed, so this might be long.

There is an obvious huge pacing problem here. The first battle game happens just a brief interlude before the second battle game. Instead of spreading this game out over the course of the Hogwarts school year (or at least putting a few of the other classroom episodes in between) these just get slammed together. First battle, one interlude, last battle. That means that a lot of the evolution of the game over time, how people are reacting to it, etc. is left as a tell rather than a show. A lot of this chapter is spent dealing with big changes to Hogwarts that have been developing as student’s get super-involved in this battle game, but we never see any of that.

Imagine if Ender’s game (a book fresh on my mind because of the incredibly specific references in this chapter) were structured so that you get the first battle game, and then a flash-forward to his final battle against the aliens, with Ender explaining all the strategy he learned over the rest of that year. This chapter is about as effective as that last Ender’s game battle would be.

The chapter opens with Dumbledore and McGonagall worried about the school-

Students were wearing armbands with insignia of fire or smile or upraised hand, and hexing each other in the corridors.

Loyalty to armies over house or school is tearing the school apart!

But then we turn to the army generals- apparently the new rules of the game allowed soldiers in armies to turn traitor, and its caused the whole game to spiral out of control- Draco complains:

You can’t possibly do any real plots with all this stuff going on. Last battle, one of my soldiers faked his own suicide.

Hermione agrees, everyone is losing control of their armies because of all the traitors.

“But.. wait…” I can hear you asking, “how can that make sense? Loyalty to the armies is so absolute people are hexing each other in the corridors? But at the same time, almost all the students in the armies are turning traitor and plotting against their generals? Both of those can’t be true?” I agree, you smart reader you, both of these things don’t work together. NOT ONLY IS YUDKOWSKY TELLING INSTEAD OF SHOWING, WE ARE BEING TOLD CONTRADICTORY THINGS. Yudkowsky wanted to be able to follow through on the Robber’s Cave idea he developed earlier, but he also needed all these traitors for his plot, so he tried to run in both directions at once.

Thats not the only problem with this chapter (it wouldn’t be HPMOR without misapplied science/math concepts)- it turns out Hermione is winning, so the only way for Draco and Hariezer to try to catch up is to temporarily team up, which leads to a long explanation where Hariezer explains the prisoner’s dilemma and Yudkowsky’s pet decision theory.

Here is the big problem- In the classic prisoner’s dilemma:

If my partner cooperates, I can either:

-cooperate, in which case I spend a short time in jail, and my partner spends a short time in jail

-defect, in which case I spend no time in jail, and my partner serves a long time in jail

If my partner defects, I can either:

-cooperate, in which case I spend a long time in jail, and my partner goes free

-defect, in which case I spend a long time in jail, as does my partner.

The key insight of the prisoner’s dilemma is that no matter what my partner does, defecting improves my situation. This leads to a dominant strategy where everyone defects, even though the both-defect is worse than the both-cooperate.

In the situation between Draco and Hariezer:

If Draco cooperates, Hariezer can either:

-cooperate in which case both Hariezer and Draco both have a shot at getting first or second

-defect, in which case Hariezer is guaranteed second, Draco guaranteed 3rd place

If Draco defects, Hariezer can either

-cooperate, in which case Hariezer is guaranteed 3rd, and Draco gets 2nd.

-defect, in which case Hariezer and Draco are fighting it out for 2nd and third.

Can you see the difference here? If Draco is expected to cooperate, Hariezer has no incentive to defect- both cooperate is STRICTLY BETTER than the situation where Hariezer defects against Draco. This is not at all a prisoner’s dilemma, its just cooperating against a bigger threat. All the pontificating about decision theories that Hariezer does is just wasted breath, because no one is in a prisoner’s dilemma.

After the pointless digression about the non-prisoner’s dilemma (seriously, this is getting absurd, and frustrating- I’m hard pressed to find a single science reference in this whole thing that’s unambiguously applied correctly.).

After these preliminaries, the battle begins. Unlike the light hearted, winking reference to Ender’s game of the previous chapter, Yudkowsky feels the need to make it totally explicit- they fight in the lake, so that Hariezer can use exactly the stuff he learned from Ender’s game to give him an edge. It turns the light homage of the last battle into just the setup for the beat-you-over-the-head reference this time. There is a benefit to subtlety, and assuming your reader isn’t an idiot.

Anyway, during the battle, everyone betrays everyone and the overall competition ends in a tie.

Some more notes regarding HPMOR

kai-skai:

HPMOR fan, fast reader here - I noticed some of the stuff OP was talking about (the way they constantly affirm each other’s NPC-ness, and also the way Harry is ridiculously overpowered in a lot of ways), but I definitely don’t mind that there are a lot of “unimportant” scenes and dialogues or chapters without plot, because… idk, plot isn’t all that important to me, and if you can fit in “pointless” scenes that are funny or have awesome conversations, that’s reason enough to throw them in, in my opinion. I kind of read things more for those things than the plot, anyway.

To be clear, the criticism isn’t that there are pointless scenes- its that if you strip out the places where everyone acts silly to be a foil for Harry, or the self-referential conversations about manipulating each other, or the flat-out wrong science, there are chapters where there is literally nothing else left in the chapter. No ideas, no conversation, just nothing.

More specific criticism can be found on my tumblr, where I’m live blogging my reading experience.

Can’t you stop being so uptight and pedantic and just enjoy a good story?

No

HPMOR Chapter 1

kai-skai:

(I’m sorry, I’m probably not going to do this for every chapter you reviewed or anything, but you directed me to your reviews so I’ll nitpick a little!)

Honestly, I appreciate any engagement you want to make. Its somewhat flattering that anyone would read my reaction to a fanfic at all. Respond to any chapter, every chapter, whatever you please.

I’ll probably not respond to everything, for fear of creating an infinite chain of tangents, but if you feel there is anything egregious, and people who read my tumblr need a second opinion, let me know and I’ll be sure to reblog it.

Chapter 34-35 Aftermath of the War Game

These chapters contain a lot of speechifying, but in this case it actually fits, as a resolution to the battle game. Its expected and isn’t overly long.

The language, as throughout, is still horribly stilted, but I think I’m getting used to it (when Hariezer referred to Hermione as “General of Sunshine” I almost went right past it without a mental complaint). Basically, I’m likely to stop complaining about the stilted language but its still there, its always there.

Angry at the ridiculousness of the traitors, Hemione and Draco insist that if Hariezer uses traitors in his army that they will team up and destroy him. He insists he will keep using them.

Next, Quirrell gives a long speech about how much chaos the traitors were able to create, and makes an analogy to the death eaters. He insists that the only way to guard against such is essentially fascism.

Hariezer than speaks up, and says that you can do just as much damage in the hunt for traitors as traitors can do themselves, and stands up for a more open society. The themes of these speeches can be found in probably hundreds of books, but they work well enough here.

Every army leader gets a wish, Draco and Hermione decide to wish for their houses to win the house cup. In an attempt to demonstrate his argument for truth, justice and the American way, Hariezer wishes for quidditch to no longer contain the snitch. I guess nothing will rally students around an open society like one person fucking with the sport they love.

We also find out that Dumbledore helped the tie happen by aiding in the plotting(the plot was “too complicated” for any student, according to Quirrell, so it must have been Dumbledore- apparently, ‘betray everyone to keep the score close’ is a genius master plan), but we are also introduced to a mysterious cloaked stranger who was also involved but wiped all memory of his passing.

These are ok chapters, as HPMOR chapters go.

Hariezer’s Arrogance

In response to some things that kai-skai has said, I started thinking about how should we view Hariezer’s arrogance. Should we view it as a character flaw? Something Hariezer will grow and overcome? I don’t think its being presented that way.

My problem with the arrogance are several:

-the author intends for Hariezer to be a teacher. He is supposed to be the master rationalist that the reader (and other characters) learn from. His arrogance makes that off-putting. If you aren’t familiar at all with the topics Hariezer happens to be discussing, you are being condescended to along with the characters in the story (although if you know the material you get to condescend to the simpletons along with Hariezer). Its just a bad pedagogical choice. You don’t teach people by putting them on the defensive.

-The arrogance is not presented by the author as a character flaw. In the story, its not a flaw to overcome, its part of what makes him “awesome.” His arrogance has not harmed him, he hasn’t felt the need to revisit it. When he thinks he knows better than everyone else, the story invariably proves him right. He hasn’t grown or been presented with a reason to grow. I would bet a great deal of money that Hariezer ends HPMOR exactly the same arrogant twerp he starts as.

-This last one is a bit of a personal reaction. Hariezer gets a lot of science wrong (I think all of it is wrong, actually, up to where I am now), and is incredibly arrogant while doing so. I’ve taught a number of classes at the college level, and I’ve had a lot of confidently, arrogantly wrong students. Hariezer’s attitude and lack of knowledge repeatedly remind me of the worst students I ever had- smart kids too arrogant to learn (and these were physics classes, where wrong or right is totally objective).

Chapter 36/37 - Christmas Break/Not much happens

Like all the Harry Potter books, Yudkowsky includes a Christmas break. I note that a Christmas break would make a lot of sense toward the middle of the book, not less than <1/3 of the way through. Like the original books, this is just a light bit of relaxation

Not a lot happens over break. Hariezer is a twerp who think his parents don’t respect him enough, they go to Hermione’s house for Christmas, Hariezer yells at Hermione’s parents for not respecting her intelligence enough, the parents say Hermione and Hariezer are like an old married couple (it would have been nice to see the little bonding moments in the earlier chapters). Quirrell visits Hariezer on Christmas Eve.

Chapter 38 - a cryptic conversation, not much here

This whole chapter is just a conversation between Malfoy and Hariezer. It fits squarely into the “one party doesn’t really know what the conversation is about” mold, with Hariezer being the ignorant party. Malfoy is convinced Hariezer is working with someone other than Quirrell or Dumbledore.

Chapter 39- your transhumanism is showing

This was a rough chapter, in which primarily Hariezer and Dumbledore have an argument about death. Hariezer takes up the transhumanist position. If you aren’t familiar with the transhumanist position on death, its basically that death is bad (duh!) and that the world is full of deathists who have convinced themselves that death is good. This usually leads into the idea that some technology will save us from death (nanotech, SENS,etc), and even if they don’t we can all just freeze our corpses to be reanimated when that whole death thing gets solved. I find this position somewhat childish, as I’ll try and get to.

So, as a word of advice to future transhumanist authors who want to write literary screeds arguing against the evil deathists, FANTASY LITERATURE IS A UNIQUELY BAD CHOICE FOR ARGUING YOUR POINT. To be fair, Yudkowsky noticed this, and lampshaded it, when Hariezer says there is no afterlife, Dumbledore argues back with:

“How can you not believe it? ” said the Headmaster, looking completely flabbergasted. “Harry, you’re a wizard! You’ve seen ghosts! ” …And if not ghosts, then what of the Veil? What of the Resurrection Stone?”

i.e. how can you not believe in an afterlife with there is a literal gateway to the fucking afterlife sitting in the ministry of magic basement. Hariezer attempts to argue his way out of this, we get this story for instance:

You know, when I got here, when I got off the train from King’s Cross…I wasn’t expecting ghosts. So when I saw them, Headmaster, I did something really dumb. I jumped to conclusions. I, I thought there wasan afterlife… I thought I could meet my parents who died for me, and tell them that I’d heard about their sacrifice and that I’d begun to call them my mother and father -

“And then… asked Hermione and she said that they were just afterimages… And I should have known! I should have known without even having to ask! I shouldn’t have believed it even for all of thirty seconds!… And that was when I knew that my parents were really dead and gone forever and ever, that there wasn’t anything left of them, that I’d never get a chance to meet them and, and, and the other children thought I was crying because I was scared of ghosts

So, first point- this could have been a pretty powerful moment if Yudkowsky had actually structured the story to relate this WHEN HARIEZER FIRST MET A GHOST. Instead, the first we hear of it is this speech. Again, tell, tell, tell, never show

Second point- what exactly does Hariezer assume is being “afterimaged?” Clearly some sort of personality, something not physical is surviving in the wizarding world after death. If fighting death is this important to Hariezer, why hasn’t he even attempted to study ghosts yet? (full disclosure, I am an atheist personally. However, if I lived in a world WITH ACTUAL MAGIC, LITERAL GHOSTS, a stone that resurrects the dead, and a FUCKING GATEWAY TO THE AFTERLIFE I might revisit that position).

Here is Hariezer’s response to the gateway to the afterlife:

That doesn’t even sound like an interesting fraud,” Harry said, his voice calmer now that there was nothing there to make him hope, or make him angry for having hopes dashed. “Someone built a stone archway, made a little black rippling surface between it that Vanished anything it touched, and enchanted it to whisper to people and hypnotize them.”

Do you see how incurious Hariezer is? If someone told me there was a LITERAL GATEWAY TO THE AFTERLIFE I’d want to see it. I’d want to test it, see it. Can we try to record and amplify the whispers? Are things being said?

Why do they think its a gateway to the afterlife? Who built it? Minimally, this could have lead to a chapter where Hariezer debunks wizarding spiritualists like a wizard-world Houdini. (Houdini spent a great deal of his time exposing mediums and psychics who ‘contacted the dead’ as frauds.) I’m pretty sure I would have even enjoyed a chapter like that.

In the context of the wizarding world, there is all sorts of non-trivial evidence for an afterlife that simply doesn’t exist in the real world. Its just a bad choice to present these ideas in the context of this story.

Anyway, ignoring what a bad choice it is to argue against an afterlife in the context of fantasy fiction, lets move on:

Dumbledore presents some dumb arguments so that Hariezer can seem wise. Hariezer tells us death is the most frightening thing imaginable, its not good,etc. Basically, death is scary, no one should have to die. If we had all the time imaginable we would actually use it. Pretty standard stuff, Dumbledore drops the ball presenting any real arguments.

So I’ll take up Dumbledore’s side of the argument. I have some bad news for Hariezer’s philosophy. You are going to die. I’m going to die. Everyone is going to die. It sucks, and its unfortunate, sure, but there is no way around it. Its not a choice! We aren’t CHOOSING death. Even if medicine can replace your body (which doesn’t seem likely in my lifetime), the sun will explode some day. Even if we get away from the solar system, eventually we’ll run out of free energy in the universe.

But you do have one choice regarding death- you can accept that you’ll die someday, or you can convince yourself there is some way out. Convince yourself that if you say the right prayers, or in the Less Wrong case, work on the right decision theory to power an AI you’ll get to live forever. Convince yourself that if you give a life insurance policy to the amateur biologists that run croynics organizations you’ll be reanimated.

The problem with the second choice is that there is an opportunity cost- time spent praying or working on silly decision theories is time that you aren’t doing things that might matter to other humans. We accept death to be more productive in life. Stories about accepting death aren’t saying death is good they are saying death is inevitable.

Edit: I take back a bit about cognitive dissonance that was here.

Chapter 18 - What?

kai-skai:

Uh, I have to firmly side with Harry on this one: being good at something doesn’t mean you get a free pass for terrifying students. (I mean, this is the teacher who canonically is a student’s absolute greatest fear. Sorry, but no.)

Snape’s job is to teach students potions. It isn’t to avoid intimidating students with hard questions (about potions).

There is a hard-assed teacher, or coach or whatever who is the student’s “greatest fear” at pretty much any school. What would (realistically) happen if someone famous threw a two-year-old temper tantrum like Hariezer did? Seriously, look at what Snape actually does to Hariezer in that chapter- he asks some questions Hariezer doesn’t know the answer to, and makes a sarcastic comment, that’s it.

As anyone who has taught knows, the situation where Hariezer “wins” here is insane- he would have been disciplined. You don’t get to walk out of a classroom and stay in the school without repercussion. A student doesn’t get to decide the rules don’t apply to them. A blackmail threat would have resulted in more discipline, not everyone caving. And if “the boy-who-lived” had thrown a temper tantrum like that and then gone to the newspapers, the story would be “Boy-Who-Lived Spoiled Brat.” Read that chapter from the mind of someone who has been a teacher before.

Its just a ludicrous series of events, everyone is acting insane.

tell me if these get annoying for you.

As I said earlier, I’ll always read responses, but only rarely reply to them. I don’t want to send things to far down tangents.

Chapter 40- Short Follow Up to 39

Instead of Dumbledore’s views, in this chapter we get Quirrell’s view of death. He agrees with Hariezer, unsurprisingly.

Chapter 41- Another round of Quirrell’s battle game

It seems odd that AFTER the culminating scene, the award being handed out, and the big fascist vs. freedom speechifying that we have yet another round of Quirrell’s battle game.

Draco and Hermione are now working together against Hariezer. Through a series of circumstances, Draco has to drop Hermione off a roof to win.

Edit: I also point out that we don’t actually get details of the battle in this time, it opens with

Only a single soldier now stood between them and Harry, a Slytherin boy named Samuel Clamons, whose hand was clenched white around his wand, held upward to sustain his Prismatic Wall.

We then get a narrator summary of the battle that had lead up that moment. Again, tell, tell, tell never show.

Chapter 42- Is there a point to this?

Basically an extraneous chapter, but one strange detail at the end.

So in this chapter, Hariezer is worried that its his fault that in the battle last chapter. Hermione got dropped off a roof. Hermione agrees to forgive him as long as he lets Draco drop him off the same roof.

He takes a potion to help him fall slowly and is dropped, but so many young girls try to summon him to their arms (yes, this IS what happens) that he ends up falling, luckily Remus Lupin is there to catch him.

Afterwards, Remus and Hariezer talk. Hariezer learns that his father was something of a bully. And, for some reason, that Peter Petigrew and Sirius Black were lovers. Does anyone know what the point of making Petigrew and Black lovers would be?

Conversations

My girlfriend: “What have you been working on over there?”

Me: “Uhhhh… so…. there is this horrible Harry Potter fan fiction… you know, when people on the internet write more stories about Harry Potter? Yea, that. Anyway, this one is pretty terrible so I thought I’d read it and complain about it on the internet…. So I’m listening to me say this out loud and it sounds ridiculous, but.. well, it IS ridiculous… but…”

Chapter 43-46 Subtle Metaphors

These chapters actually moved pretty decently. When Yudkowsky isn’t writing dialogue, his prose style can actually be pretty workman-like. Nothing that would get you to stop and marvel at the word play, but it keeps the pace brisk and moving.

Now, in JK Rowling’s original books, it always seemed to me that the dementors were a (not-so-subtle) nod to depression. They leave people wallowing in their worst memories, low energy, unable to remember the happy thoughts,etc.

In HPMOR, however, Hariezer (after initially failing to summon a patronus) decides that the dementors really represent death. You see in HPMOR, instead of relieving their saddest, most depressing memories the characters just see a bunch of rotting corpses when the dementors get near.

This does, of course, introduce new questions? What does it mean that the dementors guard Azkaban? Why don’t the prisoner’s instantly die? Why doesn’t a dementor attack just flat-out kill you?

Anyway, apparently the way to kill death is to just imagine that someday humans will defeat death, in appropriately Carl Sagan-esque language:

The Earth, blazing blue and white with reflected sunlight as it hung in space, amid the black void and the brilliant points of light. It belonged there, within that image, because it was what gave everything else its meaning. The Earth was what made the stars significant, made them more than uncontrolled fusion reactions, because it was Earth that would someday colonize the galaxy, and fulfill the promise of the night sky.

Would they still be plagued by Dementors, the children’s children’s children, the distant descendants of humankind as they strode from star to star? No. Of course not. The Dementors were only little nuisances, paling into nothingness in the light of that promise; not unkillable, not invincible, not even close.

Once you know this, your patronus becomes a human, and kills the dementor. Get it THE PATRONUS IS HUMANS (represented in this case by a human) and THE DEMENTOR IS DEATH. Humans defeat death. Very subtle.

Another large block of chapters with no science.

Chapter 47 Racism is Bad

Nothing really objectionable here, just more conversations and plotting.

Hariezer spends much of this chapter explaining to Draco that racism is bad, and that a lot of pure bloods probably hate mudbloods because it gives them a chance to feel superior. Hariezer suggests these racist ideas are poisoning slytherin.

We also find out that Draco and his father seem to believe that Dumbledore burned Draco’s mother alive. This is clearly a departure from the original books. Hariezer agrees to take as an enemy whoever killed Draco’s mother. Feels like it’ll end up being more plots-within-plots stuff.

Another chapter with no science explored. We do find out Hariezer speaks snake language.

Chapter 48 - Utilitarianism

This chapter is actually solid as far as these things go. After learning he can talk to snakes Hariezer begins to wonder if all animals are sentient, after all snakes can talk. This has obvious implications for meat eating.

From there, he begins to wonder if plants might be sentient, in which case he wouldn’t be able to eat anything at all. This leads him to the library for research.

He also introduces scope insensitivity and utilitarianism, even though it isn’t really required at all to explain his point to Hermione. Hermione asks why he is freaking out, and instead of answering “I don’t want to eat anything that thinks and talks,” he says stuff like

“Look, it’s a question of multiplication, okay? There’s a lot of plants in the world, if they’renot sentient then they’re not important, but if plants are people then they’ve got more moral weight than all the human beings in the world put together. Now, of course your brain doesn’t realize that on an intuitive level, but that’s because the brain can’t multiply. Like if you ask three separate groups of Canadian households how much they’ll pay to save two thousand, twenty thousand, or two hundred thousand birds from dying in oil ponds, the three groups will respectively state that they’re willing to pay seventy-eight, eighty-eight, and eighty dollars. No difference, in other words. It’s called scope insensitivity.

Is that really the best way to describe his thinking? Why say something with 10 words while several hundred will do. What does scope insensitivity have to do with the idea “I don’t want to eat things that talk and think?”

Everything below here is unrelated to HPMOR and has more to do with scope insensitivity as a concept:

Now, because I have taught undergraduates intro physics, I do wonder (and have in the past)- is Kahneman’s scope insensitivity related to the general innumeracy of most people? i.e. how many people who hear that question just mentally replace literally any number with “a big number”?

The first time I taught undergraduates I was surprised to learn that most of the students had no ability to judge if their answers seemed plausible. I began adding a question “does this answer seem order of magnitude correct?” I’d also take off more points for answers that were the wrong order of magnitude, unless the student put a note saying something like “I know this is way too big, but I can’t find my mistake.”

You could ask a question about a guy throwing a football, and answers would range from 1 meter/second all the way to 5000 meters/second. You could ask a question about how far someone can hit a baseball and answers would similarly range from a few meters to a few kilometers. No one would notice when answers were wildly wrong. Lest someone think this is a units problem (Americans aren’t used to metric units), even if I forced them to convert to miles per hour, miles, or feet students couldn’t figure out if the numbers were the right order of magnitude.

So I began to give a few short talks on what I thought as basic numeracy. Create mental yardsticks (the distance from your apartment to campus might be around a few miles, the distance between this shitty college town and the nearest actual city might be around a few hundred miles,etc). When you encounter unfamiliar problems, try to relate it back to familiar ones. Scale the parameters in equations so you have dimensionless quantities * yardsticks you understand. And after being explicitly taught most of the students got better at understanding the size of numbers.

Since I began working in the business world I’ve noticed that most people never develop that skill. Stick a number in a sentence and people just mentally run right over it, you might as well have inserted some klingon phrases. Some of the better actuaries do have some nice numerical intuition, but a surprising number don’t. They can calculate, but they don’t understand what the calculations are really telling them, like Searle’s chinese room but with numbers.

In Kahneman’s scope neglect questions, there are big problems with innumeracy- if you ask people how much they’d spend on X where X is any charity that seems importantish, you are likely to get an answer of around $100. In some sense, it is scope neglect, in another sense you just max out people’s generosity/spending cash really quickly.

If your rephrase it to “how much should the government spend” you hit general innumeracy problems, and you also hit general innumeracy problems when you specify large, specific numbers of birds.

I suspect Kahneman would have gotten different results had he asked his questions varying questions as: “what percentage of the federal government’s wildlife budget should be spent preventing disease for birds in your city?” vs. “what percentage of the federal government’s wildlife budget should be spent preventing disease for birds in your state?” vs. “what percentage of the federal government’s wildlife budget should be spent preventing disease for birds in the whole country?” (I actually ran this experiment on a convenience sample of students in a 300 level physics class several years ago and got 5%,8% and 10% respectively, but the differences weren’t significant, though the trend was suggestive.)

I suspect the problem isn’t that “brains can’t multiply” so much as “most people are never taught how to think about numbers.”

If anyone knows of further literature on this, feel free to pass it my way.

The next section of HPMOR…

… is a 12 chapter block. I have a fresh bottle of lagavulin and I’m caught up on work. LETS DO THIS.

Chapter 49- Not much here

I thought I posted something about this last weekend, I think tumblr are it. So this will be particularly light. Hariezer notices that Quirrell knows too much (phrased as “his priors are too good”) but hasn’t yet put it together that Quirrell.

Chapter 50- In Need of an Editor

So this is basically a complete rehash again- it fits into the “Hariezer uses the time turner and the invisibility cloak to solve bullying” mold we’ve already seen a few times. The time turner + invisibility cloak is the solution to all problems, and when Yudkowsky needs a conflict, he throws in bullying. I think we’ve seen this exact conflict with this exact solution at least three other times.

In this chapter, its Hermione being bullied, he protects her by creating an alibi with his timer turner, dressing in an invisibility cloak, and whispering some wisdom in the bullies ear. Because most bullies just need the wisdom of an eleven year old whispered into their ear.

There is also (credit where credit is due) a clever working in of the second book into Yudkowsky’s world. The “interdict of Merlin” Yudkowsky invented prevents wizards from writing spells down, so Slytherin’s basilisk was placed in Hogwarts to pass spells on to “the heir of Slytherin.” Voldemort learned those secets and then killed the basilisk, so Hariezer has no shortcut to powerful spells.

For those who have read HPMOR

What chapters contain the actual science experiments where Hariezer explores and begins to figure out the rules of magic?

What I’m looking for are the explorations of the “physics of magic” of this world Yudkowsky has created. So far, there has been very little of this, maybe

Chapter 51-63 Economy of Language

So this block of chapters is roughly the length of the Maltese Falcon or the first Harry Potter book, probably 2/3 the length of the Hobbit. This one relatively straight-forward episode of this story is the length of The Maltese Falcon. Basically, the ratio of things-happening/words-written is terrible.

This chapter amounts to a prison break- Quirrell tells Hariezer that Bellatrix Black was innocent, so they are going to break her out. Its a weird section, given how Black escaped in the original novels (i.e. the dementors sided with the dark lord, so all he had to do was go to the dementors say “you are on my side, please let out bellatrix black, and everyone else while you are at it.”)

The plan is to have Hariezer use his patronus while Quirrell travels in snake form in his pouch. They’ll replace Bellatrix with a corpse, so everyone will just think she is dead. It becomes incredibly clear upon meeting Bellatrix that she wasn’t “innocent” at all, though she might be not guilt in the by-reason-of-insanity sense.

This doesn’t phase Hariezer, they just keep moving forward with the plan, which goes awry pretty quickly when an auror stumbles on them. Quirrell ties to kill the auror. Hariezer tries to block the killing spell and ends up knocking out Quirrell and turning his patronus off, and the plan goes to hell.

To escape, Hariezer first scares the dementors off by threatening to blast them with his uber-patronus (even death is apparently scared of death in this story). Then Quirrell wakes up, and with Quirrell’s help he transfigures a hole in the wall, and transfigures a rocket which he straps to his broomstick, and out they fly. The rocket goes so fast the aurors can’t keep up.

Its a decent bit of action in a story desperately needing a bit of action, but its marred by excessive verbosity. We have huge expanses of Hariezer talking with Quirrell, Hariezer talking to himself, Hariezer thinking about dementors, etc. Instead of a tense, taught 50 pages we get a turgid 300.

After they get to safety, Quirrell and Hariezer discuss the horror that is Azkaban. Quirrell tells Hariezer that only a democracy could produce such a torturous prison. A dark lord like Voldemort would have no use for it once got bored:

You know, Mr. Potter, if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had come to rule over magical Britain, and built such a place as Azkaban, he would have built it because he enjoyed seeing his enemies suffer. And if instead he began to find their suffering distasteful, why, he would order Azkaban torn down the next day.

Hariezer doesn’t take up the pro-democracy side, and only time will tell if he goes full-on reactionary like Quirrell by the end of our story. By the end, Hariezer is ruminating on the Milgram experiment, although I don’t think its really applicable to the horror of Azkaban (its not like the dementors are “just following orders”- they live to kill).

Hariezer then uses his time turner to go back to right before the prison breakout, the perfect alibi to the perfect crime.

Dumbledore and Mcgonagall suspect Hariezer played a part in the escape, because of the use of the rocket. They ask Hariezer to use his time turner to send a message back in time (which he wouldn’t be able to do it if he had already used his turner to hide his crime).

Hariezer solves this through the time-turner-ex-machina of Quirrell knowing someone else with a time turner, because when Yudkowsky can’t solve a problem with a time turner, he solves it with two time turners. one or two chapters in the 50 I’ve read through.

For those who have read HPMOR

youzicha:

I think there is very little of this? Like, the only cases I can remember are in the chapters that you have already read. You get quite a lot of “munchkinism”, i.e. cases where previous chapters have correctly explained the rules for how magic works and Harry exploits those rules in a surprising way, but that’s not really the same thing.

Pretty much everyone who recommended this to me described it as “imagine if Harry Potter were a scientist, and used the scientific method to explore magic!”

Why do people advertise the story like this?

Chapter 64/65 Respite

Chapter 64 is again “omake” so I didn’t read it.

Chapter 65 appears to be a pit-stop before another long block of chapters. Hariezer is chaffing that he has been confined to Hogwarts in order to protect him from the dark lord, so he and Quirrell are thinking of hiring a play-actor to pretend to be Voldemort, so that Quirrell can vanquish him.

These were a brief respite between the huge 12- chapter block I just got through and another giant 12 chapter block. Its looking like the science ideas are slowing down in these long chapter blocks, as the focus shifts to action. youzicha has suggested a lot of the rest will be Hariezer cleverly “hacking” his way out of situations, like the rocket in the previous 12 chapter block. The sweet spot for me has been discussing the science presented in these chapters, so between the expected lack of science and the increasing length of chapter blocks, expect slower updates.

Have you given up on HPMOR? No update in awhile?

You can rest easy, I’ll get there eventually. The chapters have grown in length and I’ve been bored of the story for awhile, so its taking more resolve to dig in.

Scotched and Loaded

Time to start reading some HPMOR. Hopefully updates tomorrow.

Chapter 66-77 Absolutely, appallingly awful

There is a general problem with fanfiction (although usually not in serial fiction where things tend to stay a bit more focused for whatever reason), where the side/B-plots are written entirely in one pass instead of intertwined along side the main plot. Instead of being a pleasant diversion, the side-plot piles up in one big chunk. This is one such side-plot.

Also worth noting these chapters combine basically everything I dislike about HPMOR into one book-length bundle of horror. It was honest-to-god work to continue to power through this section. So this will be just a sketch of this awful block of chapters.

We opened with another superfluous round of the army game, in which nothing notable really happens other than some character named Daphne challenges Neville to “a most ancient duel” WHICH IS APPARENTLY A BATTLE WITH LIGHTSABERS. My eyes rolled so hard I almost had a migraine, and this was the first chapter of the block.

After the battle, Hermoine becomes concerned that women are underrepresented among heros of the wizarding world, and starts a “Society for the Promotion of Heroic Equality for Witches” or SPHEW. They star with a protest in front of Dumbledore’s office and then decide to heroine it up and put an end to bullying. You see, in the HPMOR world, bullying isn’t a question of social dynamics, or ostracizing kids. Bullying is coordinated ambushes of kids in hallways by groups of older kids, and an opportunity for “leveling-up.” The way to fight bullies in this strange world is to engage in pitched wizard-battles in the hallways (having fought an actual bully in reality as a middle schooler I can tell you that at least for me “fight back” doesn’t really solve the problem in any way). In this world, the victims of the bullying are barely mentioned and don’t have names.

And of course, the authority figures like McGonagall don’t even really show up during all of this. Students are constantly attacking each other in the hallways and no one is doing anything about it. Because the way to make your characters seem “rational” is to make sure the entire world is insane.

Things quickly escalate until 44 bullies get together to ambush the eight girls in SPHEW. A back of the envelope calculation suggests Hogwarts has maybe 300 students. So we are to expect slightly more than 10% of the population of students are the sort of “get together and plot an ambush” bullies that maybe you find in 90s highschool TV shows. Luckily, Hariezer had asked Quirrell to protect the girls, so disguised Quirrell takes down the 44 bullies.

We get a “lesson” (lesson in this context means ‘series of insanely terrible ideas’) on “heroic responsibility” in the form of Hariezer lecturing to Harmoine .

The boy didn’t blink. “You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe,” Harry Potter said. “Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it’s always your fault… Following the school rules isn’t an excuse, someone else being in charge isn’t an excuse, even trying your best isn’t an excuse. There just aren’t any excuses, you’ve got toget the job done no matter what.”… Being a heroine means your job isn’t finished until you’ve done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently.”

You know a good way to solve bullying? Expel the bullies. You know who has the power to do that? McGonagall and Dumbledore. A school is a system and has procedures in place to deal with problems. The proper response is almost always “tell an authority figure you trust.” Being “rational” is knowing when to trust the system to do its job.

In this case, Yudkowsky hasn’t even pulled his usual trick of writing the system as failing- no one even attempts to tell an authority figure about the bullying and no authority figure engages with it, besides Quirrell who engages by disguising himself and attacking students, and Snape who secretly (unknown even to SPHEW) directs SPHEW to where the bullies will be. The system of school discipline stops existing for this entire series of chapters.

We get a final denouement between Hariezer and Dumbledore where the bullying situation is discussed by referencce to Ghandi’s passive resistance in India, WW2 and Churchill, and the larger wizarding war that feel largely overwrought because it was bullying. Big speeches about how Hermoine has been put in danger, etc ring empty because it was bullying. Yes, being bullied is traumatic (sometimes life-long traumatic), but its not WORLD WAR traumatic.

I also can’t help but note the irony that the block’s action largely started on Hermoine’s attempt to “self-actualize” by behaving more heroically, and ends with Dumbledore and Hariezer discussing whether it was the doing the right thing to let Hermoine play her silly little game.

Terrible things in HPMOR

• Lack of science: I have no wrong science to complain about, because these chapters have no science references at all really.
• the world/characters behave in silly ways as a foil for the characters: the authority figures don’t do anything to prevent the escalating bullying/conflict, aside from Snape and Quirrell who get actively involved. The bullying itself isn’t an actual social dynamic, its just general “conflict” to throw at the characters.
• Time turner/invisibility cloak solves all problems: in a slight twist, Snape gives a time turner to a random student and uses her to pass messages to SPHEW so they can find and attack bullies
• Superfluous retreads of previous chapters: the army battle that starts its off, much of the bullying is retread. There are several separate bully-fights in this block of chapters.
• Horrible pacing: this whole block of chapters is a B-plot roughly the length of an entire book.
• Stilted language. Everyone refers to the magic light sabers as “the most ancient blade” every time they reference it

Chekhov’s Science

Anton Chekov once famously laid out a principal of minimalism in stage drama:

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep

While this is perhaps a bit too minimalist (I don’t think you need to remove everything extraneous) I think the bit about promises is important. You are setting up your reader’s expectations and developing the structure of your book. Your developing the ideas and themes of the book.

If you spend the first 25ish chapters of your book having your main character discuss his plan to use science to learn the secrets of magic and take over the world, and attempting to recruit other characters to that effort, you are making the reader lots of promises about what is to come in your fan fiction. Dropping these ideas completely for the next FIFTY FUCKING CHAPTERS is breaking all kinds of promises to the reader.

Munchkinism

I’ve been meaning make a post like this for several weeks, since yxoque reminded me of the idea of the munchkin. jadagul mentioned me in a post today that reminded me I had never made it. Anyway:

I grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons, which was always an extremely fun way to waste a middle school afternoon. The beauty of Dungeons and Dragons is that it provides structure for a group of kids to sit around and tell a shared story as a group. The rules of the game are flexible, and one of the players acts as a living rule-interpreter to guide the action and keep the story flowing.

Somehow, every Dungeons and Dragons community I’ve ever been part of (middle school, highschool and college) had the same word for a particularly common failure mode of the game, and that word was munchkin, or munchkining (does anyone know if there was a gaming magazine that used this phrase?). The failure is simple - people get wrapped up in the letter of the rules, instead of the spirit, and start building the most powerful character possible instead of a character that makes sense as a role. Instead of story flow, the game gets bogged down in dice rolls and checks so that the munchkins can demonstrate how powerful they are. Particularly egregious munchkins have been known to cheat on their character creation rolls to boost all their abilities. With one particular group in highschool, I witnessed one particularly hot-headed munchkin yell at everyone else playing the game when the dungeon master (the human rule interpreter) slightly modified a rule and ended up weakening the muchkin’s character.

The frustrating thing about HPMOR is that Hariezer is designed, as yxoque pointed out, to be a munchkin- using science to exploit the rules of the magical world (which could be an interesting question), but because Yudkowsky is writing the rules of magic as he goes, Hariezer is essentially cheating at a game he is making up on the fly.

All of the cleverness isn’t really cleverness- its easy to find loopholes in the rules you yourself create as you go especially if you created them to have giant loopholes.

In Azkaban, Hariezer uses science to escape by transfiguring himself a rocket. This only makes sense because for some unknown reason magic brooms aren’t as fast as rockets.

In one of his army games, Hariezer uses gloves with gecko setae to climb down a wall, because for some reason broomsticks aren’t allowed. For some reason, there is no ‘grip a wall’ spell.

Yudkowsky isn’t bound by the handful of constraints in Rowling’s world (where Dementors represent depression, not death), hell he doesn’t even stick to his own constraints. In Hariezer’s escape from Azkaban he violates literally the only constraint he had laid down (don’t transfigure objects into something you plan to burn).

Every other problem in the story is solved by using the time turner as a deus ex machina. Even when plot constraints mean Hariezer’s time turner can’t be used, Yudkowsky just introduces another time turner rather than come up with a novel and clever solution for his characters.

Hariezer’s plans in HPMOR work only because the other characters become temporarily dumb to accommodate his “rationality” and because the magic is written around the idea of him succeeding.

Munchkinism

jadagul:

So I want to start this off by saying that I don’t expect to convince anyone to agree with me about anything in this post…. <snip>

…..

Bringing us back to HPMOR: the world is utterly insane. And that’s kind of the point…. <snip?

I think your argument shifted a bit. Originally, you said what you wanted of a good story is to see clever characters behaving cleverly (paraphrasing).

I was pointing out that this isn’t what HPMOR actually is- instead the world is written insane to make the main characters look clever.

Even worse, there is no system to the magic at all, no rules have been set forth, so its not even clever munchkining (for clever munchkining, you’d need a clear set of rules to be exploited. Instead we have been given only a few rules, for instance- don’t transfigure things if you plan to burn or eat them, don’t transfigure into a liquid or gas, and the only munchkining thats happened so far involved violating that one rule).

Even the constraints Yudkowsky put on time turners are roundly ignored- when Hariezer has already used his time turner but need another use, the plot pulls a time-turner-ex-machina, and provides another student with a time turner as a workaround.

What I was expecting in the story was Hariezer using science to systematically study the rules of magic. Once the rules were discovered, Hariezer could make great discoveries, or munchkin his way to power and control. But because no system has been laid out, the munchkining is just cheap and easy, because the rules are made up on the fly.

Anonymous: I think the biggest …

I think the biggest problem with HPMOR is that HJPEV thinks too quickly and too accurately for an 11 year old child. What do you think?

I disagree strongly. I think Hariezer’s thinking and plotting are a lot like Sherlock Holmes’s deductions- he consistently takes actions that would result in nothing but tears in reality, but the magic of the plot bends the world around him to conform to his plan. In reality you can’t deduce someone’s wife left him by the fact that this tie doesn’t match his shoes

I think the narrative is constructed in such a way that Hariezer spends 25 chapters or so dumping science jargon in every direction, which hooks the “I fucking love science” crowd, and sets him up as a guru.

Having established his guru-ness, the ridiculousness begins in earnest, but by now many readers already knows Hariezer is a guru, so they don’t stop to really think about the implications of his plans, or notice that the plan succeeded only because all the other characters have gone stupid.

If HPMOR is so terrible, what would you consider good fiction?

Ghostbusters

Are there HPMOR hateblogs?

In a recent SlateStarCodex post, slatestarscratchpad mentioned ‘hate-blogs’ re: HPMOR:

My personal go-to example would be that as soon as HPMOR became popular, it inspired all of these hate blogs and hate forums attacking it and Eliezer personally under the guise of “righting the wrong” of it being more successful than it “deserved”.

… do these actually exist anywhere? When I first thought about starting this project, I spent some time looking, and couldn’t find anything that covered more than the first chapter or two. Did my google skills fail me?

HPMOR Dislike

A few people responded to my call for HPMOR hate blogs, and I’m proud (a word used here to mean “slightly horrified”) to say I seem to be the only person to have put a considerable amount of effort into not liking HPMOR.

A forum called Dark Lord Potter, which appears to be about Harry Potter fan fiction has a thread full of short mixed reviews, and there are two other abortive attempts at critique (just comments on one or two chapters).

So you no longer need to worry this is, in fact, bleeding edge criticism.

“Genre Savvy”

So a lot of people have asked me to take a look at the Yudkowsky writing guide, and I will eventually (first I have to finish HPMOR ,which is taking forever because I’m incredibly bored with it, but I HAVE MADE A COMMITMENT- hopefully more HPMOR live blogging after Thanksgiving).

But I did hit something that also applies to HPMOR, and a lot of other stories. Yudkowsky advocated that characters “have read the books you’ve read” so they can solve those problems. One of my anonymous asked used the phrase “genre savvy” for this- and google lead me to TV tropes page. The problem with this idea is that as soon as you insert a genre savvy character, your themes shift, much like having a character break the fourth wall. Suddenly your story is about stories. Your story is now a commentary on the genre/genre conventions.

Now, there are places where this can work fairly well- those Scream movies, for instance, were supposed to (at least in part) ABOUT horror movies as much as they WERE horror movies. Similarly, every fan-fiction is (on some level) a commentary on the original works, so “genre savvy” fan fiction self-inserts aren’t nearly as bad an idea as they could be.

HOWEVER (and this is really important)- MOST STORIES SHOULD NOT BE ABOUT STORIES IN THE ABSTRACT/GENRE/GENRE CONVENTIONS, and this means it is a terrible idea having characters that constantly approach things on a meta level “this is like in this fiction book I read” . If you don’t have anything interesting to say about the actual genre conventions, then adding a genre savvy character is almost certainly going to do you more harm then good. If you are bored with a genre convention, you’ll almost certainly get more leverage out of subverting it (if you lead both the character AND the reader to expect a zig, and instead they get a zag it can liven things up a bit) then by sticking in a genre-savvy character.

Sticking in a genre-savvy character just says “look at this silly convention!” and then when that convention is used anyway, it just feels like the writer being a lazy hipster. Sure your reader might get a brief burst of smugness “he/she’s right, all those genre books ARE stupid! Look how smart I am!” but you aren’t really moving your story forward. You are critiquing lazy conventions while also trying to use them.

If you don’t like the conventions of a genre, don’t write in that genre, or subvert them to make things more interesting. Or simply refuse to use those conventions all together, go your own way.

Anonymous: I’ve noticed that you …

I’ve noticed that you complain several times that “Even when plot constraints mean Hariezer’s time turner can’t be used, Yudkowsky just introduces another time turner rather than come up with a novel and clever solution for his characters.” Well … this was actually foreshadowed repeatedly. Maybe you just didn’t pick up on it?

First, foreshadowing that you (as an author) are going to solve a small conflict the exact same way you’ve solved dozens of other small conflicts in the story doesn’t automatically make it interesting. There is a sense that you could say the first time he solves a problem with the time turner foreshadows the other thousand times, but its boring to use the same exact mechanic over and over.

Next, there is some foreshadowing that everybody powerful/important has a time turner (Hariezer thinks things along the line of ‘everybody is probably living 30 hours,’ etc.) but thats not actually what I was referring to there- after the Azkaban escapade McGonnagall tries to test Potter by having him take a message back in time.

For this to work as an actual problem in the story, McGonagall and the reader both have to expect that having exhausted his time turner already, Hariezer will be in trouble. In a world where everyone has a time turner, this isn’t even a real test. So having set up that expectation, we are then told Quirrell told Hariezer of some slytherin student (Margaret Bulstrode) who has a time turner, and we are also introduced to the “slytherin mail” concept. Margaret/slytherin notes were ushered into existence by Yudkowsky entirely to have a time turner to fix this single problem for Hariezer. This is what I mean by another time turner is introduced. The time turners we already know about can’t work here (he can’t go to Dumbledore or Quirrell and use the fact that he deduced they had a time turner to solve this problem), so out of thin air, we get this random student with one.

Another Bulstrode shows up in the self-actualization chapters, and she is always knows about events with the bullies that are going to happen- it would have been interesting to have had that section of chapters first, and then have Hariezer deduce that Bulstrode had the time turner. Then at least he did something to solve his problem

Anonymous: Hey, are you still …

Hey, are you still taking factual nitpicks of your HPMOR posts? Because in “Chapter 51-63”, you say “It becomes incredibly clear upon meeting Bellatrix that she wasn’t “innocent” at all, though.” However, in the actual chapter, Harry had been told she was magically brainwashed and (potentially) curable, not that she was secretly a good guy.

Quirrell tells him this:

There are surer ways to break wills than the Imperius, if you have the time for torture, and Legilimency, and rituals of which I will not speak. I cannot tell you how I know this, how I know any of this, cannot hint at it even to you, you will have to trust me. But there is a person in Azkaban who never once chose to serve the Dark Lord, who has spent years suffering alone in the most terrible cold and darkness imaginable, and never deserved a single minute of it

And Hariezer thinks this:

The most obvious person in Azkaban to be innocent was the one who hadn’t gotten a trial -

which painted to me the picture of someone who had been brainwashed, etc. I didn’t think she was secretly good, but that she was manipulated.

When Hariezer meets her, she is still very clearly absolutely devoted to Voldemort, which should have (I would think) prompted a bit of reflection on the wisdom of helping an insane follower of Voldemort escape (to be totally fair, he does have this moment, but it is AFTER the actual escape).

Anonymous: Thank you for your critiques …

Thank you for your critiques of HPMOR! I’m sorry to say that it just gets worse. I hate-read the bulk of it in a fevered blitz because I had a lot of free time and can’t stand letting a story go unfinished, and I have been deprived of internet commiseration until finding you. Along with all the incorrect science–even just being an undergrad, I side-eyed the timeless QM description–which you’ve covered wonderfully, it has just an awful narrative structure. Cheers and hopes for more soon!

I normally don’t let praise through on asks, because it sets off my narcissist warning system. But I’m making an exception because I’ve been in a bit of a slump of the form “IS THIS INTERESTING? IS THERE A HUGE COMMUNITY OUT THERE THAT IS HATING ALL OVER HPMOR? I THOUGHT I WAS ALONE IN THIS. AM I JUST WASTING MY TIME SAYING THINGS PEOPLE ALREADY KNOW?” that has been making it hard to read (and write about) more of the fanfic.

Hopefully this pushes me over that hump.

Chapter 78- Action Without Consequences

A change of tactics- this is chapter is part of another block of chapters, but I’m having trouble getting through it, so I’m going to write in installments chapter by chapter, instead of a dump on a 12 chapter block again.

This chapter is another installment of Quirrell’s battle game. This time, the parents are in the stands, which becomes important when Hermione out-magics Draco.

Afterwards, Draco is upset because his father saw him getting out magiced by a mud blood. This causes Draco, in an effort to save face or get revenge or something, to send a note to lure Hermione to meet him alone. Then, cut to the next morning- Hermione is arrested for the attempted murder of Draco. So thats it for the chapter summary.

But I want to use this chapter to touch on something that has bothered me about this story- most of the action is totally without stakes or consequences for the characters. As readers we don’t care what happens. In the case for the Quirrell battle game, the prize for victory was already handed out at the Christmas break, none of the characters have anything on the line, and the story doesn’t really act like winning or losing has real consequences for anyone involved. A lot is happening, but its ultimately boring.

The same thing happened in the anti-bullying chapters. Most of the characters being victimized lack names or personalities. Hermione and team aren’t defending characters we care about and like, they are fighting the abstract concept of bullying (and the same is largely true of Hariezer’s forays into fighting bullies.)

Part of this is because of the obvious homage to Ender’s game, without understanding Ender’s game was doing something very different- the whole point of Ender’s Game is that the series of games absolutely do feel low stakes. Even when Ender kills another kid, its largely shrugged off as Ender continuing to win (which is the first sign something a bit deeper is happening). It supposed to feel game-y so the reader rides along with Ender and doesn’t viscerally notice the genocide happening. The contrast between the real world stakes and the games being played is the point of the story. Where Ender’s game failed for me is after the battles- we don’t feel Ender’s horror at learning what happened. Sure Ender becomes speaker for the dead, but the book doesn’t make us feel Ender’s horror the same way we ride along with the game stuff. I think this is why so many people I know largely missed the point of the book and walked away with “War games are awesome!” (SCROLL DOWN FOR Fight Club FOOTNOTE THAT WAS MAKING THIS PARAGRAPH TOO LONG) But I digress- if your theme isn’t something to do with the the connection between war and games and the way people perceive violence vs games, etc, turning down the emotional stakes and the consequences for the characters make your story feel like reading a video game play-by-play, which is horribly boring.

If you cut out all the Quirell game chapters after chapter 35, no one would notice- there is nothing at stake.

ALSO- this chapter has an example of what I’ll call “DM munchkining” i.e. its easy to Munchkin when you write the rules. Hariezer is looking for powerful magic to aid him in battle, and starts reading up on potion making. He needs a way to make potions in the woods without magical ingredients, so he deduces by reading books that you don’t really need a magical ingredient, you get out from a potion ingredient what went in to making it. So Hariezer makes a potion with acorns that gets back all the light that went in to creating the acorn via photosynthesis. My point here is that this rule was created in this chapter entirely to be exploited by Hariezer in this battle. In a previous battle chapter, Hariezer exploits the fact that metal armor can block spells, a rule created specifically for that chapter to be exploited. Its not munchkining, its calvinball.

FOOTNOTE: This same problem happens with Fight Club. The tone of the movie builds up Tyler Durden as this awesome dude and the tone doesn’t shift when Ed Norton’s narrator character starts to realize how fucked everything is. So you end up with this movie thats suppose to be satirical but no one notices. They rebel against a society they find dehumanizing, BY CREATING A SOCIETY WHERE THEY LITERALLY HAVE NO NAMES, but the tone is strong enough that people are like “GO PROJECT MAYHEM! WE SHOULD START A FIGHT CLUB!”

raginrayguns: i hate every time …

raginrayguns:

i hate every time a fictional scientist is like “I couldn’t use this technology responsibly, time to destroy it and protect others from making the mistakes I made”

1. victor frankenstein
2. the guy from forbidden planet, maybe? hard to recall the details
3. dr. jekyll, who to be fair could not replicate his formula and didn’t really understand why it worked, but still destroyed it and made it harder for others to use

Like…. I feel like making a list of technology originally created for nefarious purposes that we’ve since put to better use

1. I’m Victor Frankenstein, I used rockets to bomb London, I must destroy this technology so nobody else can work the horrors I worked with it. No, NASA hired a Nazi rocket scientist and he took us to the moon
2. First computation on the first electronic computer? Part of hydrogen bomb research. Victor Frankenstein would probably destroy it after using it to bomb Japan and being haunted by the screams of burning children, and then we wouldn’t have Tumblr

and that’s just technology. The really awful things about what Frankenstein and Jekyll did isn’t destroying their particular technologies, it’s closing off the study of a novel phenomenon. Like…. Dr. Jekyll’s formula for turning into an evil version of yourself is maybe not a particularly useful invention, but where does the mass go? Where does the evil version’s features come from, your imagination? A direct effect of your imagination on reality? The phenomenon being available to scientific study is far more important than the technology itself

FOR EXAMPLE. MPTP is a chemical that induces Parkinson’s-like symptoms. It was discovered by people trying to make MPPP, an opiate, to get high and to sell it to heroin addicts. This resulted in a lot of heroin addicts getting irreversible brain damage and Parkinson’s like symptoms. At which point Viktor Frankenstein sees the evil worked by his greed and destroys the formula, right?

But… how does it induce Parkinson’s-like symptoms? That was the question that scientists superior to Viktor Frankenstein asked. They started feeding it to monkeys to study how it does its damage, figure out whether similar but weaker toxins might be responsible for some cases of parkinsons, and figure out if drugs that block the damage from it could be used as parkinson’s treatments. source: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,141542,00.html

So, like…. a chemical to give people parkinson’s disease is even more useless than a formula to turn you into an evil version of yourself, or a way to create humans out of dead body parts. But what was important wasn’t the technology, it was studying how it worked, to improve our scientific understanding.

That’s why I hate Dr. Jekyll and Viktor Frankenstein

This is a large part of why I dislike even the science bits in HPMOR. Things like- the “Interdict of Merlin” which prevents powerful spells from being written down, in the latest chapter I read it turns out the rules for making potions aren’t written down or shared, and Hariezer starts his scientific investigations with Draco as a secretive conspiracy (to make sure the wrong people don’t get the knowledge ostensibly), all of these fit the Jekyll, Frankenstein, we-don’t-share-ideas-we-hide-them-because-they-are-dangerous-mold.

This “ideas are too dangerous to let out” goes against the culture of science and prevents others from building off your ideas, which is SO important to science.

Its possible Yudkowsky will surprise me, and it will turn out that the reason powerful magic is dying out is the secretive culture or something, but given how positively these ideas are discussed in the story I doubt it.

Anonymous: the secretive culture …

the secretive culture /is/ why powerful magic is dying out. I thought that was pretty strongly established. It’s Harry’s theory. And also, we know that the magic of the founders could be taught throught he basilisk, which implies that it could have just been taught the normal way and preserved through generations if Slytherin wasn’t so concerned with restriting it to his heir

When does he actually establish this theory? Have I not gotten there yet? I admit to reading less closely as time goes on.

In the story, so far Quirrell discusses secret science like this:

There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can’t resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you do not share with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves!

Harry like this:

This was a rather different way of looking at things than Harry had grown up with. It had never occurred to him that nuclear physicists should have formed a conspiracy of silence to keep the secret of nuclear weapons from anyone not smart enough to be a nuclear physicist

Harry also says this to Draco when starting his magi-science efforts:

As you say, we will establish our own Science, a magical Science, and that Science will have smarter traditions from the very start.” The voice grew hard. “The knowledge I share with you will be taught alongside the disciplines of accepting truth, the level of this knowledge will be keyed to your progress in those disciplines, and you will share that knowledge with no one else who has not learned those disciplines. Do you accept this?

i.e. secret science is smarter science.

These are the ideas Harry thinks of for why magic is fading:

1. Magic itself is fading.
2. Wizards are interbreeding with Muggles and Squibs.
3. Knowledge to cast powerful spells is being lost.
4. Wizards are eating the wrong foods as children, or something else besides blood is making them grow up weaker.
5. Muggle technology is interfering with magic. (Since 800 years ago?)
6. Stronger wizards are having fewer children. (Draco = only child? Check if 3 powerful wizards, Quirrell / Dumbledore / Dark Lord, had any children.)

And I don’t think we’ve been back to these ideas about magic fading away since then. Also, he speaks positively about restricting dangerous knowledge in lots of places throughout the story (i.e. keeping young wizards from casting spells).

And then the magic fading away plot-thread goes away and stops coming back.

Anonymous: I notice two …

I notice two of those six possibilities are basically eugenics arguments. Or should I say “Wizard Biodiversity”?

Yes, but remember in the context of the story, those arguments gets tested and rejected. HPMOR is a lot of things, but it doesn’t go down that road.

A family member…

stumbled upon this tumblr/blog, and didn’t realize HPMOR was a real story. They instead thought this blog was mostly some sort of bizarre performance piece.

HPMOR blog coming soon

I know most of you come for the HPMOR blogging, you’ll be pleased to know I read a few more chapters during holiday travel. I’ll be updating more after I catch up on some work.

Anonymous: Can you do FIO …

Can you do FIO after you finish HPMOR?

Probably not. Finishing HPMOR has been proving to be quite a chore

HPMOR chapter 79

This chapter continues on from 78. Hermione has been arrested for murder, but Hariezer now realizes in a sudden insight that she has given a false memory.

Hariezer also realizes this is how the Weasley twins planted Rita Skeeter’s false news story- they simply memory charmed Rita. Of course, this opens up more questions then it solves- if false memory charming can be done with such precision, wouldn’t there be a rash of manipulations of this type? Its such an obvious manipulation technique that chapters 24-26 with the Fred and George “caper” was written in a weirdly non-linear style to try to make it seem more mysterious.

Anyway, Hariezer tells the adults who start investigating who might have memory charmed Hermione (you’d think wizard police would do some sort of investigation but its HPMOR, so the world needs to be maximally silly as a foil to Hariezer).

And then he has a discussion with the other kids who are bad mouthing Hermione:

Professor Quirrell isn’t here to explain to me how stupid people are, but I bet this time I can get it on my own. People do something dumb and get caught and are given Veritaserum. Not romantic master criminals, because they wouldn’t get caught, they would have learned Occlumency. Sad, pathetic, incompetent criminals get caught, and confess under Veritaserum, and they’re desperate to stay out of Azkaban so they say they were False-Memory-Charmed. Right? So your brain, by sheer Pavlovian association, links the idea of False Memory Charms to pathetic criminals with unbelievable excuses. You don’t have to consider the specific details, your brain just pattern-matches the hypothesis into a bucket of things you don’t believe, and you’re done. Just like my father thought that magical hypotheses could never be believed, because he’d heard so many stupid people talking about magic. Believing a hypothesis that involves False Memory Charms is low-status.

This sort of thing bothers the hell out me. Not only is cloying elitism creeping in, but in HPMOR as in the real world, arguments regarding “status” are just thinly disguised ad-hominems. True or not true, they aren’t really attacking an argument, just the people making them.

After all, if we fall back on the “Bayesian conspiracy” confessing to a crime/having a memory of a crime is equal evidence for having done the crime and having been false memory charmed, so all the action here is in the prior. CLAIMING a false memory charm is evidence of nothing at all.

So, if the base rate of false memory charms is so low that its laughable and “low status,” then the students are correctly using Bayesian reasoning.

Although Hariezer may point out that they aren’t taking into account evidence about what sort of person Hermione is, but if the base rates of false memory charms are really so low that is unlikely to matter much- after all Hariezer doesn’t have any specific positive evidence she was false memory charmed, and she has been behaving strangely toward Draco for awhile (which Hariezer suggests is a symptom of the way the perpetrator went about the false memory charm, but could just as easily be evidence she did it- the action is still in the prior).

Similarly, his father didn’t believe in magic because it SHOULDN’T have been believed- until the story begins he has supposedly lived his whole life in our world- where magic is quite obviously not a real thing, regardless of “status. “

OF COURSE- if the world were written as a non-silly place, the base rate for false memory charms would be through the roof and everyone would say “yea, she was probably false memory charmed! Who just blurts out a confession?” and the wizard cops would just do their job.

HPMOR remember when

Way back in chapter 20 something, Quirrell gave Hariezer Roger Bacon’s magic diary, and it was going to jump start his investigation of the rules of magic? And then it was literally never mentioned again? The aptly named Checkov’s Roger Bacon’s Magi-science Diary probably applies here.

Anonymous: why dont you tag …

why dont you tag your HPMOR stuff? It would make it way easier to find.

Originally I was, but several people told me not to “tag my hate?” I don’t understand tumblr, clearly…

Anonymous: Reading your HPMOR …

Reading your HPMOR let’s read, and I’m impressed by the wide array of stuff you seem to know about. I’ve read some of the chapters multiple times and never really thought about a lot of what you bring up. How can I level up? Do you have any tips?

First, I wouldn’t phrase it as “leveling up.” Life isn’t really like a video game, in my experience.

In my case, the answer to how I know most of what I know is probably a liberal arts education. I started my academic career as an english major (but got bored after a three semesters and switched to physics), so I bounced around through a wide variety of classes. Basically, ask lots of questions, read a lot,etc. Standard stuff really.

HPMOR Chapter 80

Apparently in the wizarding world, the way a trial is conducted involves a bunch of politicians voting if someone is guilty or innocent, so in this chapter the elder Malfoy uses his influence to convict Hermione. Not much to this chapter really.

BUT in some asides, we do get some flirting with neoreaction:

At that podium stands an old man, with care-lined face and a silver beard that stretches down below his waist; this is Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore… Karen Dutton bequeathed the Line to Albus Dumbledore… each wizard passing it to their chosen successor, back and back in unbroken chain to the day Merlin laid down his life. That (if you were wondering) is how the country of magical Britain managed to elect Cornelius Fudge for its Minister, and yet end up with Albus Dumbledore for its Chief Warlock. Not by law (for written law can be rewritten) but by most ancient tradition, the Wizengamot does not choose who shall preside over its follies. Since the day of Merlin’s sacrifice, the most important duty of any Chief Warlock has been to exercise the highest caution in their choice of people who are both good and able to discern good successors.

And we get the PC/NPC distinction used by Hariezer to separate himself from the sheeple:

The wealthy elites of magical Britain have collective force, but not individual agency; their goals are too alien and trivial for them to have personal roles in the tale. As of now, this present time, the boy neither likes nor dislikes the plum-colored robes, because his brain does not assign them enough agenthood to be the subjects of moral judgment. He is a PC, and they are wallpaper.

Hermione is convicted and Hariezer is sad he couldn’t figure out something to do about it (he did try to threaten the elder Malfoy to no avail).

HPMOR Chapter 81

Our last chapter ended with Hermione in peril- she was found guilty of the attempted murder of Draco! How will Hariezer get around this one?

Luckily the way the wizard world justice system works is fucking insane- being found guilty puts Hermione in the Malfoy’s “blood debt.” So Hariezer tells Malfoy:

By the debt owed from House Malfoy to House Potter!…I’m surprised you’ve forgotten…surely it was a cruel and painful period of your life, laboring under the Imperius curse of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, until you were freed of it by the efforts of House Potter. By my mother, Lily Potter, who died for it, and by my father, James Potter, who died for it, and by me, of course.

So Hariezer wants the blood debt transferred to him so he can decide Hermione’s fate (what a convenient and ridiculous way to handle a system of law and order).

But blood debts don’t transfer in this stupid world, instead you also have to pay money. So Malfoy demands something like twice the money in Hariezer’s vault. Hariezer waffles a bit, but decides to pay. Because the demand is such a large sum, this will involve going into debt to the Malfoys.

And then things get really stupid- Dumbledore says, as guardian of Hariezer’s vault he won’t let the transaction happen.

I’m - sorry, Harry - but this choice is not yours - for I am still the guardian of your vault.”

“What? ” said Harry, too shocked to compose his reply.

“I cannot let you go into debt to Lucius Malfoy, Harry! I cannot! You do not know - you do not realize -“

So… here is a question- if Hariezer is going to go into a lot of debt to pay Malfoy how does blocking him access to his money help avoid the debt? Wouldn’t Hariezer just take out a bigger loan from Malfoy?

Anyway, despite super rationality, Hariezer doesn’t think through how stupid Dumbledore’s threat is. Hariezer instead threatens to destroy Azkaban if Dumbledore won’t let him pay Malfoy, so Dumbledore relents.

Malfoy tries to weasel out of this nebulous blood debt arrangement because the rules of wizard justice change on the fly, but Hermione swears allegiance to House Potter and that prevents Malfoy’s weasel attempt.

I acknowledge the debt, but the law does not strictly oblige me to accept it in cancellation,” said Lord Malfoy with a grim smile. “The girl is no part of House Potter; the debt I owe House Potter is no debt to her…

And Hermione, without waiting for any further instructions, said, the words spilling out of her in a rush, “I swear service to the House of Potter, to obey its Master or Mistress, and stand at their right hand, and fight at their command, and follow where they go, until the day I die.”

The implications here are obvious- if you saved all of magical britain from a dark lord, and literally everyone owes you a “blood debt” you are totally above the law. Hariezer should just steal the money he owes Malfoy from some other magical families.

Anonymous: No one cares …

No one cares what you think of HPMOR. Maybe when it wins a hugo you’ll STFU.

Serious question- does anyone really think HPMOR could win a hugo? I don’t actually follow hugo awards and have no idea how they work.

Is there a category for fan fiction? Or does setting your book in someone else’s world already disqualify you? Does your book have to be actually published?

Anonymous: David Brin and …

David Brin and lots of other celebrities loved HPMOR. Why should we trust you over them?

You don’t have to? I’ve been as explicit as I can about my criticisms, you can read them and agree or disagree.

Also, a post-diction: I predict that Brin, and maybe some other endorsements, rolled in during the fanfiction’s early days when it seemed like it was going to be a somewhat humorous fiction where Hariezer used the scientific method to investigate magic. All those promises to the reader in the set up have been broken completely, and it has become something very different.

I attempted to test my post-diction, but then I remembered that I was bored with this.

Anonymous: Can we agree that …

Can we agree that if any hp fanfic wins, it will most likely be hpmor? And that some books that have won hugos also have problems, some bigger than hpmor’s? I’m not the anon who started the hugo asks.

I don’t know much about the hugo award. I’ve read maybe a few books that have said “hugo award winner” or the like on the cover. The two that come to mind are Dune and Ender’s Game. I don’t know anything else about it, maybe some really horrid schlock wins, since it seems to be up to a vote of convention attendees, which seems somewhat gameable.

That said, I don’t think HPMOR really “feels” like a book. It probably could with some serious editing (you could probably cut its length at least in half, and removing all the unfired chekhov’s guns,etc), but right now it feels like a first-draft of something. Professional editing is a thing for a very good reason.

HPMOR Chapter 82

So the trial is wrapped up, but to finish off the section we get a long discussion between Dumbledore and Hariezer.

First, credit where credit is due there is an atypical subversion here- now its Dumbledore attempting to give a rationality lesson to Hariezer, and Hariezer agrees that he is right. Its an attempt to mix up the formula a bit, and I appreciate it even if the rest of this chapter is profoundly stupid.

So what is the rationality lesson here?

“Yes,” Harry said, “I flinched away from the pain of losing all the money in my vault. But Idid it! That’s what counts! And you -“ The indignation that had faltered out of Harry’s voice returned. “You actually put a price on Hermione Granger’s life, and you put it below a hundred thousand Galleons!”

“Oh?” the old wizard said softly. “And what price do you put on her life, then? A million Galleons?”

“Are you familiar with the economic concept of ‘replacement value’?” The words were spilling from Harry’s lips almost faster than he could consider them. “Hermione’s replacement value is infinite! There’s nowhere I can go to buy another one!”

Now you’re just talking mathematical nonsense, said Slytherin. Ravenclaw, back me up here?

“Is Minerva’s life also of infinite worth?” the old wizard said harshly. “Would you sacrifice Minerva to save Hermione?”

“Yes and yes,” Harry snapped. “That’s part of Professor McGonagall’s job and she knows it.”

“Then Minerva’s value is not infinite,” said the old wizard, “for all that she is loved. There can only be one king upon a chessboard, Harry Potter, only one piece that you will sacrifice any other piece to save. And Hermione Granger is not that piece. Make no mistake, Harry Potter, this day you may well have lost your war.”

Basically, the lesson is this- you have to be willing to put a value on human life, even if it seems profane. Its actually a good lesson and very important to learn. If everyone was more familiar with this, the semi frequent GOVERNMENT HEALTHCARE IS DEATH PANELS panic would never happen. Although I’d add a caveat- anyone who has worked in healthcare does this so often that we start to make a mistake the other way (forgetting that underneath the numbers are actual people).

Anyway, to justify the rationality lesson further we get a reference to some of Tetlock’s work (note: I’m unfamiliar with the work cited here, so I’m taking Yudkowsky at his word- if you’ve read the rest of my hpmor stuff, you know this is dangerous).

You’d already read about Philip Tetlock’s experiments on people asked to trade off a sacred value against a secular one, like a hospital administrator who has to choose between spending a million dollars on a liver to save a five-year-old, and spending the million dollars to buy other hospital equipment or pay physician salaries. And the subjects in the experiment became indignant and wanted to punish the hospital administrator for even thinking about the choice. Do you remember reading about that, Harry Potter? Do you remember thinking how very stupid that was, since if hospital equipment and doctor salaries didn’t also save lives, there would be no point in having hospitals or doctors? Should the hospital administrator have paid a billion pounds for that liver, even if it meant the hospital going bankrupt the next day?

To bring it home, we find out that Voldemort captured Dumbledore’s brother and demanded ransom, and Mad Eye counseled thusly

“You ransom Aberforth, you lose the war,” the man said sharply. “That simple. One hundred thousand Galleons is nearly all we’ve got in the war-chest, and if you use it like this, it won’t be refilled. What’ll you do, try to convince the Potters to empty their vault like the Longbottoms already did? Voldie’s just going to kidnap someone else and make another demand. Alice, Minerva, anyone you care about, they’ll all be targets if you pay off the Death Eaters. That’s not the lesson you should be trying to teach them.”

So instead of ransoming Aberforth he burned Lucious Malfoy’s wife alive (or at least convinced the death eaters that he did). That way they would think twice about targeting him.

I think the rationality lesson is fine and dandy, just one problem- this situation is not at all like the hospital administrator in the example given. The problem here is that the idea of putting a price on a human life is only a useful concept in day-to-day reality where money has some real meaning. In an actual war, even one against a sort of weird guerrilla army of dark wizards money only becomes useful if you can exchange it for more resources, and in the wizard war resources means wizards.

Ask yourself this- would a death eater target someone close to Dumbledore even if there was no possibility of ransom? OF COURSE THEY WOULD- the whole point is defeating Dumbledore, the person standing against them. Voldemort wouldn’t ask for ransom, because its a stupid thing to do- he would kill Aberforth and send pieces of him to Dumbledore by owl. This idea that ransoming makes targets of all of Dumbledore’s allies is just idiotic- they are already targets.

Next, ask yourself this- does Voldemort have any use for money? Money is an abstract, useful because we can exchange for useful things. But its pretty apparent that Voldemort doesn’t really need money- he has no problem killing, taking and stealing. The parts of magical Britain that are willing to stand up to him won’t sell his death eaters goods at any price, and the rest are so scared they’ll give him anything for free.

Meanwhile, Dumbledore is leading a dedicated resistance- basically a volunteer army. He doesn’t need to buy people’s time, they are giving it freely! Mad Eye himself notes that he could ask the Longbottoms or the Potters to empty their vaults and they would. What the resistance needs isn’t money, its people willing to fight. So in the context of this sort of war, and able fighting man like Aberforth is worth basically infinite money- money is common and useless and people willing to stand up to Voldemort are in extremely tight supply.

It would have made a lot more sense to have Voldemort ask for prisoner exchange or something like that. Aberforth in exchange for Bellatrix Black. Then both sides would be trading value for value. But then the Tetlock reference wouldn’t be nearly as on-the-nose.

At least this chapter makes clear the reason for the profoundly stupid wizard justice system and the utterly absurd blood-debt-punishment system. The whole idea was to arrange things so Hariezer could be asked to pay a ransom to Luscious Malfoy, so the reader can learn about Tetlock’s research/putting a price on lives,etc.

At least I only have like 20 chapters of this thing left.

Anonymous: “At least I only have …

“At least I only have like 20 chapters of this thing left.” You DO realize that HPMOR isn’t finished, right?

I guess I’m sort of implicitly assuming it will go the way of the rationality book he started HPMOR to distract himself from.

Anonymous: Most of the rest

Most of the rest of hpmor was already been written and may start posting before feb. The entire plot was outlined before the first chaper was published. Keep up with the notes at hpmor. com

Eh, I don’t want to read the notes, I have enough to read without them.

But I refuse to believe despite what may be claimed that the plot was outlined that far in advance- there is simply too much stuff that inadvertently fell away (literally all the scientific exploration stopped 70 or 80 chapters ago. Bacon’s magic diary thing has never been brought up again…)

Anonymous: No motive for EY …

No motive for EY to lie about that. The diary was stated to not have meant anything. There are definitely places where something was set up dozens of chapters in advance. Also, at least wait until it’s all out to decide how much of it was known in advance? The loose ends may all be tied up in the next 20 chapters as EY has promised.

Maybe? But George Lucas claimed to have written all the star wars movies in advance, but Leia kissed Luke…

An anon wrote to tell me that earlier chapters referenced Malfoy’s mother, before that was re-written (after it was decided she’d been burned alive I guess?) No idea if that is accurate, but it would point in my favor if true. What events do you consider to have been set up dozens of chapters in advance?

And I’m not complaining about loose ends- I’m complaining that the direction the plot started in was completely abandoned around chapter 25- all the “use science to master magic” stuff stopped. The sort of stuff you usually notice in an outline. Mininally, its an unlikely pacing problem. Plot threads running for 25 chapters, and then being dropped for ~80ish chapters, only to be picked back up again.

HPMOR bitching

Much like my previous name of the wind complaints, HPMOR is heavy with exposition- and for a similar reason. Hariezer is too “awesome” which leads to heavy-handed exposition (if for slightly different reasons than name of the wind).

The standard rule of show,don’t tell implies that the best way to teach your audience something in a narrative is to have your characters learn from experience. Your characters need to make a mistake, or have something backfire. That way they can come out the other side stronger, having learned something. If you don’t trust your audience to have gotten the lesson, you can cap it off with some exposition outlining exactly what you want to learn, but the core of the lesson should be taught by the characters experience.

But Yudkowsky inserted a Hariezer fully-equipped with the “methods of rationality.” So we get lots of episodes that set-up a conflict, and then Hariezer has a huge dump of exposition that explains why its not really a problem because rationality-judo, and the tension drains away. It would be far better to have Hariezer learn over time, so the audience can learn along with him.

So Hariezer isn’t going to grow, he is just going to exposition dump most of his problems away. We can at least watch him explore the world, right? After all, Yudkowsky has put a “real scientist” into Hogwarts so we can finally see what material you actually learn at wizard school! All that academic stuff missing from the original novels! NOPE- we haven’t had a single class in the last 60 chapters. Hariezer isn’t even learning magic in a systematic way.

I really, really don’t see what people see in this. The handful of chapters I found amusing feel like an eternity ago, it ran off the rails dozens of chapters ago! People sell the story as “using the scientific method in JK Rowling’s universe” but a more accurate description would be “it starts as using the scientific method in JK rowling’s universe, but stops doing that around chapter 25 or so. Then mostly its just about a war game, with some political maneuvering.”

Anonymous: HPJEV makes a lot …

HPJEV makes a lot of mistakes and loses a lot. Just because you hear the story in his voice doesn’t mean everything he does is right. Or have you forgotten abut the Draco torture story and the Time turner fiascos, and the book reading loss to Granger, just to nam the first few I remember? There are more, but they’re after where you say you’re up to and I’m not sure where you stand on spoilers.

Also, EY has said that one of the major flaws of hpmor is that Harry doesn’t lose hard until Chapter 10. On a side note, doesn’t the fact that hpmor is the most popular hp fanfic by some measures mean that the flaws aren’t too bad? I’m sure there are good books that you don’t like, and clearly there are a lot of people who enjoy it despite all its apparent shortcomings. Have you seen EYs thing on Facebook where he tlks about about people who don’t like but don’t join the hatedom either?

(I’m assuming these asks are from the same person).

First, Hariezer does not make mistakes that the story treats like mistakes. A real mistake has long term consequences and sets events in motion. The character learns something when he lives through a real mistake. What has Hariezer learned in a character-defining way in the first 80 chapters of HPMOR? Nothing.

When Draco hits Hariezer with a torture spell, its part of Hariezer’s conversion attempt- and Hariezer escapes via time turner.

The “time turner fiasco” you refer to is literally Hariezer using the time turner to solve his problems too much. The punishment is having the time turner restricted to only evening use- HOWEVER this doesn’t stop the time turner from continuing to be used to solve almost every problem. No long term consequences what so ever.

Hariezer hasn’t “lost hard” in 80 chapters of HPMOR, let alone in the first 10! (I think he has just been sorted by chapter 10).

I’m not saying a book has to be driven by character development- plenty of great books barely have any. But when the goal is explicitly to teach to the audience, the best way is to have the audience learn along with the characters.

And if your story isn’t going to be character driven, it would be nice to have the story be narrative driven, but most of the episodes in HPMOR do little to further any overall plot.

Second, popularity isn’t really a measure of quality. Those Michael Bay Transformers movies make money, and Dan Brown is a best selling author. That doesn’t mean its wrong to like these things, merely that you should recognize its a guilty pleasure. Like eating candy or drinking soda. I have my own guilty pleasure books, but I don’t confuse them for high art.

Third, no I haven’t at all looked at EY’s facebook page. I clearly don’t understand facebook in this day and age. As a crochety old man, in my day facebook was used to share stuff friends?

Anyway, I dispute that there is any sort of HPMOR “hatedom.” After looking around, I could only find one long thread on a fan fiction forum (Dark Lord Potter), and its just a thread full of mixed reviews. Other than that, there is just me. In the culture I was trained in (physics), if no one is criticizing you, no one is taking you seriously. Pretty much no one takes HPMOR seriously.

Anonymous: You don’t get …

You don’t get HPMOR because it is not FOR YOU. Neurotpyical jocks can not see the genius of this fan fiction because they are not supposed to see it! Go back to getting bjs from cheerleaders under the bleachers, and while we learn how to optimize the world.

I simply cannot believe this is a real response. This makes me wonder how many of my asks are just trolling.

mugasofer: The same goes for a lot …

mugasofer:

The same goes for a lot of the plot; you’re seeing a failed Hero’s Journey, with each problem getting set up but it’s undercut before it can actually cause him problems and teach him something, because Harriezer is too Awesome to have problems; whereas the fans are seeing it as more of a superhero-style conflict, where the drama comes from the invincible hero using their powers creatively to defeat obstacles designed to challenge them.

Usually superhero stories create drama by inserting problems that the hero can’t solve with their powers (Spiderman’s interpersonal drama, for instance). Or by embedding the superhero in a more traditional narrative (the original Superman movie is a pretty traditional love story, some Spiderman arcs are coming of age stories,etc).

HPMOR is like a superman comic arc where supes talks with a senator for 5 issues, and then when he encounters a problem it turns out his laser eyes also work as a 3d printer (in order to see powers used creatively, we have to know what the rules are). Also, it turns out that the president is chosen on the basis of who can throw a car the farthest.

mugasofer: Have you read Worm? …

mugasofer:

Have you read Worm? Because Worm depends pretty heavily on this sort of thing. (And, not coincidentally, there’s heavy overlap with the HPMOR fanbase.)

I have not.

HPMOR is like a superman comic arc where supes talks with a senator for 5 issues, and then when he encounters a problem it turns out his laser eyes also work as a 3d printer (in order to see powers used creatively, we have to know what the rules are). Also, it turns out that the president is chosen on the basis of who can throw a car the farthest.

I’m … not really sure what this bit is referring to?

The structure of HPMOR- many chapters are just conversations of political maneuvering and many problems are solved via calvinball (need to defeat dementors? Turns out if you believe hard enough in transhumanism your patronus can kill a dementor. Need to escape a prison? Turns out rockets are faster than broomsticks. We get introduced to the idea that metal blocks certain spells in a chapter where Hariezer uses it to win his war game. The idea that potions work by “what you put in” is introduced in the chapter where Hariezer uses it to make his blinding light potion from acorns,etc.).

And the world itself is organized in really insane ways to make it easy for Hariezer (like if in a superman comic it turned out the president was elected by who can toss a car the farthest- its obviously set up so that only superman can win). Hermione convicted of murder? Luckily, the way the wizarding world blood-debt system of justice is organized, Hariezer is literally above the law (who won’t owe a blood debt to the person who got rid of Voldemort?).

Anonymous: I think you and …

I think you and some of your friends (@jadagul) are talking past each other. When you hear “smart/scientist Harry Potter” you are parsing smart/scientist as curious. Others are parsing smart as manipulative and powerful.

jadagul I’m tagging you here because you were mentioned.

I do think maybe this is part of the issue? Certainly I’ve mentioned before how frustrating I find it that Hariezer is surprisingly incurious (when Dumbledore tells a transhumanist Hariezer about a literal gateway to the Afterlife, Hariezer asks no questsions, for instance).

Anonymous: Hi, I read your post …

Hi, I read your post on HPMOR and reading fast. It reminded me of a discussion my creative writing class had about different people’s reading styles. My teacher said that people who read very quickly usually do so by skipping over descriptive passages. They experience a story as just a series of events, and so they aren’t very sensitive to show v tell. Its much the same for them. This might explain the popularity of HPMOR.

I don’t buy this theory, really. But then again I’ve never lived in someone elses head while they read. Does anyone else want to weigh in?

HPMOR Chapter 83-84

These are just rehashes of things we’ve already been presented with (so many words, so little content). The other students still think Hermione did it (although this is written in an akward tell rather than show style- Hariezer tells Hermione what is going on, rather than Hermione or the reader experiencing it). We get gems of cloying elitism like this:

Hermione, you’ve told me a lot of times that I look down too much on other people. But if I expected too much of them - if I expected people to get things right - I really would hate them, then. Idealism aside, Hogwarts students don’t actually know enough cognitive science to take responsibility for how their own minds work. It’s not their fault they’re crazy.

There is one bit of new info- as part of this investigation of the attempted murder of Draco, I guess Quirrell was investigated, and the aurors seem to think he is some missing wizard lord or something. This is totally superfluous, I assume we all know Quirrell is Voldemort. I’m hoping this doesn’t turn into a plot line.

And finally, Quirrell tries to convince Hermione to leave and go to a wizard school where people don’t think she tried to kill someone. This is fine, but in part of it, Quirrell gives us this gem on being a hero:

Long ago, long before your time or Harry Potter’s, there was a man who was hailed as a savior. The destined scion, such a one as anyone would recognize from tales, wielding justice and vengeance like twin wands against his dreadful nemesis…

“In all honesty…I still don’t understand it. They should have known that their lives depended on that man’s success. And yet it was as if they tried to do everything they could to make his life unpleasant. To throw every possible obstacle into his way. I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themselves with me so quickly - not without something in it for themselves. But their power, too, was threatened; and so I was shocked how they seemed content to step back, and leave to that man all burdens of responsibility. They sneered at his performance, remarking among themselves how they would do better in his place, though they did not condescend to step forward.”

So… the people seem mostly to rally around Dumbledore. He has a position of power and influence because of his dark-wizard vanquishing deeds. There aren’t a lot of indications people are actively attempting to make Dumbledore’s life unpleasant, he has the position he wants, turned down the position of minister of magic,etc. People are mostly in awe of Dumbledore.

But there is some other hero, we are supposed to believe, who society mocked? I can’t help but draw parallels to Friendly AI research here…

Anonymous: Pretty sure the hero …

Pretty sure the hero Quirrel(mort) is talking about is himself, since he mentions “I didn’t expect them to align themselves with ME” and all that.

Yes he is obviously talking about himself. But no one’s survival ever depended on Voldemort, nor did he ever try to be the hero. He is making up a story.

And my point was his story in no way jives with the in-world heroic experience (which would be Dumbledore’s)

mugasofer: Hermione convicted of …

mugasofer:

<snip>

Hermione convicted of murder? Luckily, the way the wizarding world blood-debt system of justice is organized, Hariezer is literally above the law (who won’t owe a blood debt to the person who got rid of Voldemort?).

Aha! This is a perfect example of what I was talking about.

See, I know for a fact that the fans read this differently to you, because I remember them predicting this on Reddit before it happened!

In earlier chapters, the “Blood Debt” system was established in passing (it was part of the “prank” on Reeta Skeeter), and Lucius Malfoy was set up as posing as a victim of Voldemort who was personally being forced to commit atrocities until he was freed by his death. So a lot of people guessed that would be a big enough thing to count as a “blood debt”, and Harry might use that.

But, that Chekhov’s Gun was ages ago, and pretty subtle, and should have been reestablished before it became A Big Plot Point. So when you ran into it, it came out of nowhere and threw you out of the story.

I feel like I’m being to flippant with my criticism and as a result we are talking past each other. To be explicit

1. the rules of magic are either constructed specifically for Hariezer to be able to take advantage of them (thinking transhumanist thoughts hard enough kills dementors, thinking about one specific formulation of quantum mechanics hard enough lets you partially transifgure stuff), or are just made up on the spot (the broomstick/rocket thing, metal blocks spells).

There is no systematic set of rules, so all exploiting of the magic system is because a rule was made up specifically to be taken advantage of. It doesn’t matter if the rule was introduced a chapter before it was needed, the rule basically amounts to “you can’t destroy a dementor unless you are Harry Potter.”

1. The world is made up similarly. The part of the “blood debt” that was established by Rita Skeeter’s article is that in-world it was plausible for Ginny to betrothed to Harry because of a “blood debt”- but the state isn’t really involved in marriage. People can get married for whatever reasons they want.

However, its when we get to the trial that it gets out of hand-

The part that is stupid is that the entire system of wizard justice works on blood debts.

It doesn’t matter that once we know the justice system works on blood debts we can infer that Lucious has a blood debt to Harry from earlier in the story- its obviously built to be exploited. Wizard justice is constructed in such a way that Harry Potter is above the law. Think of the number of families that most owe him a blood debt.

To go back to the stupid superman example, imagine if instead of making super man super strong, the writers made everything in his universe out of balsa wood (and no one else had ever though to try punching stuff).

Anonymous: Why do you keep …

Why do you keep saying HJPEV isn’t curious? He is always talking about books he has studied!

I think there is some tension in that the text tells us a few times that Hariezer is curious. But I don’t think he acts curious, especially when presented with new information.

As an example, consider the chapter where he argues against Dumbledore about death. When Dumbledore tells Hariezer about a literal doorway to the afterlife kept in the ministry of magic basement, Hariezer just logic chops it into submission like its a point in a debate. A legitimately curious person, when told about something like that would want to see it and study it, and would maybe hold off on lecturing someone.

Hariezer doesn’t really care about why magic works the way it does, or any of that. Hariezer cares about what he can do with more knowledge.

Now, to contrast, here are some anecdotes about real people I know who are super curious.

My friend Phil is one of the more curious people I’ve met. When he was in grade school he read in a comic that Gambit of the X-men charged his playing cards with kinetic energy and that’s why they exploded. So he started asking people what kinetic energy was. He couldn’t get a good answer, so he went to the encyclopedia britannica which directed him to physics books. This lead to more questions, etc. He couldn’t stop poking at that one question. Years later, he was in a physics phd program for more than a decade with enough course work for masters degrees in 6 fields (that sadly, the university would not give to him). Hell, for all I know he is STILL in grad school.

I have a similar story with the anti-matter reactor in Star Trek. Trying to get answers to questions that were raised by a TV show I watched in the late 80s has shaped most of my life. I have a bit more focus than Phil, so I at least managed to finish grad school.

A group of people in my physics department “borrowed” a parking meter for a weekend because we realized we didn’t understand how the infrared meter auditing worked. A bbq I hosted in grad school turned into an entire weekend of bbq-based experiment to figure out why temperatures plateau for so long when you are smoking meat. My office mate once set a trash can in the office on fire trying to figure out if fire was a plasma.

I snipped a bunch …

I snipped a bunch here to focus on a few points.

mugasofer:

I’m thinking. How many families had members who Voldemort was personally forcing to kill people, or otherwise torturing? Like, five?

So we know specifically of the Malfoys and the Weasleys, from the story. We can infer every former death eater that isn’t in wizard jail because they would have claimed they were cursed just like Malfoy.

If bits of the original books still hold true, we also get the Longbottoms. If a blood debt is established by avenging a murder (as the original concept would imply), we get almost all of the wizards who were fighting Voldemort, who would probably have had family members murdered.

So its probably a lot of people, and mostly very powerful people from both sides of the previous “war”. Which, in the small world of wizarding Britain will make a person very much above much of the law.

Even a blood debt from particularly wealthy person would be enough to pay off Malfoy, given that one blood debt was enough for Malfoy to get paid that much.

I have to admit, I do get the impression sometimes that everyone else is just being stupid, rather than Harry being smart. Usually in places where the worldbuilding seems to be based on old pieces of fanon, so I know the “real” explanation from the books, which usually makes more sense to me.

This is my point. This is how the entire world feels to me- the world can be arbitrarily silly to make Hariezer look smart. So we agree somewhat.

But, because the narration was focusing on those parts, you got the impression that the solution came first and the magic system was half-assedly set up to support it.

I mean, I could point to elements of the magic system that don’t help the protagonist - for example, he spends a great deal of time trying to make the Scientific Method give him awesome powers when applied to magic, but Eliezer changed the system from canon so ancient spells have to be tracked down with cryptic clues, you can’t invent new ones by understanding the rules. That’s a change that makes Being Harriezer less useful, not more, than in canon.

No, this isn’t established that you can’t use rules to create your own spells. It’s established that it could be dangerous to try to create your own spells, but it’s not impossible. The fact that it could be dangerous implies its possible.

What is frustrating is that Hariezer HASN’T spent much time actually using the scientific method to investigate magic. There is one chapter where Hariezer and Hermione try to figure out some ideas about magic, but the experiments don’t work out, we the readers don’t learn much. Hariezer never tries again.

There is another section where Hariezer decides (without doing an experiment) that if you focus really hard on one very specific formulation of quantum mechanics that you’ll be to partially transfigure….

And thats basically it for the rules of magic that we know. Hariezer isn’t creating spells because he hasn’t really tried to figure out the rules.

This is ok in the original books, because the focus was on adventure, and childhood friendships,etc. This is far less ok in HPMOR where the focus is supposed to be on rationality and the scientific method.

When I watch Star trek, I’m a fan, so when they say “this device breaks you down into energy and assembles a copy at the other end based on scans” then there must be some explanation why they can’t use this to clone people. (Which, as it happens, there is.) But when my friend, who’s heard horror stories about the writers putting “[he gives a technical explanation]” in the script and letting someone else fill it in, watches it … he concludes that the writers just didn’t think of this obvious idea, and it throws him out of the whole thing.

The difference here is that no one thinks that Star Trek’s technobabble is a good aspect of the show.

Its a matter of focus, Star Trek is about the exploration and the characters. Sure, lots of little details don’t make a lot of sense, but the best episodes breeze past those little details. They don’t matter to the story. In the worst episodes, too much focus on those details kills the story.

In HPMOR, on the other hand, when the details don’t make sense, Hariezer often exploits that to his advantage. To use the example you do- the wizard exchange rate is a little detail that I complained about and moved past (you’ll recall from my post on that chapter that it was the first chapter I actually found a bit interesting). It doesn’t really matter to the overall story much. However, if Hariezer uses the exchange rate arbitrage to pay back Malfoy, it’ll put that detail into focus in a bad way.

If the blood debt system were similar to the exchange rates, something more or less in the background, it wouldn’t be worth as much complaining as I’ve done. However, Hariezer used it to resolve his issue, which puts the whole stupid thing into focus.

slatestarscratchpad: Some thoughts …

slatestarscratchpad:

Some thoughts on the recent discussion of HPMOR and Name of the Wind:

If you want to write a slice-of-life book where characters just fall in love and encounter problems at their jobs and stuff, whatever.

If you want to write some kind of epic, where characters play a huge role in unfolding world-scale events and end up changing the history of mankind forever, this has to deal with the issue that in the real world it’s really hard for one person to make a large-scale difference. Even harder when the person isn’t a politician, tycoon, or activist - who are often boring to write about.

So as an author writing this kind of book, you’re charged with the problem of portraying something extremely unlikely (one person revolutionizing the world) without your audience groaning and rolling their eyes because they’ve noticed it’s so unlikely.

Some people solve the problem purely by giving the person some special power. For example, they’re the True Heir To The Throne and the only person who can use the Artifact Of Magic. This works, but it’s overused and kind of boring and uninspiring to read.

The other method, and the one that makes better books, is to have characters solve their problems in surprising and exciting ways that make sense from within the narrative and reinforce the idea of the character as a clever and effective person. This seems to be the point of Eliezer’s Guide To Writing Intelligent Characters.

But if we assume that fictional settings have some kind of efficient market hypothesis thing going on where there aren’t a bunch of loopholes waiting to be exploited, that seems to almost rule out this method of good writing by default. It’s reasonable to say “If there’s a way to sneak into the Dark Lord’s fortress that the hero can figure out, probably the Dark Lord or one of his hundreds of lieutenants assigned to managing security has figured it out, so it won’t work.” But then you have no way for the hero to enter the Dark Lord’s fortress, clever plan or otherwise.

I mean, if you think about it, Lord of the Rings rests on this incredibly stupid premise that Sauron wouldn’t have thought about it for five minutes and then bricked up the entrance to Mount Doom. (Yes, I know, I know, Evil can’t possibly understand Good and he was incapable of imagining that someone with the Ring might try to destroy it, but if Eliezer had made that an HPMOR plot point people would have been all over it). Likewise, Star Wars rests on the premise that rebel spies in ten minutes can spot a weakness in the Death Star that the entire Empire never noticed in years of planning and building the ship.

So it seems to me that the most honest way of writing a story is to combine these two methods - the hero has a cunning plan, but it’s not immediately ruled out by Efficient Market Hypothesis because the hero has some very unexpected advantage that couldn’t have been planned in advance, or gets very lucky. Thus, we can excuse Sauron’s error by noting that he would have been right to leave Mount Doom available if not for the highly-implausible coincidence of Gollum. We can excuse the Empire by supposing (kind of contrary to the story, but whatever) that it would have been impossible to hit that exhaust port without the help of the Force, and as far as the Empire knows all Jedi have been wiped out.

But this leaves you open to the accusation of carefully plotting everything exactly to make life easy for the hero. In the Tolkien case this is too obvious to even mention, but even in the Star Wars case, you have to have Luke be the unexpected return of the Jedi at EXACTLY the moment there’s a problem calling for a brilliant pilot with Force sensitivity, because the Empire decided to attack the Rebel base where Luke HAPPENED to be with a weapon that could ONLY be destroyed by a carefully placed shot down an exhaust port. Needless to say, this accusation is true - if the whole thing hadn’t been planned out by George Lucas, we would never have seen this unlikely conjunction of Luke’s special ability and a million-to-one chance that required exactly that special ability.

This is an even bigger problem when you’re trying to present your character’s special ability as intelligence. There’s this great phrase in Encyclopedia Brown, where he tells people something like “criminals always make one mistake”. Well, of course they do! If they didn’t, you couldn’t have a book where a clever sleuth captures criminals making a mistake! For example, in one story, someone tries to pass off a fake Civil War letter supposedly written by a general just after “the First Battle of Bull Run”, and Brown detects the fake because they wouldn’t have called it “the First Battle of Bull Run” until they knew there was going to be a second one. OBVIOUSLY the author has set this whole situation up where the criminal only makes a mistake so that Brown can succeed in solving the case, obviously we could in theory launch the objection “But shouldn’t there be lots of stories where Brown is put on a case, but the criminal thought about it for ten minutes first and got his battle names straight?” but we enjoy the story anyway because we know that’s how a story like this has to work.

So maybe part of what a good story (in this genre) is, is something that can convince you each individual piece makes sense and is perfectly natural before combining all the pieces into what is only later revealed to be an embarrassing coincidence.

This reminds me of the part of Yudkowsky’s Guide To Intelligent Characters which I found most interesting, which was where he claims you can do more in fanfic than you can do in an original novel, because the weird parts of the canon are grandfathered in and not your fault. So Eliezer says he would have been embarrassed to make up the plot point with the Dementors in an original book, because it was too obviously “character succeeds by overblown transhumanism”. But since Rowling already had the Dementors as death-like figures in black robes who were held off by thinking happy thoughts, he was able to make it seem like a natural progression that you could destroy them by thinking the novel kind of happy thought that one day we might destroy Death. In effect, he bought himself out of most of the “overblown transhumanism” accusation, because the unlikely coincidences necessary to make it work had already been inserted by someone else and seemed perfectly natural.

But this can also be done just by good pacing and development. For example, the Brown story just presents you with the text of a Civil War letter, and one of the things in it is the words “the First Battle of Bull Run”, and this seems perfectly natural because of course that’s the sort of thing Civil War generals would talk about, and you let it go under your radar. And Encyclopedia Brown being smart is a premise of the story that you’ve already accepted if you’re reading the book at all. So both of these things are taken as part of the background, and then when the coincidence happens, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence.

Likewise, Luke’s Force powers are introduced very gradually and with appropriate character development. And the Death Star exhaust port is introduced in a totally different plot thread, no apparent correlation, and so you’re willing to accept that too. Then when the big coincidence happens, you accept it with the same grace that you would accept a coincidence in real life, “Well, that was lucky, but it makes sense given what I already know.”

I think part of being a good writer is working with as few weird coincidences as possible (which is rarely zero), having the weird coincidences seem perfectly natural (eg blood debt is a perfectly normal concept to have in a medievalish society and it doesn’t raise anyone’s alarm bells) and then developing them really well with good pacing and plot.

So a few thoughts in somewhat random order. Star Wars is a very arch typical story. Its not about its details, in some sense its comforting because its familiar. The fatal flaw in the Death Star isn’t the exhaust port, really- its the Empire’s arrogance. Its a typical scrappy-underdog find the weakness the arrogant adversary neglected. Tortoise and Hare stuff.

But if you inserted a Luke Skywalker who is constantly comparing what is happening to a fantasy story, and using the force to build perpetual motion machines, we would enter a different realm. It would turn into a story at least in part about genre, and genre convention.

I think that Yudkowsky is right in the sense that a story about genre convention probably can work better in something like a fan fiction, for the reason that setting your work in another’s universe immediately sets the genre, and the expectations of that genre. But once you’ve chosen to write a story like that, every new world building decision you make, and every change to the original world, is going to be under a microscope because of the type of story you’ve chosen to write. After all, your story is explicitly and implicitly making a commentary on the world building conventions.

To go back to Superman, who I have been using as the subject of many, many terrible examples. If I wrote a story where Superman, instead of fighting crime, hops on a treadmill and generates cheap electricity 20 hours a day, and clean, cheap energy transforms the world and eliminates crime, then its a sort of winking nod to the idea that Superman comics aren’t really about exploring the consequences of super powers, they are about the character relationships and the power fantasy.

But if in the same story, I suggest kryptonite represents death, and Superman defeats Lex Luther (who I guess in this story runs an oil company and is trying to stop Superman’s clean energy?) by thinking properly transhumanist thoughts, then I’ve started to make a weird hash of things. If I then insert a political system where outcomes are determined by feats of strength, readers will say (or at least they should say) “umm? What exactly are you doing here?”

nostalgebraist: The odd thing …

nostalgebraist:

The odd thing going on in both Name of the Wind and HPMOR is that the characters seem to get by on being “the bestest ever” but there is no clear in-world explanation for this. It would be much more tolerable if Kvothe were a prophesied messiah; instead he’s just some dude who happens to be the best at everything for some reason. Likewise, granting a character intellectual superpowers can justify them figuring out things that you or I could never figure out in practice — but the whole message of HPMOR seems to be “you and I could produce these kinds of effects if only we were more rational,” to which I can only say, “no, not really.”

Name of the Wind is especially odd because the character being amazing breaks the narrative in all sorts of places. In the framing story, characters will say things to Kvothe like “wait… why didn’t you do this obvious thing using your mad skillz?” “Well…” Rothfuss could have eased these problems by simply not making young Kvothe amazing out-of-the-box.

Also, with Kvothe, people just randomly recognize he is awesome with no real reason, and give him stuff. He walks into a shoe store barefoot and the shop keeper gives him shoes because he likes the look of his feet. This is a thing that happens.

To the anon or anons pelting me with asks

I do not think that I’m taking HPMOR too seriously, or that I should stop thinking about it and just enjoy it.

HPMOR isn’t described by people as a goofy, “shounen anime,” adolescent power fantasy. People who recommended it to me described it using phrases like “best thing I’ve ever read,” “mind expanding,” “incredibly important”.

I’ve got no problem if you love it, you are free to love it. But surely you must recognize that there is a big difference between goofy shounen anime, or adolescent power fantasy AND “best thing ever.”

What’s better HPMOR or the canon books?

At least HPMOR is much better than the canon.

I find the original books orders of magnitude better than HPMOR. I don’t know if you can tell from reading the live-blog-thingy of HPMOR that I’ve been doing, but mostly I don’t like it.

Your worst enemy is stranded on a desert island, which book do you give him, Name of the Wind or HPMOR?

I’d probably give him Dune, with something witty written in the cover about his lack of water/hydraulic despotism.

Or a collection of Coleridge poems, with the famous bit from Rime of the Ancient Mariner highlighted

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

underlined or bolded or something.

To get to what I think the question is asking, I find both books to be fairly bad.

Narrator as pressure release valve

So I’ve sort of written about this before but I think there is a trait of a certain type of fiction (read: fiction I don’t like), and the people who read it, to use a flaw of the narrator as a pressure release valve for areas where the story doesn’t work for some reason. The narrator has some issue that allows the reader to release any problems they have with the story, but that same flaw isn’t supposed to have any other effect on the story.

When Hariezer in HPMOR misses the mark with his scientific explanation, or acts like so much of a twerp that the reader starts to notice, a reader can say “well, he is just a young kid!” BUT, we are never supposed to doubt the received wisdom we get from Hariezer, and we are never supposed to doubt that he is capable of interacting with the adults on their level. Its just a pressure release valve for when the arrogance and mis-fired science gets to be too much.

In Special Topics in Calamity Physics, when Blue’s constant (and often inappropriate) art and literature references get to be too much (or when the reader notices that the tone is jarring and awful), we can chalk it up to her upbringing by an obviously pretentious academic. But we aren’t suppose to doubt that she is actually cultured, smart, and educated.

In Name of the Wind, when Kvothe is just a bit too witty, or his music is described as too beautiful, or his wizard gpa is just a bit too high, we can chalk it up to the fact that he is a bit of a braggart telling his tale. But we are never supposed to doubt that the events in question actually occurred. For one thing, the events are completely mundane (Kvothe takes classes, Kvothe jokes with friends, Kvothe looks for crush around town, Kvothe works to make money. Lather, rinse,repeat for 400 pages.)

The author wants to have their cake and eat it too- they don’t have to tone down an issue (in these examples a mary sue, an overly-cute writing style, and a mary sue), and people will Rorschach their way into seeing nuance where there isn’t any.

Chapter 2, in which I remember why I hated this

su3su2u1:

nostalgebraist:

(Also I added something to that post since you reblogged it — I’m confused about why Harry things conservation of energy is being violated when there are forms of energy that aren’t necessary perceptible?)

Given the style of story, I have no doubt that both the levitation and the cat thing will eventually fit into some sort of laws-of-magic. In that case, we could append the laws of magic to the laws of physics, and instead of energy conservation being violated, we’ll have some new forms of magical energy. Its actually part of the story I’ll probably enjoy, when/if I make it there.

I remember when I wrote that… it feels like a lifetime ago. What a naive child I was then… None of that will be revisited, it will entirely be forgotten. There are no RULES to the HPMOR magic…. ::sigh::

stories where there’s an important mystery about the way the world works

raginrayguns:

I like some stories where the characters have to figure out something about their world in order to survive or win. Like… man vs difficutly of figuring out how things work.

there’s mystery stories, of course, and I like mystery stories, but i’m talking about something different, like… the mystery isn’t about peple, or what they did or plan to do. It’s about everyday things, the object of natural science?

Erfworld. Very much. Takes place in a world that runs on wargaming rules. The reason I’m even thinking about this genre is because the self-contained side-story Duke Forecastle is such a pure perfect example. Maritime power Seaworld is at war with Anchorbar, and Seaworld fleets sent against them never return. Duke Forecastle is sent along with the flagship on the third mission to Anchorbar, and his survival depends on him figuring out Anchorbar’s strategy and the maritime battle rules that they’re exploiting.

Ra. A world in which magic was discovered in 1970. The magic is very fantasy-story-like… you have to speak and understand incantations. But it was discovered in the modern world and becomes a branch of theoretical physics and engineering. It’s mundane in a way… you need heavy machinery to do anything interesting with it. But when she’s a child, Laura Ferno sees her mother just straight up fly into space to rescue some astronauts, something that’s just impossible even with magic. And her mother returns, apparently having failed and dying herself. So Laura Ferno devotes herself to the study of magic trying to reproduce her mother’s show of power. And it ends up with her survival dependent upon her understanding of the nature of magic etc.

And, I want to emphasize, there is are answers to all the mysteries she’s pursuing. It’s not just like, she says “oh I get it now” levels up and learns a new spell. It’s an actual mystery with understandable answers, so avoid spoilers.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Uh, fairly self explanatory, but… Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts with an adult-level intelligence and a lot of idealism about science, like what you get from listening to a Richard Feynman talk. So he’s gotta figure out stuff about how magic works, and also it’s a more traditional mystery too, all the people have mysterious intentions that he has to figure out.

It isn’t really as focused as the first two stories are on nature-of-the-world mysteries, despite the suggestive title. I haven’t read it in a while, but tumblr usr su3su2u1 has been liveblogging it, and repeatedly said that it’s more focused on the interpersonal intrigue than the investigation of the nature of magic. It’s still a big part of the story, I just want to warn you that it looks like its going to be a bigger part of the story.

Homestuck acts 1-5, sort of. It’s about a group of internet friends that start playing a computer game called Sburb, which is like… imagine the Sims, where you’re placing furniture and stuff, but you play it on your friend’s house, and the stuff happens in real life. And it makes meteors come and destroy the world. And you’re wondering, what is Sburb? Why does it destroy the world? What is the “ultimate reward” promised to its winners? And these questions have answers, but it’s the least of this genre out of the stories on this list, because the story is not about the characters trying to answer these questions in order to win/survive.

what is this genre called? also if I like it what else should I read?

I’m not even sure HPMOR should be in that genre? All the science/experiments/rules of magic stuff stops around maybe chapter 25ish, never to return.

People recommend Worm a lot, I haven’t read it but it might be in the genre.

hot-gay-rationalist: I find it kinna …

hot-gay-rationalist:

I find it kinna funny that nostalgebraist and @su3su2u1 (who can’t be mentioned for some reason) say that HPMOR is bad HP fanfic when it’s the single most reviewed fanfic on FF.net.

Like, one can claim that it’s got its flaws, isn’t super good or whatever, but to say it’s bad in any objective sense, when so many people seem to like it? Seems to defy normal standards of the meaning of “bad.”

Although well when people say classics are good and then most people who read said classics think they’re boring shit, that’s also a weird definition of “good.”

I think we should make a difference between “pleasing-to-readers” and “well-written.” And then add a billion caveats to the latter because one man’s trash and all that.

(ftr I agree with a lot of criticism aforementioned tumblrites aim at the fanfic, I just don’t agree they mean the fanfic is bad :P)

(and like lots of stories, HPMOR is best read quickly and in one go so you don’t notice all the flaws)

So I looked at FF.net, it seems at first glance that the same reviewer can review every chapter and have it count as a different review? So “most-reviewed” might by a mix of both popular and long. HPMOR is certainly very long.

Either way, we can agree HPMOR is popular. No doubt.

But is popular a measure of quality? Transformers 4 was the highest grossing film of 2014 by a wide margin. It’s also terrible in ways I simply don’t have the words to express. I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t say that Transformers 4 was a bad movie just because it was popular.

And finally - regarding the final parenthetical. If you have to read a story quickly and skim through it to get enjoyment out of it, its not a good story. A good story, in my estimation, has word play or intricate construction and your understanding and enjoyment is improved by close reading.

hot-gay-rationalist: Here we part ways. …

hot-gay-rationalist:

Here we part ways. Much fanfic is imho much better (i.e. more enjoyable) than the source material, especially because of the sheer freedom the medium allows. Actually, that’s true of web media and self-published works in general.

And given that computer scientists and maths people are notoriously geeky, how exactly is referencing bad anime a bad strategy for finding more computer scientists and maths people?

I’m not going to weigh in on the benefits of fanfic, but the last bit- is the idea here that the goal of HPMOR is to recruit computer scientists and mathematicians to work at MIRI? Because a much,much easier way to do that is to put up an add for a postdoc.

Given how young Less Wrong seems to be, HPMOR seems a good way to maybe recruit highschool and early college students.

Anonymous: it’s kind of weird …

it’s kind of weird to say “a lot of people like this thing so it’s not bad”. like, badness is a subjective thing that’s personal to whoever is making the judgment, it’s not objective and it’s certainly not based on popularity. like, if a lot of people see something good in a story that’s great, but i don’t see why that should stop anyone from saying that in their opinion something is bad.

I think statements like this often come from a populist / anti-elitist sense that “good art” basically means “art that people enjoy.” And therefore that popularity is, if not a perfect one-to-one indication of whether something is good, it’s a pretty informative barometer.

(I don’t know if this is what hot-gay-rationalist: was thinking, but it’s something you hear a lot from people who identify strongly as “genre fiction fans” — stuff like “sci-fi / fantasy / mystery / romance / etc. fiction are what really provide the things people want out of fiction, and more ‘sophisticated/literary’ fiction is just highly valued because of a bunch of historical accidents”)

This kind of thinking works well in cases where the purpose of something is more straightforward and there is only one kind of “taste.” Say, if you’re buying power tools, the fact that a certain tool is the most bought and best-reviewed on Amazon doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, but it’s informative evidence. And (I guess this is the analogy to fiction) if you found an alternative tool that only a few people used, and those people wrote all these highfalutin’ essays about how good it was, and most of the Amazon reviews were like “I tried to use this and it would not drill a hole, I wanted to drill a hole, 1 star” … well, you’d be kind of skeptical.

I have a bunch of problems with this view when applied to art, the main one being that it just doesn’t take into account that people’s taste can change, and that people can develop new tastes. If something is hard to get into because it makes a lot of references, that limits its appeal to people who know the references, but it’s possible to become someone who knows the references by doing some background reading. People can acquire new tastes, get bored of old stuff and start to crave more variety, etc. Generally, there aren’t works of art that are literally inaccessible in the sense that, like, you’re not allowed to read the book unless you’re over 6 feet tall or something; there are barriers to entry, but individuals can often do things to overcome those barriers. (In the power tools analogy, it’s more like there being some really good tools out there that are not very intuitive to use. You’re free to learn to use them, it’s just that inevitably, fewer people do.)

hpmor chapter 85

A return to my blogging obsession of old (which has been a slog for at least 20 chapters now, but if there is one thing that is true of all phds- we finish what we fucking start, even if it’s an awful idea).

This chapter is actually not so bad, mostly Hariezer just reflecting on the difficulty of weighing his friends lives against “the cause” as Dumbledore suggested he failed to do with Hermione in her trial a few chapters ago.

There are some good bits. For instance, this interesting bit about bow and arrow’s in Australia:

A year ago, Dad had gone to the Australian National University in Canberra for a conference where he’d been an invited speaker, and he’d taken Mum and Harry along. And they’d all visited the National Museum of Australia, because, it had turned out, there was basically nothing else to do in Canberra. The glass display cases had shown rock-throwers crafted by the Australian aborigines - like giant wooden shoehorns, they’d looked, but smoothed and carved and ornamented with painstaking care. In the 40,000 years since anatomically modern humans had migrated to Australia from Asia, nobody had invented the bow-and-arrow. It really made you appreciate how non-obvious was the idea of Progress. I always thought the fact that Australians (and lot of small islanders) lost the bow and arrow (which is interesting! They had it and then they forgot about it!) was an interesting observation about the power of sharing ideas and the importance of large groups for creativity. Small, isolated populations seem to lose the ability to innovate. Granted, almost all of my knowledge about this comes from one anthropology course I only half remember.

And of course there are always some sections that filled me with rage-

Even though Muggle physics explicitly permitted possibilities like molecular nanotechnology or the Penrose process for extracting energy from black holes, most people filed that away in the same section of their brain that stored fairy tales and history books, well away from their personal realities:

Molecular nanotechnology is just the words that sci-fi authors (and Eric Drexler) use for magic. And the nearest black hole is probably something like 2000 light years away. The reason people treat this stuff as far from their personal reality is exactly the same reason Yudkowsky treats it as far from his personal reality- IT IS. Black holes are neat, and GR is a ton of fun, but we aren’t going to be engineering with black holes in my lifetime.

No surprise, then, that the wizarding world lived in a conceptual universe bounded - not by fundamental laws of magic that nobody even knew - but just by the surface rules of known Charms and enchantments…Even if Harry’s first guess had been mistaken, one way or another it was still inconceivable that the fundamental laws of the universe contained a special case for human lips shaping the phrase ‘Wingardium Leviosa’. … What were the ultimate possibilities of invention, if the underlying laws of the universe permitted an eleven-year-old with a stick to violate almost every constraint in the Muggle version of physics?

You know what would be awesome? IF YOU GOT AROUND TO DOING SOME EXPERIMENTS AND EXPLORING THIS IDEA. The absolute essence of science is NOT asking these questions, it’s deciding to try to find out the fucking answers! You can’t be content to just wonder about things, you have to put the work in! Hariezer’s wonderment never gets past the stoned-college-kid wondering aloud and into ACTUAL exploration, and its getting really frustrating. YOU PROMISED ME YOU WERE GOING TO USE THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD TO LEARN THE SECRETS OF MAGIC. WAY BACK IN THE EARLY CHAPTERS.

Anyway, towards the end of the ruminations, Fawkes visits Hariezer and basically offers to take him to Azkaban to try to take out the evil place. Hariezer (probably wisely) decides not to go. And the chapter ends.

hpmor chapter 85

lambdaphagy:

Being a small, isolated population sounds like a better explanation for why you might fail to develop a technology in the first place, than for why you’d fail to maintain a technology your ancestors already had.

I also wonder about the available comparisons in terms of population density and isolation. In the early Jomon period in Japan, you had an initial population of 20K, for a first-order population density estimate of 0.05 people/km^2. Australia is about twenty times larger, so judging from this work, Australia reached a comparable population density about 5kya. (NB: this assumes a uniform distribution over the entire area, which is probably a worse assumption for Australia than for Japan, hence 5kya would be erring towards the present.) So if population density and idea diffusion are running the show, then late prehistorical Australian culture should have been on par with the early Jomon. Which it’s hard to say that it was.

Nature hardly ever gives you a controlled experiment. But if there are other relevant differences between Japan and Australia (and of course there are), then we’re back to saying that the level of material culture is shaped by other stuff besides the numbers game of raw population.

Was Japan ever as isolated as Australian populations? I thought Japan was able to trade with cultures on the mainland throughout it’s history. That’s a much larger population for idea diffusion.

slagoofaboo; In Eliezer’s defense …

slagoofaboo:

In Eliezer’s defense, I think it’s going to turn out that Harry was being diverted from experimenting with magic by one of [Quirrel, Dumbledore, Mystery Third Actor (time traveling older version of Harry?)] because Magic is actually an outrageous existential risk, and experimentation can rapidly lead to the destruction of the universe (see Atlantis, why Interdict of Merlin exists, etc.)

Like…I’m surprised Death Eaters never transfigured critical hunks of Plutonium, and that doesn’t even break any rules.

If the moral of the story ends up being that we should stop doing science because of the risk, I’m going to have more grounds on which to hate the story.

hpmor chapter 86

I just realized I have like 145 followers (HOLY SHIT!) and they probably came for the HPMOR thing. So I better keep the updates rolling!

Anyway, this chapter is basically Hariezer and friends (Dumbledore, Snape, Mcgonagall, Mad-eye Moody) all trying to guess who might have been responsible for trying to frame Hermione. No real conclusions are drawn, not much to see her.

A few notable things here- magic apparently works by the letter of the law, rather than the spirit:

You say someone with the Dark Mark can’t reveal its secrets to anyone who doesn’t already know them. So to find out how the Dark Mark operates, write down every way you can imagine the Dark Mark might work, then watch Professor Snape try to tell each of those things to a confederate - maybe one who doesn’t know what the experiment is about - I’ll explain binary search later so that you can play Twenty Questions to narrow things down - and whatever he can’t say out loud is true. His silence would be something that behaves differently in the presence of true statements about the Mark, versus false statements, you see.

Luckily, Voldemort thought of the test, thus freeing Snape to tell how the mark actually works:

The Dark Lord was no fool, despite Potter’s delusions. The moment such a test is suspected, the Mark ceases to bind our tongues. Yet I could not hint at the possibility, but only wait for another to deduce it.

Why not just make sure the death eaters don’t actually know the secrets of the mark? Seems like memory spells are everywhere already, and it would be way easier than this silly logic puzzle.

Finding out the secrets of the dark mark prompts Hariezer to try a Bayesian estimate of whether Voldemort is actually dangerous. I repeat that for emphasis:

Harry Potter, first year of Hogwarts who has only really succeeded at 1 thing in his learn-the-science-of-magic plan (partial transfiguration), and who knows he is not the most dangerous wizard at Hogwarts (Quirrel, Dumbledore), wonders whether Voldemort could possibly be a threat.

Here are some of the things he considers:

Harry had been to a convocation of the Wizengamot. He’d seen the laughable ‘security precautions’, if you could call them that, guarding the deepest levels of the Ministry of Magic. They didn’t even have the Thief’s Downfall which goblins used to wash away Polyjuice and Imperius Curses on people entering Gringotts … [if it] took you more than ten years to fail to overthrow the government of magical Britain, it meant you were stupid.

But might they have some other precautions? Maybe they use some sort of secret precautions Harry himself doesn’t yet know about yet? Or might the wizards of the Wizengamot be pretty powerful in their own right?

There were hypotheses where the Dark Lord was smart and the Order of the Phoenix didn’t just instantly die, but those hypotheses were more complicated and ought to get complexity penalties. After the complexity penalties of the further excuses were factored in, there would be a large likelihood ratio from the hypotheses ‘The Dark Lord is smart’ versus ‘The Dark Lord was stupid’ to the observation, ‘The Dark Lord did not instantly win the war’. That was probably worth a 10:1 likelihood ratio in favor of the Dark Lord being stupid… but maybe not 100:1. You couldn’t actually say that ‘The Dark Lord instantly wins’ had a probability of more than 99 percent, assuming the Dark Lord started out smart; the sum over all possible excuses would be more than .01.

Dude, do you even Bayesian? Probability the dark mark still works if Voldemort is dead. ~0 (everyone who knows magic thinks that the mark still existing is proof he is still out there). Given that Voldemort is alive, probability he successfully complete some sort of immortality ritual ~1. Probability someone who completed an immortality ritual knows more magic than (and therefore is a threat to) Hariezer Yudotter ~1.

So given that the dark mark is still around, Voldie is crazy dangerous, regardless of priors or base rates.

It’s helpful to look at where the information is, instead of trying to estimate the probability Voldemort could have instantly killed some of the most powerful wizards on the fucking planet.

Anyway….

OH, another thing that happens- Hariezer challenges Mad-eye to a little mini duel. Guess how he solves the problem of winning against Mad-eye? Any ideas? What could he use? I’ll give you a hint, it rhymes with time turner. This story really should be called Harry Potter And The Method of Time Turners. Seriously- time turners solve basically all the problems in this book. Anyway, he goes to Flitwick, learns a bending spell, and then time turners back into the room to pop Moody.

It’s not actually a bad scene, there is a bit of action and it moves pretty quickly. The problem is that the time turner solution is so damn boring at this point.

Also, we find out in this chapter that everyone believes Quirrell is really somebody named David Monroe whose family was killed by Voldemort and who was a leader during the war against Voldemort.

So we have some potential possibilities-

1. Voldemort was impersonating/half-invented the personality of David Monroe in order to play both sides during the war. After all, all of Monroe’s family was killed but him. Maybe all of Monroe’s family was killed, including him, and Voldemort started impersonating the dead guy. This could be a neat dynamic I guess. Could “Voldemort” have been a Watchmen style plan to unite magical Britain against a common threat that went awry for Monroe/Riddle? Quirrell really did get body snatched in this scenario. We could imagine an ending here where Monroe/Riddle are training Potter to be the leader of magical Britain that Monroe/Riddle wanted to be.

2. Monroe was a real dude, Voldemort body-snatched him, and now you’ve got Monroe brain fighting Voldemort brain inside. For some reason, they are impersonating Quirrell?

If its not the first scenario, I’m going to be sort of annoyed, because scenario 2 doesn’t provide us with much reason for the weird Monroe bit- you could just give Quirrell all of Monroe’s backstory.

Anyway, 86 chapters to go, I think this damn thing is going to clock in around 120 when all is said and done. ::sigh:: Time for a scotch.

hpmor 87 skinner box your friends

Hariezer is worried Hermione will be uncomfortable around him after the trial. So what is his solution?

“I was going to give you more space,” said Harry Potter, “only I was reading up on Critch’s theories about hedonics and how to train your inner pigeon and how small immediate positive and negative feedbacks secretly control most of what we actually do, and it occurred to me that you might be avoiding me because seeing me made you think of things that felt like negative associations, and I really didn’t want to let that run any longer without doing something about it, so I got ahold of a bag of chocolates from the Weasley twins and I’m just going to give you one every time you see me as a positive reinforcement if that’s all right with you -“

Now, this idea of positive/negative reinforcement is an old one, and goes back to probably the psychologists associated with behaviorism (BF Skinner, Pavlov, etc).

The weird thing is, there is no “Critch” I can find associated with the behaviorists, or really any of the stuff attributed above. I also emailed my psych friend, who also has never heard of it (but “it’s not really my field at all”). I’m thinking there is like a 90% chance that Yudkowsky just invented a scientist here? Why not just say BF Skinner, or Pavlov here? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

Anyway, Hermione and Hariezer are brainstorming ways to make money when they get into an argument because Hariezer has been sciencing with Draco:

“You were doing SCIENCE with him? ”
“Well -“
“You were doing SCIENCE with him? You were supposed to be doing science with ME! ”

Hermione, I get it. You wanted to figure out how magic works you’ve got some curiosity about the world. And now you think Hariezer kept his program going, but cut you out of the big discoveries, will leave you off the publications. But I’ve got news for you, girl, he hasn’t been doing science WITH ANYONE for like 60 chapters now. HE JUST FORGOT ABOUT IT.

Anyway, this argument blows up, and Hariezer explains puberty:

But even with all that weird magical stuff letting me be more adult than I should be, I haven’t gone through puberty yet and there’s no hormones in my bloodstream and my brain is physically incapable of falling in love with anyone. So I’m not in love with you! I couldn’t possibly be in love with you!

And then drops some evopsych

and besides I’ve been reading about evolutionary psychology, and, well, there are all these suggestions that one man and one woman living together happily ever afterward may be more the exception rather than the rule, and in hunter-gatherer tribes it was more often just staying together for two or three years to raise a child during its most vulnerable stages - and, I mean, considering how many people end up horribly unhappy in traditional marriages, it seems like it might be the sort of thing that needs some clever reworking - especially if we actually do solve immortality

To the story’s credit, this works about as well as you’d expect and Hermione storms off.

I think the evopsych dropping could have been sort of funny if it were played more for laughs (Hariezer’s inept way of calming Hermione down), but here it just seems like a way to shoehorn this bit of evopsych into the story.

The final scene in the chapter is played for laughs, with another student coming over after seeing Hermione storm off and saying “Witches! go figure, huh?”

hpmor(.)com/notes/87/ explanation of Critch

Thanks. For those who don’t want to read the link- apparently Critch is a CFAR instructor who developed a course on “psychology for mathematicians.” I’m not sure this makes it better- when I teach a course on physics I don’t expect my students to then start citing “SU’s work on classical mechanics”- it’s Newton’s work, I’m just conveying it.

Anonymous: IT’S HAPPENING! …

IT’S HAPPENING! HPMOR is finishing. Any chance you can catch up to the story and be ready to review the ending as soon as it comes out?

Probably not. I’m making forward progress, but you know, “real” work, personal projects, etc. I won’t rule it out completely, and I’ll probably be close but I’m not going to commit to it.

HPMOR chapter 88. In which I complain about a lack of time turners

The problem with solving every problem in your story with time turners is that it becomes incredibly conspicuous when you don’t solve a problem with time turners.

In this chapter, the bit of canon from book 1 with the troll in the dungeon is introduced- someone comes running into the dining hall yelling troll. Luckily, Quirrell has the students well prepared:

Without any hesitation, the Defense Professor swung smoothly on the Gryffindor table and clapped his hands with a sound like a floor cracking through.

“Michelle Morgan of House Gryffindor, second in command of Pinnini’s Army,” the Defense Professor said calmly into the resulting quiet. “Please advise your Head of House.”

Michelle Morgan climbed up onto her bench and spoke, the tiny witch sounding far more confident than Minerva remembered her being at the start of the year. “Students walking through the hallways would be spread out and impossible to defend. All students are to remain in the Great Hall and form a cluster in the center… not surrounded by tables, a troll would jump right over tables… with the perimeter defended by seventh-year students. From the armies only, no matter how good they are at duelling, so they don’t get in each other’s lines of fire.”

So everyone will be safe from troll, but WAIT- Hariezer realizes Hermione is missing. What does he do? Does he commit himself to time turning himself a message telling him where Hermione is (to be fair, the time is noon, and the earliest he can reach with a time turner is 3pm. However he knows of another student who uses a time turner and is willing to send messages with it, from the post Azkaban escape. He also knows other powerful wizards use time turners, so he could ask one of them to pass the message,etc).

I suspect we are approaching an important plot moment that time turnering would somehow break. Maybe we finally get a Quirrell reveal? Anywho, it’s jarring to not see Hariezer go immediately for the time turner. Instead he tries to enlist the aid of other students (and not ask if anyone has a time turner).

Anyway, Hariezer decides they need to go look for her as fast as possible- but then

The witch he’d named turned from where she’d been staring steadily out at the perimeter, her expression aghast for the one second before her face closed up.

“The Deputy Headmistress ordered us all to stay here, Mr. Potter.”

It took an effort for Harry to unclench his teeth. “Professor Quirrell didn’t say that and neither did you. Professor McGonagall isn’t a tactician, she didn’t think to check if we had missing students and she thought it was a good idea to start marching students through the hallways. But Professor McGonagall understands after her mistakes are pointed out to her, you saw how she listened to you and Professor Quirrell, and I’m certain that she wouldn’t want us to just ignore the fact that Hermione Granger is out there, alone -“

So Hariezer flags this as

Harry’s brain flagged this as I’m talking to NPCs again and he spun on his heel and dashed back for the broomstick.

Yes, Hariezer, in this world you are talking to NPCs- characters Yudkowsky wrote in, entirely to be stupid so that you can appear brilliant.

Anyway, he rushes off the Weasley twins to go find Hermione, and just as he finds her the chapter ends. I look forward to tuning in next time for the thrilling conclusion.

HPMOR Chapter 89 grimdark

There will be spoilers ahead. Although if you cared about spoilers why are you reading this?

So I thought the plot moment we were leading up to was a Quirrell reveal and I was dead wrong (a pun, because Hermione dies). By the time Hariezer arrives, Hermione has already been troll smashed (should have used the time turner,bro).

A brief battle scene ensues in which the Weasleys fail to be very effective, andHariezer kills the troll by floating his father’s rock (which he has been wearing in a ring) into the trolls mouth and then letting it go back to its original size, which pops the troll head.

Hermione then utters her final words “not your fault” and then dies. Hariezer is obviously upset by this.

Not a bad chapter really, even though it required a sort “rationality failure” involving the time turners to get here. Normally I wouldn’t care about this sort of thing, but the fact that basically every problem thus far was solved with time turners makes it very hard to suspend my disbelief here. It feels a touch to much like characters are doing things just to make the plot happen (and not following their ‘natural’ actions).

I fear the next ten chapters will be just reflections on this (instead of things happening).

If I read too many chapters in a row on HPMOR

I get sort of irrationally angry at everything.

Or maybe thats the scotch.

HPMOR Chapter 90 Hariezer’s lack of self reflection

Brief note- it’s mardi gras, and I’m about as over served as I ever have been. I LIKE HOW OVER SERVED AS A PHRASE BLAMES THE BARTENDER AND NOT ME. THIS IS A THEME FOR THIS CHAPTER. Anyway, hopefullly this will not lack my usual (non) eloquence.

This chapter begins what appears to be a 9 part section on Hariezer trying to cope with the death of his friend.

As the chapter opens, Hariezer cools Hermione’s body to try to preserve it. I guess that will slow decay, but probably not by enough to matter.

And then Hariezer gets understandably mopey. Everyone is concerned he is withdrawing from the world, so Mcgonagall goes to talk to him and we get this bit:

“Nothing I could have done? ” Harry’s voice rose on the last word. “Nothing I could have…Or if I’d just approached the whole problem from a different angle - if I’d looked for a student with a Time-Turner to send a message back in time.

It’s the one in bold that is especially troubling because the time turner is seriously what Hariezer always turns to (TURNS TO! GET IT! IT’S AN AWFUL PUN). When your character is defined by his munchkining ability to solve problems via time turner, and the one time he doesn’t go for the time turner a major plot point happens, it’s jarring to the reader. Almost as if characters are behaving entirely to make the plot happen…

Anyway,

She was aware now that tears were sliding down her cheeks, again. “Harry - Harry, you have to believe that this isn’t your fault!”

“Of course it’s my fault. There’s no one else here who could be responsible for anything.”

“No! You-Know-Who killed Hermione!” She was hardly aware of what she was saying, that she hadn’t screened the room against who might be listening. “Not you! No matter what else you could’ve done, it’s not you who killed her, it was Voldemort! If you can’t believe that you’ll go mad, Harry!”

“That’s not how responsibility works, Professor.” Harry’s voice was patient, like he was explaining things to a child who was certain not to understand. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, just staring off at the wall to her right side. “When you do a fault analysis, there’s no point in assigning fault to a part of the system you can’t change afterward

So keep this in mind- Hariezer says it’t no use blaming anyone but himself, because he can’t change their actions. This seems like a silly NPC/PC distinction- no one can change their past actions, but everyone can learn how they could have improved things.

“All right, then,” Harry said in a monotone. “I tried to do the sensible thing, when I saw Hermione was missing and that none of the Professors knew. I asked for a seventh-year student to go with me on a broomstick and protect me while we looked for Hermione. I asked for help. I begged for help. And nobody helped me. Because you gave everyone an absolute order to stay in one place or they’d be expelled, no excuses…. So when something you didn’t foresee happened and it would’ve made perfect sense to send out a seventh-year student on a fast broom to look for Hermione Granger, the students knew you wouldn’t understand or forgive. They weren’t afraid of the troll, they were afraid of you. The discipline, the conformity, the cowardice that you instilled in them delayed me just long enough for Hermione to die. Not that I should’ve tried asking for help from normal people, of course, and I will change and be less stupid next time. But if I were dumb enough to allocate responsibility to someone who isn’t me, that’s what I’d say.”

What exactly does Hariezer think she should have said here? If a fire had broken out in the meal hall does Hariezer think that everyone would have stayed in the cafeteria and burned to death out of fear of Mcgonagall? Also, it certainly sounds as if Hariezer has plenty of blame for people not himself. “I only blame me, but also you suck in the following ways…”

But normal people don’t choose on the basis of consequences, they just play roles. There’s a picture in your head of a stern disciplinarian and you do whatever that picture would do, whether or not it makes any sense….People like you aren’t responsible for anything, people like me are, and when we fail there’s no one else to blame.”

I AM THE ONLY PC, YOU ARE ALL NPC. I AM THE ONLY FULL HUMAN. TREMBLE BEFORE MY AGENTYNESS. I get that Harizer is mourning, but is their any more condescending way to mourn? “Everything is my fault because you aren’t all even fully human?” You are a fucking twerp Hariezer, even when you mourn.

His hand darted beneath his robes, brought forth the golden sphere that was the Ministry-issued protective shell of his Time Turner. He spoke in a dead, level voice without any emphasis. “This could’ve saved Hermione, if I’d been able to use it. But you thought it was your role to shut me down and get in my way.

No, Hariezer, you were told THERE WERE RULES and you violated them. You yourself have said that time travel can be dangerous and you were using it because Snape asked questions you didn’t know the answer to, and really to solve any trivial problem. You broke the rules, and it locked your time turner down when you might have really wanted it. Total boy-who-cried-wolf situation, and yet its conspicuously absent from your discussion above- you blame yourself in lots of ways, but not in this way.

Unable to speak, she brought forth her wand and did so, releasing the time-keyed enchantment she’d laced into the shell’s lock.

The only lessons learned from this are other character “updating towards” the idea that Hariezer Yudotter is always right. And he fails when other people have prevented his natural PC based awesomenes.

Anyway, Mcgonagall sends in the big guns (Quirrell) to try to talk to Hariezer, which leads Hariezer to say to him:

The boy’s voice was razor-sharp. “I’d forgotten there was someone else in Hogwarts who could be responsible for things.”

And later in the conversation:

“You did want to save her. You wanted it so strongly that you made some sort of actual effort. I suppose your mind, if not theirs, would be capable of that.”

So you see- it’s clearly not about assigning himself all the blame (because he can only change his own actions), it’s about separating the world into ‘real people’ and ‘NPCs’ Only real people can get any blame for anything, everyone else is just window dressing. Maybe it’s a pet peeve, but I react in abhorrence to this “you aren’t even human enough to share some blame” schtick.

8 more chapters in this fucking section.

I don’t think HPMOR has an afterlife

raginrayguns:

in the past I thought it did. It seemed to fit thematically very well

‘cause, this is a story about the methods of rationality, not the conclusions. If HPMOR had an afterlife, it would be EY writing a story in which some of his most controversial, emotionally significant beliefs were wrong, and showing that the methods of rationality tell you this.

‘Cause, rationality is supposed to work systematically. Rationality means that in the parallel universe where you’re wrong about everything, its version of you has different beliefs. In EY’s definition, that’s the essence of what it is.

So that’s how I would have written this story. I would have made Harry into a sort of flat earth atheist. I would have taken special care not to change any parts of canon that conflict with my view of the world, especially the views that are most controversial, the views I’m most committed to defending. And I would have made Harry suffer for maintaining my views in a parallel universe where they weren’t true.

But I don’t think this is what EY is going to do, because he’s pretty much said so. In this thread, search out both the EliezerYudkowsky comments, reading one didn’t convince me. He finds stories with afterlives upsetting.

So I think that he’d agree with me about the thematic point made by keeping the afterlife as in canon. But I don’t think he’d consider it worth it, because of the emotional cost.

Thank you to everyone who linked me to this thread, and especially hot-gay-rationalist who convinced me of this interpretation of it.

So I had a post complaining about this- http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/98874313003/chapter-39-your-transhumanism-is-showing

The issue I had is that the fantasy genre is a uniquely bad genre in which to argue against an afterlife (as Hariezer does in that chapter) because you have to discount evidence like “that gateway to the afterlife living in the ministry of magic.”

And I think this a good example of the post I made here

http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/109276679888/narrator-as-pressure-release-valve I think a lot of readers feel the same tension I feel, but are more willing to resolve the tension by assuming Harry in the story is wrong about something, or just being a kid,etc.

HPMOR Chapter 91

Total retread of the last chapter. Hariezer is still blaming himself, Snape tries to talk to him. They bring his parents in to try to talk to him. Nothing here really.

HPMOR Chapter 92

Really, still nothing here. Quirrell is also concerned about Hariezer, but as before his concern seems less than totally genuine. I fear this arc is basically just a lot of retreads.

HPMOR Chapter 93

Still very little going on in these chapters…

So Mcgonagall completes the transformation she began two chapters ago, and realizes rules are for suckers and Hariezer is always right

“I am ashamed,” said Minerva McGonagall, “of the events of this day. I am ashamed that there were only two of you. Ashamed of what I have done to Gryffindor. Of all the Houses, it should have been Gryffindor to help when Hermione Granger was in need, when Harry Potter called for the brave to aid him. It was true, a seventh-year could have held back a mountain troll while searching for Miss Granger. And you should have believed that the Head of House Gryffindor,” her voice broke, “would have believed in you. If you disobeyed her to do what was right, in events she had not foreseen. And the reason you did not believe this, is that I have never shown it to you. I did not believe in you. I did not believe in the virtues of Gryffindor itself. I tried to stamp out your defiance, instead of training your courage to wisdom.

Maybe I’m projecting too much of canon McGonagall onto my reading of this one in this fanfic, but has she really been stamping out all defiance and overly stern? Would any student really have believed they would have expelled for trying to help find a missing student in a dire situation?

Hariezer certainly wasn’t expelled (or punished in anyway) for his experimenting with transfiguration/discovering partial transfiguration. He was punished for flaunting his time turner despite explicit instructions not to… But in a school for magic users, that is probably a necessity.

Also, Hermione’s body has gone missing. I suspect Hariezer is cryonicsing it.

HPMOR Chapter 94

This is the best chapter of this “reflect on what just happened” giant block of chapters, but that’s not saying much.

Hariezer might not have taken Hermione’s body, but seems unconcerned that it’s missing (maybe he took it to freeze the brain, maybe Voldie took it to resurrect Hermione or brain upload her or something). That’s the only real thing of merit that happens in this chapter (a conversation between Dumbledore and Hariezer, a conversation between Neville and Hariezer).

Hariezer has finally convinced himself that Voldemort is smart, which leads to this rumination

Okay, serious question. If the enemy is that smart, why the heck am I still alive? Is it seriously that hard to poison someone, are there Charms and Potions and bezoars which can cure me of literally anything that could be slipped into my breakfast? Would the wards record it, trace the magic of the murderer?

Could my scar contain the fragment of soul that’s keeping the Dark Lord anchored to the world, so he doesn’t want to kill me? Instead he’s trying to drive off all my friends to weaken my spirit so he can take over my body? It’d explain the Parselmouth thing. The Sorting Hat might not be able to detect a lich-phylactery-thingy. Obvious problem 1, the Dark Lord is supposed to have made his lich-phylactery-thingy in 1943 by killing whatshername and framing Mr. Hagrid. Obvious problem 2, there’s no such thing as souls.

So, all the readers are already on board this train, because they’ve read the canon novel, so I guess it’s nice that the “super rationalist” is considering it (although Voldemort is smart, therefore I have a Voldemort fragment trying to possess me is a huge leap. You didn’t even Bayes that shit bro).

But seriously, “there’s no such thing as souls?” SO DON’T CALL IT A SOUL, CALL IT A MAGIC RESURRECTION FRAGMENT. Are we really getting hung up on semantics?

These chapter are intensely frustrating because any “rising action” in this story (we are nearing the conclusion after all) is blunted because after anything happens, we need 10 chapters for everyone to talk about everything and digest the events. The ratio of words/plot is ridiculously huge.

We do maybe get a bit of self-reflection when Neville tries to blame himself for Hermione’s death:

“Wow,” the empty air finally said. “Wow. That puts a pretty different perspective on things, I have to say. I’m going to remember this the next time I feel an impulse to blame myself for something. Neville, the term in the literature for this is ‘egocentric bias’, it means that you experience everything about your own life but you don’t get to experience everything else that happens in the world. There was way, way more going on than you running in front of me. You’re going to spend weeks remembering that thing you did there for six seconds, I can tell, but nobody else is going to bother thinking about it. Other people spend a lot less time thinking about your past mistakes than you do, just because you’re not the center of their worlds. I guarantee to you that nobody except you has even consideredblaming Neville Longbottom for what happened to Hermione. Not for a fraction of a second. You are being, if you will pardon the phrase, a silly-dilly. Now shut up and say goodbye.”

It would be nice for Hariezer to more explicitly use this to come to terms with his own grieving (instead of insisting on “heroic responsibility” for himself a few sections back, and also insisting it’s McGonagall’s fault for trying to enforce rules, and now insisting that blaming yourself is egocentric bias). I hope this is Hariezer realizing that he shouldn’t blame himself, and growing a bit, but fear this is Hariezer suggesting that Neville isn’t important enough to blame.

Anyway, Hariezer insists that Neville leave for awhile to help keep him safe.

thinkingornot: The rationale for not …

thinkingornot:

The rationale for not believing in souls in HPMOR was

1. Brain damage is a thing
2. Ghosts don’t have all the memories of the dead person, so are likely not souls (plus can’t have original thoughts)
3. Little evidence of souls exist

Just because magic exists doesn’t mean every single thing ever said against science is true.

Ghosts exist, so clearly something is capable of being imprinted. It doesn’t matter if you call it a “soul” or a wizard-portrait-like copy of Voldemort. My point is that Hariezer took a concept, named it soul and then said “souls don’t exist” in order to argue against the idea that Voldemort has imprinted via his scar (which is weird, because the reader has been assuming that’s what Hariezer’s dark side is from the beginning, because we’ve read the canon books).

And yes, because magic exists every single assumption based on science has to be revisited.

thinkingornot: A ghost was explained …

thinkingornot:

A ghost was explained explicitly as not having all the qualities of a soul. It’s like saying souls exist in our universe because we have videos of people who have died.

My point above was that Harry did revisit this assumption, and found there wasn’t enough evidence for it. At least in the HPMOR-verse, at the time Harry thought about it, there wasn’t enough evidence known to Harry that souls exist.

(You’ve argued in the past that Harry didn’t pay enough attention when Dumbledore was telling him about this, but I disagree. He asked questions, then dismissed it as not enough.)

You are missing the point. It doesn’t matter whether a “soul” exists, what matters is whether or not it’s possible for a wizard’s mind to be somehow imprinted on Hariezer.

Bad mood

I’ve been in a bad mood for a few days and realized today it was my attempt to read more HPMOR to get caught up… ::sigh:: this fucking story…

HPMOR Chapter 95

So the chapter opens with more incuriousness, which is the rest of the chapter in miniature:

Harry had set the alarm upon his mechanical watch to tell him when it was lunchtime, since he couldn’t actually look at his wrist, being invisible and all that. It raised the question of how his eyeglasses worked while he was wearing the Cloak. For that matter the Law of the Excluded Middle seemed to imply that either the rhodopsin complexes in his retina were absorbing photons and transducing them to neural spikes, or alternatively, those photons were going straight through his body and out the other side, but not both. It really did seem increasingly likely that invisibility cloaks let you see outward while being invisible yourself because, on some fundamental level, that was how the caster had - not wanted - but implicitly believed - that invisibility should work.

This would be an excellent fucking question to explore, maybe via some experiments. But no. I’ve totally given up on this story exploring the magic world in any detail at all. Anyway, Hariezer skips straight from “I wonder how this works” to “it must work this way, how could we exploit it”

Whereupon you had to wonder whether anyone had tried Confunding or Legilimizing someone into implicitly and matter-of-factly believing that Fixus Everythingus ought to be an easy first-year Charm, and then trying to invent it.

Or maybe find a worthy Muggleborn in a country that didn’t identify Muggleborn children, and tell them some extensive lies, fake up a surrounding story and corresponding evidence, so that, from the very beginning, they’d have a different idea of what magic could do. This skips all the interesting hard work of science.

The majority of the chapter is a long discussion between Quirrell and Hariezer where Quirrell tries to convince Hariezer not to try to raise the dead. It’s too dangerous, may end the universe, etc.

Lots of discussion about how special Quirrell and Hariezer are because only they would even think to fight death,etc. It’s all a boring retread of ideas already explored in earlier chapters,etc.

It reads a lot like any discussion of cryonics with a cryonics true believer:

The Defense Professor’s voice was also rising. “The Transfiguration Professor is reading from a script, Mr. Potter! That script calls for her to mourn and grieve, that all may know how much she cared. Ordinary people react poorly if you suggest that they go off-script. As you already knew!”

Also, it’s sloppy world building- do we really think no wizards in the HPMOR universe have spent time investigating death/spells to reverse aging/spells to deal with head injuries,etc?

THERE IS A RESURRECTION STONE AND A LITERAL GATEWAY TO THE AFTERLIFE IN THE BASEMENT OF THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC. Maybe Hariezer’s FIRST FUCKING STOP if he wanted to investigate bringing back the dead SHOULD BE THAT GATE. Maybe some scientific experiments?

It’s like the above incuriousness with the invisibility cloak (and the typical transhumanist approach to science)- assume all the problems are solved and imagine what the world be like, how dangerous that power might be. This is no way to explore a question. It’s not even producing a very interesting story.

Quirrell assumes Hariezer might end the world even though he has shown 0 aptitude with any magic even approaching dangerous…

HPMOR 96 More of the same

Remus takes Hariezer to Godric’s Hollow to try to cheer him up or whatever.

Hariezer discovers the Potter’s family motto is apparently the passage from Corinthians:

The Last Enemy to Be Destroyed is Death

Hariezer is super glad that his family has a long history of trying to end death, and (at least) realizes that other wizards have tried. Of course, the idea of actually looking at their research doesn’t fucking occur to him because this story is very silly.

We get this rumination from Hariezer on the Peverell’s ‘deathly hallows’ from the books:

Hiding from Death’s shadow is not defeating Death itself. The Resurrection Stone couldn’t really bring anyone back. The Elder Wand couldn’t protect you from old age.

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW THE RESURRECTION STONE CAN’T BRING ANYONE BACK? HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN IT?

Step 1- assume that the resurrection stone doesn’t work because you can’t magically bring back the dead

Step 2- decide you want to magically resurrect the dead

Step 3- never revisit step 1.

SCIENCE!

GO INVESTIGATE THE DOORWAY TO THE AFTERLIFE! GO TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT THE RESURRECTION STONE! DO SOME FUCKING RESEARCH! “I’m going to resurrect the dead by thinking really hard about how much death sucks and doing nothing else.”

Anonymous: wait, so… instead …

wait, so… instead of the scientific method… HARIEZER USES ARISTOTELIAN PROTOSCIENCE. THE IRONY.

Pretty much, yes.

Chapter 97 plot points resolved arbitrarily

nNext on the list to talk with Hariezer regarding Hermione’s death? The Malfoys who call Hariezer to Gringotts under the pretense of talking about Hariezer’s debt.

On the way in he passes a goblin, which prompts this

If I understand human nature correctly - and if I’m right that all the humanoid magical species are genetically human plus a heritable magical effect -

How did you come to that conclusion Hariezer? What did you do to study it? Did you just make it up with no justification whatsoever? This story confuses science jargon for science.

Anyway, Lucious is worried that he’ll be blamed for Hermione’s death (although given that it has already been established that the wizard court votes exactly as he wants it to I’m not sure why he is worried about it) so he agrees to cancel Hariezer’s debt and return all his money if Hariezer swears Lucious didn’t have anything to do with the troll that killed Hermione.

This makes very little sense- why would anyone listen to Hariezer on this? Hariezer doesn’t actually know that the Malfoys weren’t involved. If he is asked “how do you know?” he’ll have to say “I don’t.” If he Bayesed that shit, the Malfoys should be near the fucking top of the suspect list…

Anyway, the Malfoys try to convince Hariezer that Dumbledore killed Hermione as some sort of multi-level plot.

I’m so bored.

Chapter 98- This block is nearly over!

The agreement put in place in the previous chapter is enacted.

Malfoy announces to Hogwarts that Hermione was innocent. Hariezer says there is no ill will between the Potters and the Malfoys. Why did we even need this fucking scene?

Through backstage maneuvering by Hariezer and Malfoy,the Hogwarts board of governors enacts some rules for safety of students (travel in packs, work together,etc). Why they needed the maneuvering I don’t know (just ask McGonagall to implement whatever rules you want. No effort required).

Also, Neville was sent away from Hogwarts like.. three chapters ago. But now he is in Hogwarts and stands up to read some of the rules? And Draco, who was closer to Hariezer, returns to Hogwarts? This makes no sense given Hariezer’s fear for his friends? “No one is safe! Wait, I changed my mind even though nothing has happened.”

There was also a surreal moment where the second worst thing I’ve ever read referenced the first:

“Remind me to buy you a copy of the Muggle novel Atlas Shrugged,”

HPMOR Chapter 99

This chapter is literally one sentence long. Unicorn died at Hogwarts. Why not just slap it into the previous chapter?

nuclearspaceheater: What’s worse, it looks …

nuclearspaceheater:

What’s worse, it looks like you are probably going to get proven wrong in the near future about this story never being finished.

As if in punishment for your error, you will then have to read all of HPMOR.

Really long form fan-fiction like this, especially fan-fiction that is meant to be a serious literary effort, makes me wonder, isn’t the point where a fan-fiction is “finished,” the point in the life-cycle of a normal novel that you would call “completion of the first draft?” Like, when Elizier posts the last chapter, is that the point where he then pours over and re-writes major parts of the whole thing again, and then after that, sends it to an editor, who could possibly sent back with major comments that, if acted on, would completely change the flow and pacing, greatly compress or eliminate entire sections or subplots, and more, and significantly improve the final quality, as I understand competent editors routinely do?

Because if he actually cares about this story, it would be odd if he cut out what is normally more-than-half of the usual writing process and call his first draft the finished work.

But even if he did revise it and send it to an editor, then revise it again and publish something very different from what we’ve been reading so far, then what? I assume you’re not going to re-read the entire thing after that happens. Even if people tell you that, no, it’s way better now, I doubt you’d believe them. And even if you did…hell, I’ve largely enjoyed it (because I have terrible taste in fan-fiction, and it probably helps that I’ve never read any of the canon books). But the story so far is comparable in length to the entire canon Harry Potter series. I don’t think I’m going to make that much time to read a somewhat better version of something I’ve already read.

So it seems to me that he is either less-than-half-assing the writing process, or at the very least is ruining the final version for his readers by openly posting what is in all normal understanding the first draft.

I do appear to have been proven wrong.

But yes, the story could very clearly use an editor, rearranging and editing. I’d bet a competent editor could easily cut the length of this thing down by a factor of 5 at least. You don’t need 10 chapters of everyone talking about an event immediately after an event happens. Chopping out all the repetitive writing quirks (always referring to families as “noble and most ancient houses”), dropping all the unfulfilled stuff from the first 20-30 chapters (all the science references really).

My biggest problem though (other than the ridiculous bloat) though is all the mis-fired science references. Like… peppering slightly wrong science throughout is bound to hurt my enjoyment of a story. And then consistently having people recommend a story to me because the characters are supposed to be scientific and having said characters studiously avoid doing any science…. No way I can enjoy that…

light-rook: Man, you must really …

light-rook:

Man, you must really hate scifi then.

In all seriousness, I interpret people recommending a story to me ‘because the characters are supposed to be scientific’ as ‘this story was written not by a physicist, but by someone who spends more time around physicists than they’re completely comfortable with, so should be taken as a cultural commentary on physics departments’. Tell me you didn’t know anyone who talked like Hareizer in grad school (or less charitably, as a undergrad), I dare you :P

I’m not saying that HPMOR is well-written by any means, just that I think you could enjoy it in the “haha that’s a humorous caricature of me and people I know” sense.

The conceit of this story, for the first 30ish chapters is that Hariezer is going to use science to explore magic. That is the dominant plot thread. It then stops, completely.

And honestly, Hariezer isn’t written as a caricature, he is written as the hero. His jargon dumping of physics mad libs, his intelligence trumps all/nerd elitism,etc. is played totally straight- it never gets him into trouble, never causes him issues,etc. It’s clear that the author doesn’t realize how much science he hasn’t gotten right.

I would love a story that actually tried to put some rules around the magic, actually explored the consequences of those rules,etc. This story is not it.

somervta: He has talked to Quirrell

somervta:

He has talked to Quirrell about such things, who essentially confirmed his original thought:

Professor Quirrell set down his teacup with a small, high-pitched tacking sound on his saucer. “Some of those wizards were reasonably intelligent, Mr. Potter, so you may take it that the existence of an afterlife is not obvious. I have looked into the matter myself. There have been many claims of the sort which hope and fear would be expected to produce. Among those reports whose veracity is not in doubt, there is nothing which could not be the result of mere wizardry. There are certain devices said to communicate with the dead, but these, I suspect, only project an image from the mind; the result seems indistinguishable from memory because it is memory. The alleged spirits tell no secrets they knew in life, nor could have learned after death, which are not known to the wielder -“

“Which is why the Resurrection Stone is not the most valuable magical artifact in the world,” said Harry.

First, the resurrection stone really is one of the three most valuable magical artifacts in the world.

Second, Quirrell wraps the whole thing up in “I suspect,” and makes no mention of the specific devices he has seen. Why is the resurrection stone so much more valuable than these other “devices said to communicate with the dead?”

The resurrection stone, the arch in the basement of the ministry,etc these are bits of canon hugely inconvenient for what is turning out to be the dominant themes of this story, and having Hariezer just dismiss them as obvious fraud is just lazy.

somervta: He came up …

somervta:

He came up with it (with some justification) In a much earlier chapter.

The only thing I remember is this bit:

“I mean -“ Harry said even more quietly, trying to figure out how to ask whether goblins had evolved from humans, or evolved from a common ancestor of humans like Homo erectus, or if goblins had been made out of humans somehow - if, say, they were still genetically human under a heritable enchantment whose magical effect was diluted if only one parent was a ‘goblin’, which would explain how interbreeding was possible, and in which case goblins would not be an incredibly valuable second data point for how intelligence had evolved in other species besides Homo sapiens - now that Harry thought about it, the goblins in Gringotts hadn’t seemed very much like genuinely alien, nonhuman intelligences, nothing like Dirdir or Puppeteers - “I mean, where did goblins come from, anyway?”

Notice how he goes straight from speculating about it here, to assuming it’s true much later, without ever having done any investigation.

Harry Potter and the Method of Having Your Conjectures Always Be Right WIthout Doing Any Work.

HPMOR Chapter 100

Remember that mysterious bit about the unicorns dying? That merited a whole one-sentence chapter? Luckily, it’s totally resolved in this chapter.

Borrowing a scene from canon, we have Draco and some slytherin palls (working to fix the school) investigating the forest with Hagrid as part of a detention. This leads to a variant of an old game theory/cs joke:

Meself,” Hagrid continued, “I think we might ‘ave a Parisian hydra on our ‘ands. They’re no threat to a wizard, yeh’ve just got to keep holdin’ ‘em off long enough, and there’s no way yeh can lose. I mean literally no way yeh can lose so long’s yeh keep fightin’. Trouble is, against a Parisian hydra, most creatures give up long before. Takes a while to cut down all the heads, yeh see.”

“Bah,” said the foreign boy. “In Durmstrang we learn to fight Buchholz hydra. Unimaginably more tedious to fight! I mean literally, cannot imagine. First-years not believe us when we tell them winning is possible! Instructor must give second order, iterate until they comprehend.” This time, it’s just Draco and friends in detention, no Hariezer/

When Draco encounters the unicorn killer, all of a sudden Hariezer and aurors come riding in to save the day:

After Captain Brodski had learned that Draco Malfoy was in the Forbidden Forest, seemingly in the company of Rubeus Hagrid, Brodski had begun inquiring to find out who had authorized this, and had still been unable to find out when Draco Malfoy had missed check-in. Despite Harry’s protests, the Auror Captain, who was authorized to know about Time-Turners, had refused to allow deployment to before the time of the missed check-in; there were standard procedures involving Time. But Brodski had given Harry written orders allowing him to go back and deploy an Auror trio to arrive one second after the missed check-in time.

So… why does Hariezer come with the aurors? For what purpose? He is always talking about avoiding danger,etc so why ride into danger when the battle wizards will probably be enough?

Anyway, we all know its Quirrell killing unicorns, so I’ll skip to the Hariezer/Quirrell interaction:

The use of unicorn’s blood is too well-known.”

“I don’t know it,” Harry said.

“I know you do not,” the Defense Professor said sharply. “Or you would not be pestering me about it. The power of unicorn’s blood is to preserve your life for a time, even if you are on the very verge of death.”

And then

“And why -“ Harry’s breath hitched again. “Why isn’t unicorn’s blood standard in healer’s kits, then? To keep someone alive, even if they’re on the very verge of dying from their legs being eaten?”

“Because there are permanent side effects,” Professor Quirrell said quietly.

“Side effects? Side effects? What kind of side effect is medically worse than DEATH? ” Harry’s voice rose on the last word until he was shouting.

“Not everyone thinks the same way we do, Mr. Potter. Though, to be fair, the blood must come from a live unicorn and the unicorn must die in the drinking. Would I be here otherwise?”

Harry turned, stared at the surrounding trees. “Have a herd of unicorns at St. Mungos. Floo the patients there, or use portkeys.”

“Yes, that would work.”

So do you remember a few chapters back when Hariezer was worried about eating plants or animals that might be conscious (after he learned snake speech)?

He knows literally nothing about unicorns here, nothing about what the side effects are,etc. I know lots of doctors who have living wills because they aren’t ok with the side effects of certain life-preserving treatments.

This feels again like canon is fighting the transhumanist message the author wants to insert.

HPMOR chapter 101

Still in the woods, Hariezer encounters a centaur who tries to kill him, because he divines that Hariezer is going to make all the stars die.

There are some standard anti-astrology arguments, which again seems to be fighting the actual situation because the centaurs successfully use astrology to divine things.

We get this:

“Cometary orbits are also set thousands of years in advance so they shouldn’t correlate much to current events. And the light of the stars takes years to travel from the stars to Earth, and the stars don’t move much at all, not visibly. So the obvious hypothesis is that centaurs have a native magical talent for Divination which you just, well, project onto the night sky.”

There are so, so many other hypothesis Hariezer. Maybe starlight has a magical component that waxes and wanes as stars align into different magical symbols are some such. The HPMOR scientific method:

observation -> generate 1 hypothesis -> assume you are right -> it turns out that you are right.

Quirrell saves Hariezer and I guess in the aftermath Filch and Hagrid both get sacked (we aren’t actually shown this, instead Dumbledore and Hariezer have a discussion about it, because why show when you can have characters talk about! So much more interesting!)

Anyway, Dumbeldore is a bit sad by the loss of Filch and especially Hagrid, but Hariezer says

“Your mistake,” Harry said, looking down at his knees, feeling at least ten percent as exhausted as he’d ever been, “is a cognitive bias we would call, in the trade, scope insensitivity. Failure to multiply. You’re thinking about how happy Mr. Hagrid would be when he heard the news. Consider the next ten years and a thousand students taking Magical Creatures and ten percent of them being scalded by Ashwinders. No one student would be hurt as much as Mr. Hagrid would be happy, but there’d be a hundred students being hurt and only one happy teacher.”

First “in the trade”? Really?

Anyway, Hariezer isn’t multiplying in the obvious tangible benefits of an enthusiastic teacher who really knows his shit regarding magical creatures. Yes, more students will be scalded but its because there will be SUPER AWESOME LESSONS WHERE KIDS COULD BE SCALDED!

In the balance, I think Hariezer was right about Filch and Dumbledore was right about Hagrid.

Anyway, thats it for this chapter, its a standard “chapter where people do nothing that talk.”

Harry Potter and the Methods of Expository Dialogue.

HPMOR chapter 102 open borders and death spells

Quirrell is still dying, Hariezer brings him a unicorn he turned into a stone.

We learn how horcruxes work in this world:

Only one who doess not believe in common liess will reasson further, ssee beneath obsscuration, realisse how to casst sspell. Required murder iss not ssacrificial ritual at all. Ssudden death ssometimes makess ghosst, if magic burssts and imprintss on nearby thing. Horcrux sspell channelss death-bursst through casster, createss your own ghosst insstead of victim’ss, imprintss ghosst in sspecial device. Ssecond victim pickss up horcrux device, device imprintss your memoriess into them. But only memoriess from time horcrux device wass made. You ssee flaw?”

Wait? A ghost has all the memories of the person who died? Why isn’t Hariezer reading everything he can about how these imprints work? If the Horcrux can transfer ghost-like stuff into a person, could you return any ghost to a new body? I feel like Hariezer just says “I’m going to end death! Humanity should end death! I can’t believe no one is trying to end death!” But he isn’t actually doing anything about it himself.

Also, if that is how a horcrux works WHY THE FUCK WOULD VOLDEMORT PUT ONE ON A PIONEER PROBE? The odds of that encountering people again are pretty much nill. At least we’ve learned horcruxes aren’t conscious- I had assumed Voldemort had condemned one of his copies to an eternity of isolation.

We also learn that in HPMOR world

There is a second level to the Killing Curse.

Harry’s brain had solved the riddle instantly, in the moment of first hearing it; as though the knowledge had always been inside him, waiting to make itself known.

Harry had read once, somewhere, that the opposite of happiness wasn’t sadness, but boredom; and the author had gone on to say that to find happiness in life you asked yourself not what would make you happy, but what would excite you. And by the same reasoning, hatred wasn’t the true opposite of love. Even hatred was a kind of respect that you could give to someone’s existence. If you cared about someone enough to prefer their dying to their living, it meant you were thinking about them.

It had come up much earlier, before the Trial, in conversation with Hermione; when she’d said something about magical Britain being Prejudiced, with considerable and recent justification. And Harry had thought - but not said - that at least she’d been let into Hogwarts to be spat upon.

Not like certain people living in certain countries, who were, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn’t be allowed to live in Muggle Britain. On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye. Magical Britain might discriminate against Muggleborns, but at least it allowed them inside so they could be spat upon in person.

What is deadlier than hate, and flows without limit?

“Indifference,” Harry whispered aloud, the secret of a spell he would never be able to cast; and kept striding toward the library to read anything he could find, anything at all, about the Philosopher’s Stone.

So standard open borders stuff, not worth spending time with.

But I want to talk about the magic here- apparently you can only cast the killing curse at people you hate, and toward people you are indifferent toward. So you can’t kill your loved ones! Big limitation!

Also, Hariezer “99% of the fucking planet is NPCs” Yudotter isn’t indifferent to anyone? I call BS.

Chapter 103 Very Punny

Credit where credit is due, this whole chapter sets up a pretty clever pun.

The students take an exam, and then receive their final “battle magic” grades. Hermione is failed because she made the mistake of dying. Hariezer gets an exceeds expectations, which Quirrell informs Hariezer “It is the same grade… that I received in my own first year.”

Get it? He marked him as an equal.

su3su2u1: Credit where credit …

su3su2u1:

Credit where credit is due, this whole chapter sets up a pretty clever pun.

The students take an exam, and then receive their final “battle magic” grades. Hermione is failed because she made the mistake of dying. Hariezer gets an exceeds expectations, which Quirrell informs Hariezer…

So two puns for the price of one. Although an anon ask tells me that the credit really goes to the reddit HPMOR board who suggested the idea to Yudkowsky. So credit all the way around I guess.

nostalgebraist: You know, in his HPMOR …

nostalgebraist:

You know, in his HPMOR liveblog, su3su2u1 keeps complaining about Harry leaping to conclusions rather than doing scientific experiments. I think what Yudkowsky would say is that with Bayesian rationality you’re supposed to leap to some conclusions, because you don’t have infinite resources to test every unlikely hypothesis. So you can just dismiss stuff like astrology on the grounds of “look at how much unlikely stuff would have to be true for this to work,” and go on to test likelier hypotheses.

Except in HPMOR, Harry is in a world where lots of things he thought was “incredibly unlikely” were in fact true (as pointed out in the first chapter, helpfully titled “A Day of Very Low Probability”), and the whole edifice of knowledge he used to use to dismiss hypotheses as “unlikely” is now unreliable. And he doesn’t know what to replace it with.

In other words, he no longer knows what his prior should be, but he goes around using using his old prior even though it’s no longer applicable. A story about how great Bayesian rationality is has been set in a world where Bayesian rationality doesn’t really work, because new facts have screwed up your prior and you can’t get a new one without doing a whole bunch of experiments (when part of EY’s Bayesian point is that you don’t always have to do experiments).

As with the afterlife stuff (of which this is a particular case), the story has been set in a world unusually ill-equipped to convey its message.

Exactly this! Even worse, the original premise of the story as suggested by the story was using the scientific method to discover the secrets of magic- i.e. figuring out a new prior by learning the rules of magic,etc. The driving plot thread of the first 30ish chapters is then totally dropped,in favor of just seeing something magical and immediately inferring how it worked.

Anonymous: The reason Harry’s …

The reason Harry’s plausible hypothesis usually turn out to be right is explained in Yudkowsky’s “Level 2 Intelligent Characters” article. “We get to see Harry fail once in Ch. 22, because I felt like I had to make the point about clever ideas not always working. A more realistic story with eight more failed ideas passing before Harry’s first original discovery in Ch. 28 would not have been fun to read, or write.” In other words, it’s a bit of artistic license to make the story more fun.

Ummm… Harry still only has that one real discovery? He does no other experiments after those chapters. I’m not complaining that he makes discoveries after too few experiments, I’m complaining that he instantly knows all the answers without doing anything at all.

He makes HUGE snap judgements with no evidence (the bit about astrology with the centaur, for instance) Most of these asides have nothing to do with the plot, but the resurrection stone, ghosts, and the arch in the ministry basement are all huge pieces of magic that conceivably would help Harry’s goal of reversing death. But he spends 0 time studying them.

His plan to end death seems to be “whine real loud about how people don’t fight death enough”- which come to think of it is pretty much the transhumanist plan.

Anonymous: After reading your let’s read …

After reading your let’s read HPMOR, and then reading the new chapters, all your criticism rings pop out at me. And I’m not alone, I know 2 other people you’ve ruined this for

Sorry dude.

Anonymous: Contrary to that last anon …

Contrary to that last anon, reading your Let’s Read is the only reason I’m finishing HPMOR through to the end, because I finally know so much more about what was bugging me and why and that I’m not weird for not liking it much.

Point/counterpoint then.

Anonymous: Quick, we have 60 hours …

Quick, we have 60 hours to solve HPMOR! Do you have any ideas?

huh?

Edit: I honestly don’t know what this is referring to, but you can solve any problem in the story by noting that the world has established that Harry is above the law, and that there are basically infinitely many time turners around to be used.

Anonymous: What rational fic are you ..

What rational fic are you liveblogging after HPMOR? Luminosity? Friendship is Optimal? Myou’ve Gotta be Kidding Me? Branches on the Tree of Time? The Metropolitan Man? Mortal? Something else?

I’ll probably take a break from rationalist fic reading. I’d like to finish up the quantum posts I’ve been writing, and after that who knows. Maybe I’ll talk about a book I actually like.

Chapter 104 Plot threads hastily tied up/also some nonsense

So this chapter opens with a quidditch game, in an attempt to wrap up an earlier plot thread- Quirrell’s reward for his battle game (a reward given out back in chapter 34 or so, and literally never mentioned again until this chapter) was that slytherin and ravenclaw would tie for the house cup and Hogwarts would stop playing quidditch with the snitch.

Going into this game, Hufflepuff is in the lead for house cup “by something like five hundred points.” Quirrell is out of commission with his sickness, but the students have taken matters into their own hands- it appears the plan is just to not catch the snitch?

It was at eight pm and six minutes, according to Harry’s watch, when Slytherin had just scored another 10 points bringing the score to 170-140, when Cedric Diggory leapt out of his seat and shouted “Those bastards!”

“Yeah!” cried a young boy beside him, leaping to his own feet. “Who do they think they are, scoring points?”

“Not that!” cried Cedric Diggory. “They’re - they’re trying to steal the Cup from us! ”

“But we’re not in the running any more for -“

“Not the Quidditch Cup! The House Cup!”

What? It’s totally unclear to me how this is supposed to work. In the books, as I remember it, points were awarded for winning quidditch games NOT for simply scoring points within a quidditch game? Winning 500 to 500 will just result in some fixed amount of points going to the winner.

Also, there appears to be a misunderstanding of quidditch:

The game had started at six o’ clock in the afternoon. A typical game would have gone until seven or so, at which point it would have been time for dinner.

No, as I recall, games go on for days not one hour. I think the books mention a game lasting longer than a month. No one would be upset at a game where the snitch hasn’t been caught in a few hours.

Basically, this whole thing feels really ill-conceived.

Luckily, the chapter pivots away from the quidditch game pretty quickly, Hariezer gets a letter from himself.

Beware the constellation,
and help the watcher of stars
and by the wise and the well-meaning.
in the place that is prohibited and bloody stupid.
Pass unseen by the life-eaters’ confederates,
Six, and seven in a square,

I note that Hariezer established way back when somewhere that he has a system in place to communicate with himself, with secret codes for his notes to make sure they really are for him. I’m too lazy to dig this back up, but I definitely remember reading it. Probably in chapter 13 with the time travel game?

Anyway, apparently Hariezer has forgotten this (I hope this comes up and it’s not just a weird problem introduced for no reason?) because this turns out to be a decoy note from Quirrell to lure him to the forbidden corridor. After a whole bunch of people all show up at the forbidden corridor at the same time, and some chaos breaks out, Hariezer and Quirrell are the last men standing, which leads to this:

An awful intuition had come over Harry, something separate from all the reasoning he’d done so far, an intuition that Harry couldn’t put into words; except that he and the Defense Professor were very much alike in certain ways, and faking a Time-Turned message was just the sort of creative method that Harry himself might have tried to bypass all of a target’s protections

• …

And Professor Quirrell had known a password that Bellatrix Black had thought identified the Dark Lord and his presence gave the Boy-Who-Lived a sense of doom and his magic interacted destructively with Harry’s and his favorite spell was Avada Kedavra and and and …

Harry’s mouth was dry, even his lips were trembling with adrenaline, but he managed to speak. “Hello, Lord Voldemort.”

Professor Quirrell inclined his head in acknowledgement, and said, “Hello, Tom Riddle.”

We also indirectly find out that Quirrell killed Hermione (but we already knew that), although he did it by controlling professor Sprout (I guess to throw off the scent if he got caught?)

Anyway, this pivotal plot moment seems to rely entirely on the fact that Hariezer forgot his own coded note system?

HPMOR Chapter 105

So Quirrell gets Hariezer to cooperate with him, by threatening students, and offering to resurrect Hermione if he gets the philosopher’s stone

And know this, I have taken hostages. I have already set in motion a spell that will kill hundreds of Hogwarts students, including many you called friends. I can stop that spell using the Stone, if I obtain it successfully. If I am interrupted before then, or if I choose not to stop the spell, hundreds of students will die. Hariezer does manage to extract a concession:

Agreed,” hissed Professor Quirrell. “Help me, and you sshall have ansswerss to your quesstions, sso long ass they are about passt eventss, and not my planss for the future. I do not intend to raisse my hand or magic againsst you in future, sso long ass you do not raisse your hand or magic againsst me. Sshall kill none within sschool groundss for a week, unlesss I musst. Now promisse that you will not attempt to warn againsst me or esscape. Promisse to put forth your own besst efforts toward helping me to obtain the Sstone. And your girl-child friend sshall be revived by me, to true life and health; nor sshall me or mine ever sseek to harm her.” A twisted smile. “Promisse, boy, and the bargain will be sstruck.”

So coming up we’ll get one of those chapters where the villain explains everything. Always a good sign when the villain does apparently nothing for 90 or so out of 100 chapters, and then explains the significance of everything at the very end.

HPMOR 106

Not much happens here, Quirrell kills the 3 headed cerberus to get past the first puzzle. When Hariezer points out that might have alerted someone, Quirrell is all “eh, I fucked all the wards up.”

So I guess more time to go before we get the villain monologue chapter.

Chapter 107 still no monologue

Still no villain monologue. Quirrell and Hariezer encounter the other puzzles from the book, and Quirrell blasts them to death with magic fire rather than actually solve them.

However, Quirrell has some random reasons to not blast apart the potion room (he respects Snape or something, blah,bah). Anyway, apparently this means he’ll have to make a long and complicated potion, which will give Quirrell and Hariezer some time to talk.

Side note: credit where credit is due, I again notice these chapters flow much better, and have a much smoother writing style. There is some wit in the way that Quirrell just hulk-smashes all the puzzles (although stopping at Snape;s puzzle seems like a contrived way to drop the monologue we know is coming next chapter or so into the story) When things are happening, HPMOR can be decently written.

HPMOR Chapter 108 monologue

So we get the big “explain everything” monologue, and it’s kind of a let down?

The first secret we get- Hariezer is indeed a copy of Voldemort (which was just resolving some dramatic irony, we all knew this because we read the books). In a slight twist, we find out that he was intentionally a horcrux-

It occurred to me how I might fulfill the Prophecy my own way, to my own benefit. I would mark the baby as my equal by casting the old horcrux spell in such fashion as to imprint my own spirit onto the baby’s blank slate… I would arrange with the other Tom Riddle that he should appear to vanquish me, and he would rule over the Britain he had saved. We would play the game against each other forever, keeping our lives interesting amid a world of fools.

But apparently creating the horcrux created some sort of magic resonance and killed his body. But he had somehow made true-immortal horcruxes. Unfortunately, he had put them stupid places like on the pioneer probe or in volcanos where people would never touch them, so he never managed to find a host (remember when I complained about that a few chapters back?)

Hariezer does point out that Voldemort should have tested the new horcrux spell. He suggests Voldie failed to do so because he doesn’t think about doing nice things, but Voldie could have just horcruxed someone, killed them to test it, then destroyed the horcrux, then killed them for real. Not nice, pretty straightforward. It feels like this is going to be Voldemort’s weakness that gets exploited.

We find out that the philosopher’s stone makes transfigurations permanent, which I guess is a minor twist on the traditional legend? Really, just a specific way of making it work- in the legends it can transmute metals, heal sickness, bring dead plants back to life, let you make homunculi,etc.

In HPMOR, powerful magical artifacts can’t have been produced recently, because lore is lost of whatever, so we get a grimdark history of the stone, involving a Hogwarts student seducing professor Baba Yaga to trick her into taking her virginity so she could steal the stone. Really incidental to anything. Anyway, Flamel, who stole the stone, is both man and woman and uses the stone to transmute back and forth, and apparently gave Dumbledore power to fight Grindlewald.

Quirrell killed Hermione (duh) because

I killed Miss Granger to improve your position relative to that of Lucius Malfoy, since my plans did not call for him to have so much leverage over you.

I don’t think this actually makes much sense at all? It’s pretty clear Voldie plans to kill Hariezer as soon as this is over, so why should he care about Malfoy at all in this? I had admittedly assume he killed Hermione to help his dark side take over Hariezer or something.

Apparently they raided Azkaban to find out where Black had hidden Quirrell’s wand.

Also, as expected, Voldemort was both Monroe and Voldemort and was playing both sides in order to gain political power. He wanted to get political power because he was afraid muggles would destroy the world.

Basically, every single reveal is basically what you’d expect from the books. Harry Potter and The Obvious Villain Monologue.

The only open question is why the Hariezer-crux, given how that spell is supposed to work, didn’t have any of Voldemort’s memories up until that time? I expect we are supposed to chalk it up to “the spell didn’t quite work because of the resonance that blew everything up” or whatever.

Chapter 109 supreme author wank

We get to the final mirror, and we get this bit of author wank:

Upon a wall of metal in a place where no one had come for centuries, I found written the claim that some Atlanteans foresaw their world’s end, and sought to forge a device of great power to avert the inevitable catastrophe. If that device had been completed, the story claimed, it would have become an absolutely stable existence that could withstand the channeling of unlimited magic in order to grant wishes. And also - this was said to be the vastly harder task - the device would somehow avert the inevitable catastrophes any sane person would expect to follow from that premise. The aspect I found interesting was that, according to the tale writ upon those metal plates, the rest of Atlantis ignored this project and went upon their ways. It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. I recognise certain echoes of my own experience that one does not usually see invented in mere tales.”

Get it? It’s friendly AI and we are all living in Atlantis! And Yud is bravely toiling away in obscurity to save us all! (Note: toiling in obscurity in this context means soliciting donations to continue running one of the least productive research organizations in existence.)

Anyway, after this bit of wankery, Voldie and Hariezer return to the problem of how to get the stone. The answer turns out to be by confounding himself into thinking that he is Dumbledore wanting the stone back after Voldemort has been defeated.

I point out that the book’s original condition where the way to get the stone was to not want the stone was vastly more clever. Don’t think of elephants, and all that.

Anyway, after Voldemort gets the stone, Dumbledore shows up.

Chapter 110

Apparently Dumbledore was going to use the mirror as a trap to banish Voldemort. But when he saw Hariezer was with him, Dumbledore sacrificed himself to save Hariezer. So now Dumbledore is banished somewhere.

Anonymous: Oh man, I was surprised …

Oh man, I was surprised about something you didn’t comment on for chapter 109, but I checked and EY edited it out. When it originally posted, the “Only a gibbering dullard…” sentence was longer and had something about “flaming monkey vomit for brains”. In fairness, it’s to his credit that he decided that was inappropriate.

Although you did remind me I wanted to comment on the bit that proceeded that. I read the chapters last night and didn’t take notes like usual. Trying to get caught up before the end when I have time.

Anonymous: And just to explain …

And just to explain the “Quirrell killing Hermione to improve Harry’s position relative to Lucius” thing, it’s virtually certain that his plans changed once he heard the “tear apart the stars” prophecy when Hermione died. Before that, he was grooming Harry to rule and had told him that in Parseltongue. It’s virtually certain that Parseltongue isn’t an oath in MOR: you can’t lie about your plans, but they can change unexpectedly.

Fair enough then. It didn’t occur to me that Riddle wouldn’t take the safest possible plan and kill Hariezer just because of the old prophecy.

So after the big HPMOR reveal

It sort of feels like HPMOR is just the overly wordy gritty Potter reboot with some science stuff slapped on to the first 20 chapters or so.

Like, Potter is still a horcrux, Voldemort still wanted to take take over the wizard world and kill the muggles, etc.

Even the anti-death themes have fallen flat because of “show, don’t tell”- Dumbledore was a “deathist” but he was on the side of not killing all the muggles, Voledmort actually defeated death but that position rides along side the kill-everyone ethos, and Hariezer’s resolution to end death apparently was going to blow up the entire world. So the characters might argue the positions, but for reasons I don’t comprehend, actually following through is shown as a terrible idea.

Anonymous: Do you ship …

Do you ship any characters from HPMOR? Draco x Hermione? Quirrell x Harry? Dumbledore x McGonagall? Snape x Lily?

None of the characters feel enough like real people for me to care much about them. The ones that feel the most “real” are the ones that are most tangential to the story, so they just feel like their canon counterparts.

I read the rest of HPMOR/113 puzzle

I read HPMOR, and will put chapter updates when I have time, but I wanted to put down my version of how Hariezer will get out of the predicament at the end of

1. I fear if I put this down after the next chapter is released, and if it’s correct, people will say I looked ahead.

Anyway, the way that this would normally be solved in HPMOR is simple the time turner- Hariezer would resolve to go and find Mcgonagall or Bones or whoever when this was all over and tell them to time turner into this location and bring the heat. Or whatever. But that has been disallowed by the rules.

But I think Yud is setting this up as a sort of “AI box” experiment, because he has his obsessions and they show up time and time again. So the solution is simply to convince Voldemort to let him go. How? In a version of Roko’s basilisk he needs to convince Voldemort that they might be in a simulation- i.e. maybe they are still looking in the mirror. Hasn’t everything gone a little too well since they first looked in? Dumbledore was vanquished, bringing back Hermione was practically easy, every little thing has been going perfectly. Maybe the mirror is just simulating what he wants to see?

So two ways to go from here- Hariezer is also looking in the mirror (and he has also gotten what he wanted, Hermione being brought back) so he might be able to test this just by wishing for something.

Or, Hariezer can convince Voldemort that the only way to know for sure is for Voldemort to fail to get something he wants, and the last thing he wants is for Hariezer to die.

Anonymous: Will you submit …

Will you submit/have you submitted your theory to the silly little game? If not, do you mind if someone else does? Seems plausible, and trainwrecky as this has been, good-end appeals.

I have not submitted it. You are welcome to submit it.

Anonymous: Your theory is the best …

Your theory is the best I’ve seen! If we get the good ending because of you, I’ll blow you and everyone you love

That is a bit… extreme?

WHOA

I have a (frankly) surprising number of followers. What do you guys expect to see in this space? I’m almost out of HPMOR, what else should I be putting here?

Anonymous: The text of the chapter …

The text of the chapter 113 review page (just the plain text, not the HTML) is now longer than plain-text War and Peace from Project Gutenberg.

Hahahaha, someone linked me to the reddit thread where Yud asked for help cataloging all the ideas. Anyone know if he found any takers?

I’m also sort of surprised he’d read them. I had assumed he was always going to post the “good” ending, and this was just a way to boost his review count.

Anonymous: Did you see Yud …

Did you see Yud posted the solution? Apparently it was just to partially transfigure and to hit Voldemort with a stun spell. Super boring

Probably won’t have time to read it until after work hours.

What did he partially transfigure? The air into poison? The air into a wall between him and the death eaters? Hell, the ground into a wall between him and the death eaters?

Anonymous: The ground into carbon …

The ground into carbon nanowire that he decapitated all the death eaters with.

Huh? How did he get it around their necks? Nevermind, don’t answer I’ll find out this evening.

So I read chapter 114

And I kind of don’t get how Hariezer’s solution worked? He turned the ground near his wand into spider silk, but how did he get it around everyone’s neck? Why did he make it spider silk before turning it into nanowire?

HPMOR Chapter 111

So in this chapter, Hariezer is stripped of wand, pouch and time turner, and Voldemort has the philosopher’s stone. It’s looking pretty bad for our hero.

Voldemort walks Hariezer to an altar he has prepared,does some magic stuff, and a new shiny body appears for him. So now he has fully resurrected.

Voldemort then brings back Hermione (Hariezer HAD stolen the remains). I note that I don’t think Hariezer has actually done anything in this entire story- his first agenda- study magic using science- was a complete bust, and then his second agenda was a big resolution to bring back Hermione, but Voldemort did it for him. Voldemort also crossed Hermione with a troll and unicorn (creating a class Trermionecorn) so she is now basically indestructible. Why didn’t Voldemort do this to his own body? No idea. Why would someone obsessed with fighting death and pissed as hell about how long it took him to reclaim his old body think to give Hermione wolverine-level indestructibility but not himself? Much like the letter Hariezer got to set this up, it’s always bad when characters have to behave out of character in order to set the plot up.

Anyway, to bring Hermione back Voldie gives Hariezer his wand back so he can hit her with his super-patronus. So he now has a wand.

Voldemort then asks Hariezer for Roger Bacon’s diary (which he turns into a Hermione horcrux), which prompts Hariezer to say

I tried translating a little at the beginning, but it was going slowly -“ Actually, it had been excruciatingly slow and Harry had found other priorities.

Yep, doing experiments to discover magic, despite being the premise of the first 20ish chapters then immediately stopped being any priority at all. Luckily it shows up here as an excuse for Hariezer to get his pouch back (he retrieved it to get the diary).

While Voldemort is distracted making the horcrux, Hariezer whips a gun out of the pouch and shoots Voldemort. Something tells me it didn’t work.

HPMOR 112

Not surprisingly, the shots did nothing to Voldemort who apparently can create a wall of dirt faster than a bullet travels. Apparently it was a trick, because Voldemort had created some system where no Tom Riddle could kill any other Tom Riddle unless the first had attacked him. Somehow, Hariezer hadn’t been bound to it, and now neither of them are.

I don’t know why Yudkowsky introduced this curse and then had it broken immediately? It would have been more interesting to force Hariezer to deal with Voldemort without taking away his immortality. Actually, given all the focus on memory charms in the story, it’s pretty clear that when he achieves ultimate victory Hariezer will do it with a memory charm- turning Tom Riddle into an immortal amnesiac or implanting other memories in him (so he is an immortal guy who works in a restaurant or something).

In retaliation, Voldemort hits him with a spell that takes everything but his glasses and wand, so he is naked in a graveyard, and a bunch of death eaters teleport in (37 of them).

Any idea how …

Any idea how Hariezer actually got the spider silk/nanowire around the death eater’s necks? I don’t understand why he gets to levitate whatever the he is transfiguring, it’s not like its rigid. He would be pushing on a string trying to move it outward?

I think it’s that thing he was practising at the Quidditch game with a pencil, where he can control the shape of something while he’s transfiguring it.

nostalgebraist: Reddit’s various attempts to come …

nostalgebraist:

Reddit’s various attempts to come to terms with the climax of HPMOR, which was apparently disappointing even to many HPMOR fans, is interesting to watch — e.g. here, here. I’m just here on the sidelines, but I’m kind of wondering if Yudkowsky isn’t playing sort of trick, because he’s usually at least good at satisfying the people who like the very particular sort of thing he writes.

I think the climax was actually sort of in keeping with general HPMOR. It relied on munchkining with a previously not-really-clear magical principle (how well CAN Hariezer shape things with transfiguration? Can he levitate them against gravity while shaping?) and was sort of goofy. Which is a problem I’ve discussed at length previously. Also, the world behaved insane so that Hariezer could win (in this case Voldemort went to great lengths to placate Hariezer before just killing him).

I think the issue was really that he preceded the climax with a “final exam”- which made people assume that the solution was something possible if you weren’t the dungeon master (to extend the munchkin thing). And you could figure out the solution with a literary analysis (the beginning does have some foreshadowing, the power Hariezer has that no one else does is clearly partial transfiguration,etc), but you can’t have guessed at that solution as a “rationalist” solution- but that’s been true the whole time! Only the “exam” pointed it out and spoiled the illusion.

nostalgebraist: This all makes sense …

nostalgebraist:

This all makes sense, but leaves me wondering why he did the “final exam” to begin with. What benefits did it have? It just made people aware of a bunch of clever solutions, no more than one of which could have actually happened, and thus diminished the impact of the actual climax.

It would have made sense if the climax had been qualitatively more clever, complicated, etc. than what had gone before — but tempting people to come up with the fanciest tricks they can and then presenting something pretty ordinary is just a recipe for disappointment. What was EY’s motivation for doing it?

Maybe he’d hoped to have time to weave the better ideas into his own chapters? No idea.

sigmaleph: The purpose of HPMOR …

sigmaleph:

The purpose of HPMOR was always getting people into Less Wrong and/or teaching them rationality. Encouraging people to be clever and testing to see if they’ve learned anything from the story makes perfect sense from that angle.

I think Less Wrong style rationality is uniquely unsuited for generating clever ideas? It’s not like Bayesian estimates are going to help anyone here- the way to arrive at a solution in this case was close reading.

Anonymous: I think you are secretly …

I think you are secretly EY and just trolling everybody with your “reviews.” Prove me wrong!

What? Why would you think that?

I’m kind of disturbed that I might come across like EY…

Anonymous: Not a liveblog …

Not a liveblog suggestion, but have you read any of Harry Potter and the Natural 20? I ask because from what I’ve read of it it seems to stick to the whole “experimenting with the nature of magic” theme a lot better than HPMoR does.

It’s been recommended here before. Maybe I’ll look into it after HPMOR concludes.

Anonymous: Why would you know …

Why would you know many editors? I call bs

I went to grad school and occasionally hung out with (soon to be) English phds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of them went on to become editors for largeish publishing companies.

Exactly what you weren’t expecting here- a video game review. Don’t bother with The Order 1886

nuclearspaceheater:

If you want to fight vampires you can play Gun, preferably on Hard. I mean, there’s nothing whatsoever in the story about the bosses being vampires or in any way supernatural, but I just sort of filled that in myself, what with them being able to survive dozens of gunshots to the head, or in the case of the final boss, being literally immune to bullets, while you still die in one rifle shot. As far as vampire games go, I feel this really captured the raw skill difference there would have to be for an ordinary mortal to actually defeat super-humanly durable undead in combat, even though it’s not “officially” a vampire game.

Another example of taking fiction as presented and running with it instead of just calling bullshit. Probably due to a habit I started long ago, in which I would mentally create elaborate plots to underscore the simple platforming games of the Sega Genisis. Sonic the Hedgehog was a fucking hero’s journey when my 6 year old self played it, let me tell you.

A more minor example was when I was awe-struck by, and I’m not kidding here, the implied materials science behind the supports in the caverns containing the old Aperture labs in Portal 2. For the pillars shown to have supported that much open volume under the pressure from being that far underground made me all like, “whoah,” and I assumed that the area must have been built far into the future.

But yeah, I’ve heard that Do Not Order 1886 is pretty bad.

I don’t do much in the way of reinventing the plot of books or movies as I read/watch them- the story is what is presented (and in fact, tension between the “show” and the “tell” tends to absolutely destroy my suspension of disbelief).

Video games are another matter- the ones I played growing up had so little story that you could fill in whatever you want. Although a game like The Order is really trying to be an interactive movie, so it’s hard to drop in your own interpretations.

I think my general rule is how central to the ideas being presented something is- like the implied material science of Aperture labs doesn’t really matter for the experience, if you can suspend disbelief in that way, that’s fine. But if there was a document laying around saying all the pillars were made of bricks, you might have an issue (I’m thinking of Name of the Wind, where the rules of magic introduced blatantly conflict with how he uses magic literally a paragraph away). Best to just introduce and not comment.

I think my problem with HPMOR is that in part its “genre savvyness” forces a lot of fantasy conventions into sharp relief for me, and then it uses them anyway. I wouldn’t have noticed half the problems I see if the text itself didn’t point them out.

HPMOR Chapter 113

This is a short chapter, Hariezer is still in peril. As Voldemort’s death eaters pop in, one of them tries to turn against him but Voldemort kills him dead.

And then he forces Hariezer to swear an oath to not try to destroy the world- Voldemort’s plan is apparently to resurrect Hermione, force Hariezer to not destroy the world, and then to kill him. (I note that if he did things in a slightly different order, he’d have already won…)

So this chapter ends with Hariezer surrounded by death eaters, all with wands pointed at him, ready to kill him, and we get this (sorry, it’s a long quote).

This is your final exam. Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death, despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort. 12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015,
the story will continue to Ch. 121.
Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game. he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.
the Dark Lord’s utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.
the Death Eaters will fire on him immediately.
if Harry cannot reach his Time-Turner without Time-Turned help - then the Time-Turner will not come into play.
Harry is allowed to attain his full potential as a rationalist, now in this moment or never, regardless of his previous flaws.
if you are using the word ‘rational’ correctly, is just a needlessly fancy way of saying ‘the best solution’ or ‘the solution I like’ or ‘the solution I think we should use’, and you should usually say one of the latter instead. (We only need the word ‘rational’ to talk about ways of thinking, considered apart from any particular solutions.)
if you know exactly what a smart mind would do, you must be at least that smart yourself….

The issue here is that literally any solution, no matter how outlandish will work if you can design the rules to make the munchkin work.

Hariezer could use partial transfiguration to make an atomic lattice under the earth with a few atoms of anti-matter under each death eater to blow up each of them.

He could use the fact that Voldemort apparently cast broomstick spells on his legs to levitate Voldemort. And after levitating Voldemort away convince the death eaters he is even more powerful than Voldie.

He could use the fact that Tom Riddle controls the dark mark to burn all the death eaters where they stand- Voldemort can’t kill Hariezer with magic because of the resonance, and a simple shield should stop bullets.

He could partially transfigure a dead man’s switch of sorts, so that if he dies fireworks go up and the quidditch game gets disrupted- he knows it didn’t, so he knows he won’t die.

In my own solution I posted earlier, he could talk his way out using logic-ratio-judo. Lots of options other than my original posted solution here- convince them that killing Hariezer makes the prophecy come true because of science reasons,etc.

He could partially transfigure poison gas or knock out gas.

Try to come up with your own outlandish solution. The thing is, all of these work because we don’t really know the rules of HPMOR magic- we have a rough outline, but there is still a lot of author flexibility. So there is that.

HPMOR 114 Solutions to the exam

Hariezer transfigures part of his wand into carbon nanotubes that he makes into a net around each death eater’s head and around voldemort’s hands.

He uses it to decapitate all the death eaters (killing Malfoy’s father almost certainly) and taking Voldemort’s hand’s off.

Voldemort then charges at him but Hariezer hits him with a stunning spell.

I note that this solution is as outlandish as any.

It WAS foreshadowed in the very first chapter, but that doesn’t make it less outlandish.

Anonymous: Someone linked you …

Someone linked you on reddit. Here comes the hate. Might want to turn off anon asks.

So far I’ve only had two. So reddit users, if you read this, I have a policy of not letting through most praise or condemnation. Serious questions do get answered, mostly.

Anonymous: Settle something that …

Settle something that came up on reddit. Do you really write this while drunk?

If it’s late in the day, odds are I’ve had a few glasses of scotch.

Having written that I now wonder if I have a problem.

Hi r/HPMOR

I read your thread , but I generally don’t think it’s wise to directly comment on people discussing stuff I wrote (so I’m commenting here, as a minor violation of the rule).

Anyway, I’m flattered that you are reading me! Much appreciated! Please don’t take things to seriously, I “snark” because I labor under the false impression that I’m witty and honestly I didn’t take this project particularly seriously.

I also, I apologize somewhat that someone linked me there. I’m flattered if anyone got any enjoyment out of my rambling, but I wouldn’t want to shit on your fun.

Also, asks are open if you have questions.

Anonymous: came for the sassy …

came for the sassy drunk criticism of HPMOR, (which I loved, despite or because of being a huge fanboy) stayed for the /holy shit I actually understand some of modern physics now, you’re the best/

I don’t normally let praise through, but I do want to say- more physics coming soon. If you haven’t seen it my physics tag is quantum stuff.

Also, I keep saying this but I rarely get asks- please ask questions about the physics posts if you have them.

Anonymous: Regarding Snape …

Regarding Snape being turned into a mind reader - he’s actually both a Occulmens and Legilimens in canon, so I don’t think HPMOR changed anything.

Sure, but in the canon he was notable for being able to block Voldemort’s mind reading (which was a big deal because Voldemort was really good at it or something.)

I think in canon, every wizard could do a bit of both?

Anonymous: not hating, but …

not hating, but voldemort just dodged, didn’t charge at him. he was fucked because he didn’t know stuporfy existed and he put up many wards to avoid Harry escaping…which stopped HIM from escaping when something went wrong. He just underestimated Harry, but he wasn’t so afraid of his new body dying because he thought Harry would just kill him, not obliviate him. His blind spot was Harry not wanting to murder him and just showing some compassion.

I’m not sure it matters if he started moving to dodge, or if he started moving to charge Hariezer?

Anonymous: HPMOR reddit reader …

HPMOR reddit reader. One thing I found ironically funny is how quickly you caught Quirrel=Voldemort. A lot of the subreddit wanted to believe Quirrel was secretly a good guy, even well after the Azkaban arc. I think even after the centaur getting murdered there was people on the subreddit that wanted to believe that he was good after all. I think because of your distrust of Harry and Quirrel, you figured out what some people didn’t believe even after having it explained and pointed out.

I can understand where they are coming from though- Quirrell is used as author mouthpiece a few times, same as Hariezer. Even the somewhat disturbing chapter where Hariezer learns “how to lose” is treated by the text in a pretty positive way.

Anonymous: Your link on Reddit …

Your link on Reddit has been the most-upvoted thing on r/hpmor all week. There’s been a good amount of counter-criticism, as well as quite a bit of affirmation of some of your points. Would you consider popping over there and contributing to the discussion?

I think it’s best for me to avoid inserting myself- that’s your playground and you should be free to rip me apart (or whatever the opposite is? Put me together?) without worrying that I’m looking over your shoulder.

That said, again, I’m totally flattered people are reading me (and apparently agreeing enough to upvote)! And if I got any science wrong, please drop me an ask to let me know.

Anonymous: Coming from the reddit …

Coming from the reddit thread, I think one huge thing you are missing is that the genre of the story is really a mystery. Most of your complaints are about clues to the mystery!

Honestly? I really didn’t get that sense at all? With the few potentially mysterious things I can think of (Quirrell, Hariezer’s dark side), we already knew the answers from reading the original books. I think it’s dramatic irony, not really a mystery.

HPMOR 115-116-117

Throughout the story, whenever there is action we then have 5-10 chapters where everyone digests what happened. These chapters all fit in that vein.

Hariezer rearranges the scene of his victory to put Voldemort’s hands around Hermione’s neck and then rigs a big explosion. He then time turners back to the quidditch game (why the hell did he have time left on his time turner?)

Anyway, when he gets back to the game he does a whole “I CAN FEEL THE DARK LORD COMING” thing, and says the Hermione followed him back. I guess the reason for this plot is just to keep him out of it/explain how Hermione came back? You’d think he could have just hung around the scene of the crime, waited ‘till he was discovered and explain what happened?

Then in chapter 117, Mcgonagall explains to the school what was found- Malfoy’s father is dead, Hermione is alive, etc.

I AM CAUGHT UP ON HPMOR

First time ever. I’ll try to stay caught up until it finishes, and then I’ll write a full review.

Anonymous: What do you think …

What do you think about EY’s author notes for chapter 119, specifically his “I think you would be better served if I could, instead, get into a position where it’s possible for me to publish my real writing” reason for not being able to publish the epilogue as it is, because his characters are in their seventh Hogwarts year in it?

So I just skimmed the author’s note. I don’t quite get his reasoning

I do want to talk about this

Imagine my trying to explain briefly to someone why blogging about rationality for two years was the best way to get a nonprofit into a position where it could produce mathematical progress on the value alignment problem for advanced agents, or why a Harry Potter fanfiction would be a good way to recruit International Mathematical Olympiadists for that project.

The reason that is a hard sell is that it’s clearly not the best way- you can hire actual, phd having, proven research mathematicians for like $50k a year (especially the category theory type stuff MIRI has decided is important). I once got CS grad students at a top program to implement some code for me over a weekend for the total cost of three cases of beer. You can get phd students even cheaper.

Direct engagement of mathematicians (possibly in exchange for money) is a far easier way to get mathematicians for your project then to hope that rationality blogging or Harry Potter fanfiction attracts people to you.

Especially notable because it’s pretty clear from MIRIs self-publications that they have very little actual research experience. They don’t quite read like formal papers and they haven’t even bothered to clean them up and put them on arxiv.

Anonymous: So reading your chapter 78 …

So reading your chapter 78 response, it seemed to reiterate a slight bit of dissonance in your own critiques (I otherwise agree with most of your critiques). The author makes the world obviously insane with his writing, yet at the same time you regularly get annoyed at how many people do insane things (like start fight clubs). I think to an extent that is a point the author was trying to highlight via a bit of absurdity. We sometimes forget how insane many of the people in the world are.

My point in that chapter 78 critique is that the tone of fight club makes it very easy to miss the point. Just like the tone of Ender’s Game made it very easy to miss it’s point. The problem isn’t with the people who came away with the wrong idea, the problem is with the art in question.

I don’t think the world is insane, I think most systems mostly work, which is pretty impressive when you think about the scope of the civilization we live in. Self organizing cooperation is hard, so there are going to be seams where things don’t quite line up,etc. We can always do better and we should always be trying to do better, but the world is remarkably sane.

Anonymous: The one thing I don’t get …

The one thing I don’t get about your HPMOR reviews is: why are you still reading it? Sure, in the beginning you thought you were going to be critiquing some craptastic attempt at using science on Harry Potter. But by now it’s abundantly clear that it’s just a fanfic you don’t like, full of misreadings of science and far too much talking. Do you expect that it’s suddenly going to be amazing in the denouement? Do you just enjoy annoying the people who like it? Why not just go read something good?

First, I honestly don’t understand why my critique should annoy anyone. I’ve not advertised it anywhere that the Less Wrong crowd or HPMOR fans frequent, and I’ve avoided “tagging my hate” so as to not annoy the tumblr fans. You don’t have to read me! Lots of people find my critiques interesting, lots of people don’t. To each their own.

Now, I want to read the whole thing because 1. I have a tick, very common in phds, where we finish what we start. I began the project, I’m going to finish it. You might notice how many chapters I barely comment on, though. 2. I want to write a complete review at the end, for which I owe it to the work to finish it. 3. Some of my critiques of the themes may turn (although given how little is left, that is unlikely). 4. I don’t like to see bad science and bad interpretations of science left uncorrected. HPMOR is full of references to interesting science, but it gets a lot of them wrong. The fan of good pedagogy in me finds this tremendously upsetting- tons of people have talked about how much they learned from HPMOR and I honestly hate to think they are learning wrong things. In particular, the partial transfiguration bit is such a huge misconception of what physics is that I cringe. I want to read the rest in case something else needs to be corrected (also unlikely, given how little is left).

Also, I think you overestimate how much effort this takes- it’s mostly off-the-cuff. I make a few notes in the margin while I read the chapter and then write something up in one go, usually on a phone. Hence all the typos, weird word omissions,etc.

Anonymous: There are now two reddit …

There are now two reddit thread mentioning you, one with a lot of people who agree, one full of people who think you went full retard.

I’m avoiding reading any comments on my stuff on reddit (or anywhere else really). If people have legitimate complaints about any of the science I bring up, please tell me so I can edit in correct science.

Other than that, I’ve made my case as much as I want to.

HPMOR chapter 118

The story is still in resolution mood, and I want to point out one thing that this story does right that the original books failed at- which is an actual resolution. The one big failure of the original Harry Potter books, in my mind, was that after Voldemort was defeated, we flashed immediately to the epilogue. No funeral for the departed (no chance to say goodbye to the departed Fred Weasley,etc).

Of course, in the HPMOR style, there is a huge resolution after literally every major even in the story, so it’s at least in part a stopped clock situation.

This chapter is Quirrell’s funeral, which is mostly a student giving a long eulogy (remember, Hariezer dressed things up to make it look like Quirrell died fighting Voldemort, which is sort of true, but not the Quirrell anyone knew.)

HPMOR Chapter 119

Still in resolution mode.

Hariezer comes clean with (essentially) the order of the Phoenix members, and tells them about how Dumbledore is trapped in the mirror. This leads to him receiving some letters Dumbledore left.

We find out that Dumbledore has been acting to fulfill a certain prophecy that Hariezer plays a role in-

Yet in your case, Harry, and in your case alone, the prophecies of your apocalypse have loopholes, though those loopholes be ever so slight.

Always ‘he will end the world’, not ‘he will end life’.

So I guess he’ll bring in the transhumanist future.

Hariezer has also been given Dumbledore’s place, which Amelia Bones is annoyed at, so he makes her regent until he is old enough.

We also get one last weird pointless rearrangement of the canon books- apparently Peter Pettigrew was one of those shape shifting wizards and somehow got tricked into looking like Sirius Black. So the wrong person has been locked up in Azkaban. I don’t really “get” this whole Sirius/Peter were lovers/Sirius was evil/the plot of book 3 was a schizophrenic delusion running thread (also, Hariezer deduces, with only the evidence that there is a Black in prison and a dead Black among the death eaters, that Peter Pettigrew was a shapeshifter, that Peter immitated black, and that Peter is the one in Azkaban.)

And Hariezer puts a plan in place to open a hospital using the philsophers stone, so BAM, death is defeated, at least in the wizarding world. Unless it turns out the stone has limits or something.

HPMOR Chapter 120

More resolution.

Hariezer comes clean to Draco about how the death eaters died. (why did he go to the effort of the subterfuge, if he was going to come clean to everyone afterwards? It just added a weird layer to all this resolution).

Draco is sad his parents are dead. BUT, surprise- as I predicted way back when, Dumbledore only faked Narcissa Malfoy’s death and put her in magic witness protection.

I think one of the things …

I think one of the things I strongly dislike about HPMOR is that there doesn’t seem to be any joy purely in the discovery. People have fun playing the battle games, or fighting bullies with time turners, or generally being powerful, but no one seems to have fun just trying to figure things out.

For some reason (the reason is that I have a fair amount of scotch in me actually), my brain keeps trying to put together an imprecise metaphor to old SNES rpgs- a friend of mine in grade school loved FF2, but he always went out of his way to find all the powerups and do all the side quests,etc. This meant he was always powerful enough to smash boss fights in one or two punches. And I always hated that- what is the fun in that? What is the challenge? When things got too easy, I started running from all the random encounters and stopped buying equipment so that the boss battles were more fun.

And HPMOR feels like playing the game the first way- instead of working hard at the fun part (discovery), you get to just use Aristotle’s method (Harry Potter and Methods of Aristotelian Science) and slap an answer down. And that answer makes you more powerful- you can time turner all your problems away like shooing a misquito with a flamethrower, when a dementor shows up you get to destroy it just by thinking hard- no discovery required. The story repeatedly skips the fun part- the struggle, the learning, the discovery.

argumate: Maybe Harry needs to fail …

argumate:

Maybe Harry needs to fail more? I mean, he failed a fair bit at the start, but there was definitely a sense that his first idea usually worked pretty well.

I think it’s more that he needs some curiousity. A lot of it isn’t even main plot stuff, it’s just side-thinking. Like, he deduces that that there is some Atlantis-based-source-of-magic, but he never tries to find out if that’s the case. He deduces that magical creatures are just cursed humans, but never tries to verify it, never tries to study them,etc.

HPMOR chapter 221

Snape leaves hogwarts, thus completing an arc I don’t think I ever cared about.

Anonymous: Brilliant critical analysis …

Brilliant critical analysis of the chapter! I laughed a lot at the truth of what you wrote.

Of which chapter?

Anonymous: You have no empathy …

You have no empathy at all.

It’s true. After I criticize HPMOR I drown cute puppies in my sink, just to feel something.

HPMOR Chapter 122 the end of the beginning

So unlike the canon books, the end of HPMOR sets it up more as an origin story than a finished adventure. After the canon books, we get the impression Harry, Ron and Hermione settled into peaceful wizard lives. After HPMOR, Hariezer has set up a magical think tank to solve the problem of friendly magic, with Hermione as his super-powered, indestructible lab assistant (tell me again how Hariezer isn’t a self insert?) , and we get the impression the real work is just starting.

He also has the idea to found CFAR:

It would help if Muggles had classes for this sort of thing, but they didn’t. Maybe Harry could recruit Daniel Kahneman, fake his death, rejuvenate him with the Stone, and put him in charge of inventing better training methods…

We also learn that a more open society of idea sharing is an idea so destructive that Hariezer’s vow to end the world wouldn’t let him do it:

Harry could look back now on the Unbreakable Vow that he’d made, and guess that if not for that Vow, disaster might have already been set in motion yesterday when Harry had wanted to tear down the International Statute of Secrecy.

So secretive magiscience lead by Hariezer (with Hermione as super-powered “Sparkling Unicorn Princess” side kick) will save the day, sometime in the future.

HPMOR Chapter 122 the end of the beginning

I think WoG says that HPJEV is a friend-insert of Robin Hanson rather than a self-insert. But I’m not sure we’d be able to see the difference…

WoG?

Also, many of Hariezer’s personal anecdotes (26 hour sleep cycle, biting a teacher,etc) are Yudkowsky’s. And Hariezer has the idea to fund wizard CFAR and (essentially) wizard MIRI at the end of the story.

HPMOR Full Review (draft)

I opened up a bottle of delicious older-than-me scotch when Terry Pratchett died, and I’ve been enjoying it for much of this afternoon, so this will probably be a mess and cleaned up later.

Out of 5 stars, I’d give HPMOR a 1.5. Now, to the review (this is almost certainly going to be long)

The Good

HPMOR contains some legitimately clever reworkings of the canon books to fit with Yudkowsky’s modified world:

A few examples- In HPMOR, the “interdict of Merlin” prevents wizards from writing down powerful spells, so Slytherin put the Basilisk in the chamber of secrets to pass on his magical lore. The prophecy “the dark lord will mark him as his own” was met when Voldemort gave Hariezer the same grade he himself had received.

Yudkowsky is also well read, and the story is peppered with reference to legitimately interesting science. If you google and research every reference, you’ll learn a lot. The problem is that most of the in-story references are incorrect, so if you don’t google around you are likely to pick up dozens of incorrect ideas.

The writing style during action scenes is pretty good. It keeps the pace moving and brisk and can be genuinely fun to read.

The Bad

Stilted, repetitive writing

A lot of this story involves conversations that read like ham-fisted attempts at manipulation, filled with overly stilted language. Phrases like “Noble and Most Ancient House,” “General of Sunshine,” “ General of Chaos,”etc are peppered in over and over again. It’s just turgid. It smooths out when events are happening, but things are rarely happening.

Bad Ideas

HPMOR is full of ideas I find incredibly suspect- the only character trait worth anything in the story (both implicitly and explicitly) is intelligence, and the primary use of intelligence within the story is manipulation. This leads to cloying levels of a sort of nerd elitism. Ron and Hagrid are basically dismissed out of hand in this story (Ron explicitly as being useless, Hagrid implicitly so) because they aren’t intelligent enough, and Hariezer explicitly draws implicit NPC vs real-people distinctions.

The world itself is constructed to back up these assertions- nothing in the wizarding world makes much sense, and characters often behave in silly ways (“like NPCs”) to be a foil for Hariezer.

The most ridiculous example of this is that the wizarding world justice is based on two cornerstones- poltiicans decide guilt or innocence for all wizard crimes, and the system of blood debts. All of the former death eaters who were pardoned (for claiming to be imperius cursed) apparently owe a blood debt to Hariezer, and so as far as wizarding justice is concerned he is above the law. He uses this to his advantage at a trial for Hermione.

Bad Pedagogy

Hariezer routinely flubs the scientific concepts the reader is supposed to be learning. Almost all of the explicit in story science references are incorrect, as well as being overly-jargon filled.

Some of this might be on purpose- Hariezer is supposed to be only 11. However, this is terrible pedagogy. The reader’s guide to rationality is completely unreliable. Even weirder, the main antagonist, Voldemort, is also used as author mouthpiece several times. So the pedagogy is wrong at worst, and completely unreliable at best.

And implicitly, the method Hariezer relies on for the majority of his problem solving is Aristotelian science. He looks at things, thinks real hard, and knows the answer. This is horrifyingly bad implicit pedagogy.

Bad Plotting

Over the course of the story, Hariezer moves from pro-active to no-active. At the start of the story he has a legitimate positive agenda- he wants to use science to uncover the secrets of magic. As the story develops, however, he completely loses sight of that goal, and he instead becomes just a passenger in the plot- he competes in Quirrell’s games and goes through school like any other student. When Voldemort starts including Hariezer in his plot, Hariezer floats along in a completely reactive way,etc.

Not until Hermione dies, near the end of the story, does Hariezer pick up a positive goal again (ending death) and he does absolutely nothing to achieve it. He floats along reacting to everything, and Voldemort defeats death and revives Hermione with no real input from Hariezer at all.

For a character who is supposed to be full of agency, he spends very little time exercising it in a proactive way.

Nothing has consequences (boring!)

And this brings me to another problem with the plotting- nothing in this story has any consequences. Nothing that goes wrong has any lasting implications for the story at all, which makes all the evens on hand ultimately boring. Several examples- early in the story Hariezer uses his time turner to solve even the simplest problems. Snape is asking you questions about potions you don’t know? Time travel. Bullies are stealing a meaningless trinket? Time travel,etc. As a result of these rule violations, his time turner is locked down by Professor Mcgonagall. Despite this Hariezer continues to use his time turner to solve all of his problems- the plot introduces another student willing to send a time turner message for a small amount of money via. “slytherin mail” it’s even totally anonymous.

Another egregious example of this is Quirrell’s battle game- the prize for the battle game is handed out by Quirrell in chapter 35 or so, and there are several more battle games after the prize! The reader knows that it doesn’t at all matter who wins these games- the prize is already awarded! What’s the point? The reader knows the prize has been given out, why are they invested in the proceedings at all?

When Hariezer becomes indebted to Luscious Malfoy, it never constrains him in any way. He becomes in debt, Dumbledore tells him it’s bad, he does literally nothing to deal with the problem. Two weeks later, Hermione dies and the debt gets cancelled.

When Hermione DIES Hariezer does nothing, and a few weeks later Voldemort brings her back. Nothing that happens ever matters.

The closest thing to long term repercussions is Hariezer helping Bellatrix Black escape- but we literally never see Bellatrix after that.

Hariezer never acts positively to fix his problems, he just bounces along whining about how humans need to defeat death until his problems get solved for him.

Mystery, dramatic irony and genre savvy

If you’ve read the canon books, you know at all times what is happening in the story. Voldemort has possessed Quirrell, Hariezer is a horcrux, Quirrell wants the philsopher’s stone, etc. There are bits and pieces that are modified, but the shape of the story is exactly canon. So all the mystery is just dramatic irony.

This is fine, as far as it goes, but there is a huge amount of tension because Hariezer is written as “genre savvy” and occasionally says things like “the hero of story such-and-such would do this” or “I understand mysterious prophecies from books.” The story is poking at cliches that the story wholeheartedly embraces. Supposedly Hariezer has read enough books just like this that dramatic irony liked this shouldn’t happen, as the story points out many times,- he should be just as informed as the reader. AND YET…

The author is practically screaming “wouldn’t it be lazy that Harry’s darkside is because he is a horcrux?” And yet, Harry’s darkside is because he is a horcrux.

Even worse, the narration of the book takes lots of swipes at the canon plots while “borrowing” the plot of the books.

Huge Tension Between the themes/lessons and the setting

The major themes of this book are in major conflict with the setting throughout the story.

One major theme is the need for secretive science to hide dangerous secrets- it’s echoed in the way Hariezer builds his “bayesian conspiracy,” reinforced by Hariezer and Quirrell’s attitudes toward nuclear weapons (and their explicit idea that people smart enough to build atomic weapons wouldn’t use them), and it’s reinforced at the end of the novel when Hariezer’s desire to dissolve some of the secrecy around magic is thwarted by a vow he took to not-end-the-world.

Unfortunately, that same secrecy is portrayed as having stagnated the progress of the wizarding world, and preventing magic from spreading. That same secrecy might well be why the wizarding world hasn’t already ended death and made thousands of philosopher’s stones.

Another major theme is fighting death/no-afterlife. But this is a fantasy story with magic. There are ghosts, a gate to the afterlife, a stone to talk to your dead loved ones,etc. The story tries to lamp shade it a bit, but that fundamental tension doesn’t go away. Some readers even assumed that Hariezer was simply wrong about an afterlife in the story- because they felt the tension and used my point above (unreliable pedagogy) to put the blame on Hariezer. In the story, the character who actually ended death WAS ALSO THE ANTAGONIST. Hariezer’s attempts are portrayed AS SO DANGEROUS THEY COULD END THE WORLD.

And finally- the major theme of this story is the supremacy of Bayesian reasoning. Unfortunately, as nostalgebraist pointed out explicitly, a world with magic is a world where your non-magic based Bayesian prior is worthless. Reasoning time and time again from that prior leads to snap conclusions unlikely to be right- and yet in the story this works time and time again. Once again, the world is fighting the theme of the story in obvious ways.

Let’s talk about Hermoine

The most explicitly feminist arc in this story is the arc where Hermione starts SPHEW, a group dedicated to making more wizarding heroines. The group starts out successful, gets in over their head, and Hariezer has to be called in to save the day (with the help of Quirrell).

At the end of the arc, Hariezer and Dumbledore have a long conversation about whether or not they should have let Hermione and friends play their little bully fighting game- which feels a bit like retroactively removing the characters agency. Sure, the women got to play at their fantasy, but only at the whim of the real heroes.

By the end of the story, Hermione is an indestructible part-unicorn/part-troll immortal. And what is she going to do with this power? Become Hariezer’s lab assistant, more or less. Be sent on quests by him. It just feels like Hermione isn’t really allowed to grow into her own agency in a meaningful way.

This isn’t to say that it’s intentional (pretty much the only character with real, proactive agency in this story is Quirrell) - but it does feel like women get the short end of the stick here.

Sanderson’s Law of Magic

So I’ve never read Sanderson, but someone point me to his first law of magic

Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

The idea here is that if your magic is laid out with clear rules, the author should feel free to solve problems with it- if your magic is mysterious and vague like Gandolf you shouldn’t solve all the conflict with magic, but if you lay out careful rules you can have the characters magic up the occasional solution. I’m not sure I buy into the rule fully, but it does make a good point- if the reader doesn’t understand your magic the solution might feel like it comes out of nowhere.

Yudkowsky never clearly lays out most of the rules of magic, and yet still solves all his problems via magic (and magic mixed with science). We don’t know how brooms work, but apparently if you strap one to a rocket you can actually steer the rocket, you won’t fall off the thing, and you can go way faster than other broomsticks.

This became especially problematic when he posted his final exam- lots of solutions were floated around each of which relied on some previously ill-defined aspect of the magic. Yudkowsky’s own solution relied on previously ill-defined transfiguration.

And when he isn’t solving problems like that, he is relying on the time turner over and over again. Swatting flies with flame throwers over and over again.

Coupled with the world being written as “insane” and it just feels like it’s lazy conflict resolution.

Conclusion

A largely forgettable, overly long nerd power fantasy, with a bit of science (most of it wrong) and a lot of bad ideas. 1.5 stars.

HPMOR Full Review (draft)

thinkingornot:

su3su2u1:

All of the former death eaters who were pardoned (for claiming to be imperius cursed) apparently owe a blood debt to Hariezer, and so as far as wizarding justice is concerned he is above the law.

That didn’t happen. Reread the chapter again.

I’ve had a long discussion of this in the previous reviews - if Malfoy owes a blood debt to Hariezer (for freeing him from the imperius curse) then all the pardoned death eaters do as well.

I decided not to edit my HPMOR review

Because fuck it, I’m done.

Interestingly enough, the exact same thing happened with my thesis. “this is a rough.. no wait FINAL draft.”

Hello again reddit

I guess someone else linked reddit to me- remember if your ask is just complaining I won’t let it through. You have to ask a question.

Anonymous: you’re absolutely right about …

you’re absolutely right about the SPHEW part, that’s just shit and the author regrets writing it. I think the magic was well explained, he explained shaping right before the final exam, which you probably skimmed over. I think you were biased against the fic from the beginning because you felt threatened and insecure by Harry’s braggings, so I’m giving your review 2/5 stars. You tried hard, but in the end it didn’t even matter.

He just tells us that shaping is a thing, we don’t know if it’s possible to shape against gravity, how much he can shape, how fast, any limitations,etc. Apparently, while you shape an object, you can levitate it against gravity, AND non-rigid objects are rigid while the transformation is happening.

Anyway, the reason I’m responding to this one is that I want to respond to a point a lot of people have been suggesting in my anonymous hate asks (and yours is the most polite), I actually came into HPMOR expecting to somewhat enjoy the story- I’ve read enough fantasy to enjoy deconstructions that poke a bit at the common cliches of the fantasy genre. If you look at my early chapter reviews, you might see that I occasionally say things like “this is what I wanted,” “this was good, but I wanted more,” etc. I didn’t expect to dislike it as much as I did.

Anonymous: –Harry’s dark side is not …

–Harry’s dark side is not a horcrux, like in Harry Potter where only a tiny side of his personality is influenced. Harry IS the horcrux, completely, his dark side are just old thought patterns that didn’t get positively reinforced enough to become part of his personality. This is a big twist enough from canon. Secrecy successfully worked to get the philosopher’s stone on Harry’s hands, which worked well enough to advance the no-death plan. Voldemort didn’t end death, only delayed it–

“It’s not that Harry’s dark side is a horcrux, it’s that Harry is a horcrux and that process left him with a dark side.” You realize that’s just splitting hairs, right?

Also, Voldemort literally brought Hermione back from the dead with the stone. The stone also apparently can keep someone young indefinitely. If that isn’t “defeating death” then nothing is.

Anonymous: What made you stat …

what made you stat reading hpmor? have you ever considered writing your own fiction, fanfic or not, and if so have you made it publicly available?

About a dozen people recommended HPMOR to me. I haven’t written any fiction.

Anonymous: why haven’t you written …

why haven’t you written any fiction?

Been busy with other things. I might as well ask why you didn’t get a phd in physics? Just different priorities, different choices.

Lots of asks today

The current tally of stuff that is either agreement or condemnation:

6 positive “I agree with you about most of this, this was a good review” asks.

14 negative “you are wrong about everything and I hate you” asks

4 “I know you are secretly EY playing a hilarious joke” asks.

Anonymous: The current influx …

The current influx of people might be Hacker News and not Reddit—there was a discussion about the end of HPMOR and I linked to you in a comment there. Sorry about that!

No problem. I don’t mind. If it gets to be too much, I can always turn off anonymous asks.

That said, if anyone on Hacker News thinks I got something wrong with the science I mentioned please tell me. I don’t want people reading this and walking away with incorrect scientific ideas.

Anonymous: Do you think there’re …

Do you think there’re any allowances that could potentially be made for the time in which HPMOR takes place? Did EY put any forethought into the scientific or rational misconceptions that could or would have been circulated back in 1991/1992? If the information in the story is modern (in contrast with the setting), do you think the story would have suffered for applying only period-appropriate teachings? I don’t recall if EY addressed this in his author’s notes at some point. Maybe the nanotube.

I honestly don’t know enough about when non-physics science was done to know what the story would be like if you used 90s science instead of current science. EY didn’t seem to mind using current science throughout the story, and in one place referred to a CFAR instructor’s seminar as science research for story purposes.

I don’t think you’d want to back up science by 20 years if you were writing a pedagogical story- best to stay current.

Anonymous: Much more useful …

Much more useful than writing that HPMOR science is incorrect is identifying the errors explicitly. Can you please do so?

I did! I did a let’s read of the whole thing.

Which post were you linked here against? The full review?

Dear anonymous askers

“You hate something I don’t hate so you are an idiot” isn’t really a rational argument.

If you are trying to convince me you learned to be more effective from a story that isn’t the way to do it.

Anonymous: After realizing the amount …

After realizing the amount of failures of applied rationality in HPMOR - a setting in which the author had the perfect opportunity for flawless examples of applied rationality - I find asking myself whether Yudkowky’s Sequences and his other rationality works are as good as I once thought. Have you formed any opinion on him as a rationalist, and a teacher, from HPMOR?

I think I’ve made this comment before- but Yudkowsky is a good advocate of ideas: if you want an argument about why Bayesianism is the best thing ever, etc it’s a fine place to find it.

However, he isn’t a good guide to these ideas. Don’t expect to find the reasons why in a lot of practical situations people don’t use Bayesian methods,etc.

Anonymous: What would you recommend reading …

What would you recommend reading instead of HPMOR for entertaining, education fiction?

Fresh in my mind because he passed away recently- Terry Pratchett.

Also, there is a lot of entertaining non-fiction- read Kahneman, Erik Larson, Mary Roach,etc.

Anonymous: It’s not fair to say that …

It’s not fair to say that “if you’ve read the canon books you know at all what is happening in the story” most were positively surprised when Quirrell actually turned out to be Voldemort.

Alright, I’ve been receiving comments all day about how my reading comprehension is terrible, and how I “don’t get it” and how I’m not smart enough to “get” HPMOR, and now I’ve gotten this.

Who wouldn’t think Quirrell was Voldemort? In one of his first appearances he orchestrates a group of older students beating the crap out of an 11 year old. He does the whole Azkaban thing,etc. The book screams at you about how Quirrell is Voldemort from his first appearance onward.

Anonymous: Are you just jealous …

Are you just jealous that EY has accomplished more with his life than you have?

See, these asks feel like troll posts? I’m going to let this one through so people can see the sort of stuff I’m dealing with here. If I were crafting asks to make the HPMOR fans look irrational, they would look like this.

Anonymous: You way too snarky …

You way too snarky to take seriously. Enjoy your lonely life.

OH MY GOD I HAVE ISOLATED MY SELF FROM FRIENDS AND FAMILY VIA MY SNARKY ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE.

THANK YOU ANONYMOUS, YOU’VE SAVED ME.

Seriously though, I honestly I don’t think I was over-the-top in my posts, and a lot of people who enjoyed HPMOR seem to have enjoyed my reviews. Put your head between your knees, take a deep breath, and calm the fuck down.

Anonymous: Hermione wasn’t fridged …

Hermione wasn’t fridged. It was important to HJPEVs development.

Never once said she was.

Anonymous: You’re writing a fan fiction …

You’re writing a fan fiction entitled “Ron Weasley and the Quantum Theories”, in which 11-year-old Ronald Weasley was raised as both a physicist (by his father, learned in the field of Muggle Studies) and an unabashed Quidditch fanatic, going to his first year of Hogwarts and applying Magic to his beloved sport creatively and scientifically for the first time… what would be Ron’s bold and controversial ambition? Harry’s in HPMOR was to defeat death, so Ron needs something equivalent in RWQT.

I don’t think I’d give Ron a grand ambition other than to combine quidditch science with quidditch magic. So maybe after a spell gone awry (trying to make broomsticks that can tunnel through the opposing players or something), the quaffle behaves like a quantum particle, and the goal keeper has problems because they only know where it will be probablistically. Maybe someone figures out something like Grover’s algorithm to search the arena for the snitch. I’d have to think more about it, but the point would be quidditch “magic” as direct analogy to quantum behavior.

Basically like Gamow’s Mr. Tompkins but with quidditch.

Anonymous: I have a physics phd. …

I have a physics phd. Levitating something against gravity does not necessarily violate conservation of energy. Your whole chapter 2 review is garbage.

I don’t believe you have a physics phd.

Anonymous: I DONT have a physics PHD …

I DONT have a physics PHD but can’t you levitate stuff if you are using energy from some source? You might need FTL maybe if the levitation is instant (speculation) but it does not seem very unlikely. Isn’t levitation basically what an elevator does - of course without the “hidden” source of energy.

Sure, no magic at all will violate conservation of energy if everytime there is an imbalance you say “the energy came from magic” or “the energy went into magic.” But you are just defining it away.

Conservation of energy is totally unrelated to faster-than-light signalling. If you were making magic physics, you could have local violations or non-local physics that conserves energy.

Anonymous: It seems like non-conservation …

It seems like non-conservation of energy is very hard to detect since there could always be hidden reservoirs you don’t know about. Is this true? And is there some such “escape clause” for FTL too? Or anytime you see information being transmitted from A to B instantaneously, we have to have FTL?

Sure, there could always be reservoirs you don’t know about, but if it seems like you can extract energy indefinitely, something’s up. It’s not like wands seem to run down.

If information goes from A to B faster than the speed of light, it’s going to be faster than light. This is pretty hard to observe without actual measuring apparatus because light speed is really fast.

Anonymous: My roommate bet me 200 …

My roommate bet me 200 that all the science in HPMOR was correct. I won because of you. Thank you.

Your welcome, hope they are good for it.

Anonymous: Hello! Part 1: …

Hello! Part 1: I’m a chemical/mechanical engineer, and I think your discussion of mass transfer / diffusion in chapter 15 is a bit off. Most mass transfer in large volumes of gas phase material is dominated by convection rather than diffusion. (if you use e.g. typical room dimensions, you find that Rayleigh-Benard convection is ~always present, and there are other sources of air circulation). This is why smells are distributed quickly and people don’t suffocate in closed rooms.

Part 2:In most unconfined evaporation calculations, it’s fairly typical to assume that the bulk gas is well-mixed and diffusion is the dominant transfer mechanism only in the surface film. Under those conditions non-trivial quantities of transfigured matter could be inhaled. This doesn’t affect your other complaints about the transfiguration rules.

Fair enough, I’ll edit this in to chapter 15.

Anonymous: I think most of your …

I think most of your criticism is on point, but a good bit of it seems like criticism of the genre than the fic itself. All of the following are essentially hallmarks of the hp crackfic genre: {Sanderson’s Law violations, Finding new ways to make fun of the wizarding justice system, HP is Genre Savvy Except When it Matters, stupid jabs at cannon, overuse of silly overwordy titles (Oldest and Most Ancient House of Potter)} (Not that this is a good exmple of crackfic. Better ex is A Black Comedy

This seems confused “HPMOR isn’t ‘crack fic’ but you should give it a pass because crack fic stories also do those things.”

The problem is that HPMOR tells us from all over the place that its “rational fic” and so there is tension between the idea that we should learn from Harry and the idea that the world is designed to be really silly so that Harry can ‘win’ without trying.

Anonymous: Did you see that …

Did you see that Yudkowsky has crowd sourced reddit to find and fix his science flaws? Most the flaws are quoting you.

Honestly, that is probably the best possible outcome. Lots of people apparently read and like it (my positive feed back is usually “I agree with you, but I still like HPMOR”). I’d prefer they get factual information.

Anonymous: People would take you …

People would take you more seriously if you went such an asshole. You are not wrong, you are just an asshole.

I’m going to let this one through because the second sentence is pretty close to a Big Lebowski reference.

And because I want to respond to some anonymous stuff I’ve been getting:

So responding to this: I’m not going to rewrite my criticism to remove the “snark.” I don’t think I’m “signalling that I’m a member of sneer culture” (exact quote from an ask) and I actually don’t really know what that would mean.

If you don’t like my writing style, fine, that’s totally fair. But it doesn’t make me wrong.

If you don’t like it, you should have just stopped reading and STFU

How often have you seen the sentiment “I don’t know why people wouldn’t like HPMOR”- that is because most people stop reading and STFU. I guarantee you I’m not the first person to notice all the issues with the science references (or the literary critique) in the story- most people didn’t bother to point them out or bring them up.

Stop link spamming your narcissistic trash all over reddit

I haven’t once linked my stuff over reddit- that’s other people who probably liked my stuff (for the record, if you are linking me in other places, that’s totally fine, but please make it clear that you aren’t the author).

You should spend more time talking about all the wall to wall AWESOME in the story.

I didn’t like the story! Surely if you want people to talk about how awesome the story is you can find people that loved it all over the place.

LOL! Maybe if you weren’t so drunk you wouldn’t be such an asshat

I readily admit I did not take my project very seriously. It was just a goofy side project. Even still, people find it interesting.

Anonymous: You’re getting “sneer culture” …

You’re getting “sneer culture” asks because Big Yud wrote this about you(r reviews): “I try not to read online hate culture or sneer culture - at all, never mind whether it is targeted at me personally. It is their own mistake or flaw to deliberately go reading things that outrage them, and I try not to repeat it.”

So he posted a comment about he deliberately didn’t read me? I mean, that is fine. I’m not heading over to reddit to read what people are saying about what I wrote- I made my case as best I can. There is no rule that you have to read about yourself.

But like… why bring it up at all? “I didn’t read anything that guy said, but he is a sneering moron.”

So if you think I’m involved with “sneer culture”

Do you think there is a place for negative reviews of things? Should negative reviewers be forced to hide their bias?

Anonymous: First of all …

First of all, thanks so much for doing this whole review thing! I hope it hasn’t, in any way, detracted from your enjoyment of blogging and doing stuff. I very much enjoyed all of it. My question is do you think overall that this story does more good than bad? It has wonky science/ bad-ish story, by far, but, on the other hand, a lot of people are now more interested in science. Do you think overall it has been a force of “good”? I think I am leaning towards yes, in part because of your review.

So I’m not the arbiter of taste (as much as I might say otherwise if I’ve had a few drinks). I can’t tell you that the stories bad objectively outweighs the good. For me, the things I disliked were very strong.

There is a famous essay by CP Snow that asserts that intellectual life is split into two cultures, humanities and science. Throughout college and my phd program I was surrounded by people who insist that this division is obviously good, and that science culture » humanities culture. This comes with a lot of other baggage (since science culture is smaller, most people are “sheeple,” etc). I think these ideas are 1. deeply entrenched in “science” culture 2. harmful and wrong.

Because of this, I’m deeply distrustful of things that strongly reinforce these sorts of ideas (implicitly and explicitly). I’m also deeply distrustful of the “think real hard -> your problem is solved” methodology that appears time and time again in HPMOR. It’s dressing up deeply unscientific behavior as the ultimate in scientific behavior.

So for me, these issues were always going to overshadow the good in HPMOR. But for you, they obviously didn’t. And that’s fine. People have different tastes.

As for whether it’s a “force of good,” I think that might be to strong. I think it’s been a piece of writing some people found entertaining and some people didn’t that is probably ultimately neutral in the world of ideas and literature.

Inference!

I took the text of some of my asks and chucked them into a quick statistical model. They divide pretty neatly into 3 clusters, which also coincide with the day they came in.

So if an ask contains the words “sneer” it came in today with pretty high probability. No one had used that word much before. So someone linked me with the word sneer I guess.

The word snark signals pretty strongly you came in before I wrote my full review. You also are likely to have used “uncharitable,” “geek porn” and “efficient market hypothesis.” I have literally no explanation for those particular words, maybe they were mentioned by whoever linked me.

The word “examples” (always complaining about how I gave no examples) came in a day after I wrote my full review, I think someone must have linked to only the full review and the people bitching found the ask button before the “my methods of rationality series” link. These people also were likely to use Hermione, asshat, fridge, and EY (always suggesting I’m secretly EY).

There is a very small fourth cluster that asked troll questions about gamergate, rape, reverse racism,etc.

Anonymous: Would be really interested …

Would be really interested in details on the statistical model and how you made those inferences, if you don’t mind and if you get some time in between physics blogging! Also, wondering if you used R or Python or pytumblr etc because that would be cool.

I moved the data to a file in the most low tech way possible (copy/paste). Since I was reading them, I flagged a few phrases (i.e. efficient market hypothesis) I wanted to keep as one token.

After that I ran it through some python code I originally wrote for a client, so I can’t be too specific- but it does a tiny bit of stemming, removes a set list of words (my own list of stop words, basically), after that, each word’s existence sets a flag, so you get big vectors of 1s and 0s for which words are present/not present, and then finds clusters by

1. randomly putting down some cluster centers

2. finding which center is closest to each data point and assigning the point to that cluster

3. calculate the center of each cluster, and move the central point of the cluster to the new center.

Rinse and repeat

To calculate the distance between points, you could just use the euclidean distance but I use a few things I’ve found to be slight improvements.

I also have some “goodness of fit” metrics on how well the points are clustered. So it calculates first with 2 clusters, checks goodness of fit, then 3,etc. And it stops adding new clusters when the fit stops improving.

Anonymous: Who cares if the science …

Who cares if the science is completely correct or not? No author can be an expert in everything.

The big problem is that Yudkowsky asserts over and over that all the science is correct.

If he said “I tried to make all the science correct, but I’m no expert,” then sure, I’d agree with you.

slatestarscratchpad: Some people have questioned …

slatestarscratchpad:

Some people have questioned the term “sneer culture”. I don’t have any particular thoughts as it relates to HPMOR, but this seems to me to be a real natural kind.

Quick definition by extension:
Frequent gathering places: Something Awful, RationalWiki, Gawker, Freethought Blogs
Favorite words:…

So I want to point out that my hpmor criticism embodies basically none of those things. So maybe now people will stop spamming me with asks about how I’m an evil sneerer who sneers.

Anonymous: I recently finished reading HPMOR …

I recently finished reading HPMOR and just now finished your review. Both helped me look at the whole thing more critically, rather than blind fanboyism. Would you be willing to write a story with a similar premise? A scientist being transported to a magical and that tries to figure out the secret of magic, all while using that knowledge to fight off some evil (because conflict is important to a story)?

Several people have recommended Ra, Worm and Harry Potter and the Natural d20 to me for stories along those lines. Once I get around to reading them, I can decide if I have anything interesting to add to that sort of story.

So if you think I’m involved with “sneer culture”

linkhyrule5:

su3su2u1:

Do you think there is a place for negative reviews of things? Should negative reviewers be forced to hide their bias?

The problem with sneer culture isn’t really with the original poster, as I understand it - it’s with the community of “haters” that grows up around it, and the community of fans that grow up around counter-hating it, and so on and so forth. See toxoplasma of rage.

Basically, EY’s really just saying “That review is vitriolic enough that it’d be very unpleasant to read; can someone filter it for critique and phrase it in a more edible format? “

Which I honestly feel is reasonably mature.

But honestly, other than a few one-off “I didn’t like this” sort of reviews (that are on sites dedicated to Harry Potter fanfic) literally no one but me seems to have put any time into looking at HPMOR on it’s own term, and discussing the science and themes. There is no sneer culture, there is just “sneer me” I guess.

I’m not suggesting EY has to read this, or even that he should. I don’t think anyone has to read it (which is why I didn’t link it to the subreddit). But pointing out that my review exists while also claiming it’s a bad, ugly, sneery sneerfest isn’t exactly doing my ask box any good.

And it’s not like he hasn’t heard the same criticism before. Here is a reddit thread I got sent by fan mail with my same criticism from 2 years ago:

http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/19z9sw/help_understanding_harrys_rant_in_ch2/

slatestarscratchpad: When I think of sneer culture …

slatestarscratchpad:

<snip>

When I think of sneer culture, I think of people who would never donate a cent of their own money to help the fight against AIDS, but will always go out of their way to mock HIV denialists and make them feel stupid, even if they’re minding their own business and not bothering anybody.

<snip>

So I want to point out that HIV denialists are always hurting/’bothering’ people.

A family friend’s daughter passed away because HIV denialist literature convinced her not to take medicine to protect her daughter. She then passed away not long after.

She wasn’t aggressively converted, she got her diagnosis, paniced, and turned to the internet for advice.

There are real consequences to those terrible ideas.

I don’t know if sneering at them/making them feel stupid helps rid people of the ideas (it probably doesn’t), but we should be doing everything in our power to clear out the ideas.

Anonymous: Does sneering …

Does sneering at the community make you feel like a big man (or woman)?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I laughed at this so hard. I haven’t been letting these through because they are all sort of like this.

But I love that anon cared about the gender while insulting me.

Just realized the irony

Spent all day getting asks “sneering” at me for being part of “sneer culture.”

Glass houses…

countersignal: slatestarscratchpad: Some people …

countersignal:

slatestarscratchpad:

Some people have questioned the term “sneer culture”. I don’t have any particular thoughts as it relates to HPMOR, but this seems to me to be a real natural kind.

Quick definition by extension: Frequent gathering places: Something Awful, RationalWiki, Gawker, Freethought Blogs Favorite words: gross, man-child, entitled Favorite targets: bronies, furries, paleo dieters, conservatives, anti-vaxxers, Tumblrinas Favorite accusations: person lives in their parents’ basement, person is overweight, person is a virgin, person is an MRA or “fedora”, person believes woo or is a “denialist”, person is a “special snowflake”.

Quick definition by intension: The apex predators of the signaling world, at least in Blue-coded spaces. People who have optimized for always being on the right side of a lynch mob. People who really enjoy punching down at non-conformists, and trying to invoke people’s Disgust foundation to urge them to treat such non-conformists lower than dirt.

A powerful combination of mocking anybody more social-justicey than normal as a special snowflake otherkin Tumblrina, and mocking anybody less social-justicey than normal as a disgusting MRA PUA racist creep, while themselves making sure to be exactly the most popular amount of social-justicey at all times.

Favorite attack is to take a complicated non-mainstream idea, focus on its worst and most extreme practitioners, link it however tenuously to things that are known to be taboo and gross, then declare that the thing itself is taboo and gross, and declare anyone who says it’s more complicated to be a fellow-traveler who should themselves be considered taboo and gross. Example: “He believes in cryonics, which is popular in libertarian circles, but some libertarians become neoreactionaries, and some neoreactionaries are MRAs. So basically if you believe in cryonics you’re an entitled fedora! M’lady!”

The problem is that these people are right 90% of the time, because usually the strongest position to mock people from is the popular consensus position, and when consensuses and rare fringe groups clash, the consensus is usually right. This makes them hard to catch and get rid of.

I don’t know if this is exactly what Eliezer means when he says “sneer culture”, but it’s how I think of it and it’s something that sure as heck needs a name.

Does this happen to such an extent outside Blue Tribe circles? If not, that’s a damned strong argument either for or against something: against the Blue Tribe or for Christianity (or at least a version of it that hasn’t justifiably had a siege mentality for over a century) or something along those lines.

Given that these people have amassed a significant amount of Blue institutional power… if their institutions don’t believe coexistence is possible, why should anyone else? And they’re the ones who declared war on the rest of the world — and isn’t it said that we’re supposed to have learned a lesson from WW2 about that?

You must not have ever lived in a red state. Yes, the “red tribe” bashes hippies, sissies, “hard-leftists,” commies, etc.

My friend pulled his kid from public school, because she said something about global warming and the teacher made fun of her.

Blessed Silence

I awoke to 0 asks about HPMOR. First time in nearly a week.

Anonymous: Do you think …

Do you think it would be a good thing if HPMOR partially displaced Atlas Shrugged as wish-fulfilment fantasy for high schoolers of above-average intelligence? (Sorry for the HPMOR ask.)

I’m indifferent, I didn’t really enjoy either work. Hopefully in the future all high schoolers of above-average intelligence read Pratchett or something more fun.

Anonymous: You seem like …

You seem like an intelligent person, why hate all over hpmor munch

Because I didn’t like it.

Anonymous: I actually know EY, …

I actually know EY, and he is a master of moving the goalposts. You’re right to complain that “all the science is right” untill someone spots an error, and then it was “HJPEV makes mistakes he is 11” or “he was really Tom Riddle there.” or “he has all of Tom Riddle’s memories echoed in him so he has more information.” He’ll never admit that something isn’t perfect. It is always a secret master plan.

I sort of doubt you actually know the guy, but that is the impression I get.

Anonymous: Same asker …

Same asker. As an example, he wrote a long WoG about how there wasn’t an afterlife in HPMOR. Now with your criticism, he says “there isn’t enough evidence to support the soul hypothesis. It’s just one hypothesis among many! He isn’t using a reductionist prior.”

Same asker. It’s just bs, because the whole point of the story is the transhumanism. He acts like he is infallible just because there is much confusion about HJPEV vs TR and because HJPEV is so young.

Got everything off your chest now?

Was I linked somewhere again?

The HPMOR asks are back in force.

Anonymous: I won a bet …

I won a bet against sometime who bet me that hpmor was shorter than the first Harry Potter book. I got the idea from you!

I don’t think can be true? Who would take that bet?

reddit. com/r/HPMOR/comments/ …

reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2zfkx1/pretentious_discussion_of_harrys_hierarchical/cpji6wd?context=3

I’m sort of trying to stay off the r/hpmor type forums, because the last thing I need or want is to get into arguments on reddit. I assume this is whatever thread linked me again?

“Why doesn’t this community …

“Why doesn’t this community have any good critics? Our ideas must be super awesome!”

“What about that guy? Or all of these people? Or this one?”

“They are just sneering! They probably have too much deference to status so they aren’t genetically capable of not sneering. I wouldn’t bother reading them.”

uncrediblehallq: Harry Potter …

uncrediblehallq:

Harry Potter and the problem with genre deconstructions:

So, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s long-running Harry Potter fanfic, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, is now complete. I’ve been holding off until now to post some thoughts on it I’ve had since the climax was posted ~2 weeks ago.

Thought I’d link to other reviews.

Maybe I’m not sneering. …

Maybe I’m not sneering. Maybe I’m minimizing the hedons associated with incorrect science in a story.

argumate: Thanks! I think I can …

argumate:

Thanks! I think I can summarise most of your reaction as being a complaint that HPMOR is marketed as a story about science, but is actually about power.

Harry barely uses the scientific method, traditional or otherwise, and most of the rules of magic only exist in order for Harry to gain power over others.

The story ends with Harry gaining power over Hogwarts, magical Britain, and essentially the world. He can overcome death, manufacture unlimited quantities of gold or anything else, and he has collected the complete set of the strongest magical artefacts and an immortal hybrid unicorn/troll sidekick.

While that sounds like the typical outcome of a poorly-run D&D campaign, it’s worth noting that many aspects of the story are intended to reflect reality, and the focus on power is no exception.

It’s not that the story barely uses the scientific method- it’s that the story consistently uses Aristotelian methods (think hard -> be right), which are pretty much the opposite of the scientific method, all while claiming to be didactic fiction. The lesson it’s teaching is that science is for suckers, real men think hard and then win. Heck, the only time science is tried, it fails so Harry gives up on science and just starts thinking hard.

Also, read this again:

The story ends with Harry gaining power over Hogwarts, magical Britain, and essentially the world. He can overcome death, manufacture unlimited quantities of gold or anything else, and he has collected the complete set of the strongest magical artefacts and an immortal hybrid unicorn/troll sidekick. That isn’t a focus on reality it’s a focus on wish fulfillment! That is why its the “typical outcome of a poorly-run D&D campaign.”

Anonymous: Do you actually think …

Do you actually think Pratchett could provide smart high schoolers with the wish-fulfilment fantasy and feelings of superiority/importance/meaning so many of them crave, the way Atlas Shrugged and HPMOR do? Pratchett is good fun but I’ve never met anybody who said it changed their life or who got involved in real-world discussion groups or movements because of it, whereas this is (somewhat distressingly) common with Atlas Shrugged and HPMOR.

I was just suggesting a good alternative book to read.

Anonymous: Ender’s Game and Dawkins …

Ender’s Game and Dawkins come closer but HPMOR seems designed for this niche. At minimum I think it has much better ethical side effects than the “be an asshole”/”altruism is evil” baggage of Atlas Shrugged. (Yudkowsky even threw in a rant about open borders!) But maybe you think filling this wish-fulfilment niche at all does too much harm to be worth it?

Oh, I mean, I think generally a lot of stuff sits in that niche. Schlock genre sci-fi and fantasy, etc.

I’d rather have Rand over HPMOR honestly, because I get super frustrated about people not understanding how science works :)

Anonymous: Re: the last published anon …

Re: the last published anon. I’d say Pratchett’s a good place to get a satisfying moral foundation. I know his body of work helped high-school-me become a more compassionate/understanding person and that it’s affected my trajectory in life. I found the stories super fulfilling. But I’d also say Pratchett’s moral of “the world is complicated, and whatever happens, be a compassionate person” definitely doesn’t have the hooks of “everyone else is stupid and greedy, screw ‘em” that HPMOR and Rand do

somervta: su3su2u1: “Why doesn’t …

somervta:

su3su2u1:

“Why doesn’t this community have any good critics? Our ideas must be super awesome!”

“What about that guy? Or all of these people? Or this one?”

“They are just sneering! They probably have too much deference to status so they aren’t genetically capable of not sneering. I wouldn’t bother reading them.”

I would like to know who apart from yourself that second paragraph refers to (unless it’s in-community critics - people who like hpmor but have and explain issues they have with parts of it?). I can totally take a little more sneering if it’s as… complete as yours.

(separate issue, but… can you seriously defend yourself as not doing something-like-sneering? ‘Hariezer Yudotter’?)

The first thing that pops into my head is rationalwiki. I’ve been linked to their posts by people as “OMG, how terrible!” and I always think it’s actually a pretty fair (though biased) piece. Or at least it was several months ago when I read it, it’s a wiki so that is a moving target.

And I think sneering would be only talking about Draco’s rape threat, or only talking about the chapter where a group of 18 year olds beat up an 11 year old at the behest of a teacher after a class. Taking one piece out of context, and talking about it’s ridiculousness, and nothing else.

I took HPMOR for exactly what it claimed to be, I read the entire thing. I pointed out the many times it gets the science completely wrong, and the themes and ideas I found suspect. I took it for the didactic fiction it claimed to be and demonstrated the problems I had. Yes, I mocked the fact that Harry was an obvious self-insert with a childish portmanteu. But it’s too much to ask for a critic to take the story seriously and write a fair critique AND TO USE A TONE YOU APPROVE OF. I didn’t like the story. I’m not going to pretend I was dispassionate about it.

And I doubt I’m the first person to notice all these problems with the science- I’m just the only person who seems to have taken the story seriously enough to actually care.

I also think all the people complaining about my tone should avoid going into science or research, where arguments are far more contentious.

Anonymous: I hesitate to link …

I hesitate to link friends to them because they read more like a hateblog than a review/critique. I think something like this may be what people are trying to point to when they say it’s “sneering” (though many are no doubt just aping EY); just looking at the first page, things like “this chapter had me rolling my eyes so hard that I now I have quite the headache” immediately jump out. Your overall tone seems to be that of contempt.

But what are you really hoping to get here? In a positive review, you’d probably find someone saying “I LOVED this chapter. I was shaking with excitement” or “I wept tears of joy,” or other such. In a negative review you might find sentiments like “I was rolling my eyes,” “this was viscerally upsetting,” etc.

I didn’t like the story. If your friends don’t want to read negative reviews of HPMOR that is fine, but negative reviews are going to be, you know, negative.

Edit: this isn’t rhetorical. Seriously, what are you expecting to get here?

Anonymous: Same guy as earlier …

Same guy as earlier (I’m not somervta) - I was hoping for a review that I could link to some of my friends to explain some problems I have with HPMoR in a relatively balanced fashion. The current one feels like an attack rather than a review. Many reviews are negative without being contemptuous; many reviews are positive without being ecstatic.

I really didn’t like the story. I’m sorry that there aren’t any more neutral reviews for you. I try to make my point of view clear, so people know where I’m coming from.

BUT, and this is important, I also try to be fair. I correct mistakes where I think I’ve made them and I try to treat the story on the terms it sets for itself.

Anonymous: I wonder how the accuracy …

I wonder how the accuracy of “The Science of Discworld” compares to HPMOR. Probably better (discounting the fact that it’s from 99)

I don’t know. I didn’t know The Science of Discworld was a thing until right now. I wonder how the accuracy of “The Science of Discworld” compares to HPMOR. Probably better (discounting the fact that it’s from 99)

I don’t know. I didn’t know The Science of Discworld was a thing until right now.

Anonymous: You should stop wasting …

You should stop wasting your breath. Less Wrong is just Christianity for the I fucking love science crowd. You basically criticized a bible. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” is on the Potters tombstones in canon and hpmor. One is Christian, one is transhumanist.

I do agree that transhumanists basically recreated christianity, and I did note in my reviews that the Potter’s motto was from Corinthians.

I didn’t realize it was also on the tombstones in the original books, probably there it wasn’t a “family motto,” Yudkowsky must have seen it and not realized it was a biblical quote, turned it into a family motto.

I’m actually going to edit a bit about this into my chapter 96.

Anonymous: I used to think you’re …

I used to think you’re a pretty cool guy until you started criticizing Eliezer for things he hasn’t done.

? Mostly I’ve criticized HPMOR? Might be helpful if you actually point to something I said that offended you?

HPMOR timeline

I’m done with HPMOR, the story is over,etc. If you notice problems that need correcting, or are like that anon that said I “accused Yudkowsky” of something or just feel the need to yell at me, you have until the end of the weekend. After that, asks about HPMOR will be summarily deleted.

Anonymous: Is Harry James …

Is Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres a sociopath?

Not really? He is an incurious and a huge twerp. And he is constantly making wrong references to cognitive biases and scientific ideas, so he has an unfounded arrogance. That doesn’t make him a sociopath, just an asshole.

Anonymous: What compelled you …

What compelled you to do the HPMOR critique?

A bunch of people told me it was an amazing story that was life changing and that it was literally impossible to dislike. Things like “I can always tell if someone is intelligent by showing them HPMOR.”

Anonymous: Are you happy that …

Are you happy that HPMOR ended with Harry x Hermione, or were you rooting for Draco x Hermione instead?

By the end I was basically ambivalent.

Anonymous: If you had to …

If you had to review HPMOR again, what would you do differently?

Instead of Harriezer I would have used Potkowsky.

I read the three reddit posts I found on my HPMOR review

I figured enough time had passed that I wouldn’t feel the urge to comment or defend myself. Luckily, not much to defend myself against (other than people complaining about tone)- it seems no one really disagrees with me about the bad/wrong/misused science,etc. So rest assured, my cutting edge criticism was r/HPMOR vetted.

Walking on a college campus today…

Overheard someone recommend my blog to someone reading HPMOR. I HAVE ARRIVED.

Anonymous: Say, do you think …

Say, do you think you’re going to look at HPMOR fanfic, or would that just cause a singularity of sadness?

I’m almost certainly done with rationalist fiction.

Anonymous: Yudkowsky is shit talking …

Yudkowsky is shit talking you on reddit HPMOR. Says all your science mistakes are fake. You should get in there.

I’ve said this before, but the HPMOR subreddit is clearly supposed to be for fans. I’m not going to go and crap all over it. I didn’t like the story, that’s not my forum.

I’ve always said that I will correct any science I’ve gotten wrong if someone brings it to my attention. If you look at my hpmor reviews, you’ll see I’ve made edits and corrections where I was mistaken. I’m not an expert in all things, I’ll obviously get some things wrong.

If anyone, Yudkowsky included, wants me to edit mistakes they merely have to point out where I’m mistaken. I leave anon asks open, in part, because I don’t want to cut off that avenue.

Anonymous: Yudkowsky’s shitposting about …

Yudkowsky’s shitposting about you keeps getting worse. It’s basically character assassination. Get in there and defend yourself!

I can understand your desire to stir up drama on reddit. But what would it accomplish? I saw the comment in question, does it really seem like I’m going to accomplish something by engaging?

Back in chapter 20 I criticized Quirrell’s crap use of Bayes theorem to justify jumping to a conclusion. Yudkowsky is doing the same thing. He hasn’t read any of my work but he decided

1. It’s super hard to find science errors, so his prior that anything I found is low. So his prior for “is making this up” is high.
2. Every mistake or criticism mentioned then “supports” the fact that I’m making it up.

There is no evidence that can move that opinion, so there is really no point in going in there and causing a shitstorm.

You can learn to reason just like Yudkowsky in that comment directly from HPMOR. Which is why I thought I needed to write a long thing about HPMOR.

Anonymous: I don’t want to pester you …

I don’t want to pester you, but if it’s really “I saw the comment in question, does it really seem like I’m going to accomplish something by engaging?” You can definitely accomplish changing minds here. Seeing these comments of his alone have affected my opinion of him negatively, and given that he’s getting downvoted on his own forum, readers are definitely open to an opinion now. You probably can’t convince Yudkowsky, but passerby? Of course you don’t have to, but on the end, why not?

I guess I feel like I made my points as clearly as I could in my original reviews. I don’t know what I can do other than just keep repeating stuff I’ve already said.

And also, if people create a community around their love of a story, I really don’t think it’s my place to run in and throw my weight around yelling about how bad the things is. I’ve kept my opinions isolated in their own little tumblr, and I feel confident enough in what I’ve written that I think the posts speak pretty well on their own.

Several people have told me that a lot of the r/HPMOR community agrees with many of my points, and that is great. I feel like I’ve accomplished something if people are saying “ok, I still love this story, it’s fantastic, BUT now I can see why someone might react differently.” And I don’t think I could have achieved that if I didn’t let the community read the posts and come to their own opinions without me sitting over their shoulder yelling “SEE? SEE WHAT I MEAN?”