One thought on “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”

1. Imagine Harry Potter being replaced with a Harry Potter with combined talents of Ender Wiggins, Artemis Fowl and Yagami Light and put him in world much darker than Rowling envisioned Yep, that s what this book was No Ron or Hagrid to distract you, this is a Machiavellian Harry who manipulates people to his own ends, with powers the Dark Lord knows not, and the ambition for world domination or, as he would call it, world optimization It is a HUGE book and still ongoing Took me three days straight [...]

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2. AI researcher and decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky probably woke up one day and asked himself a single question what would have happened in Harry Potter s first year in Hogwarts, had he not been such an insufferable idiot You might not have considered him to be an idiot in the first place, but as the book progresses and the new Harry makes his way around Hogwarts, facing the same problems and situations, it becomes impossible to ignore the oh so logical and natural way he handles them this ti [...]

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3. I wanted to like this, honestly When I stumbled upon it and read that description, I figured it was going to be brilliant So naturally it wasn t The author leaves a note saying if you don t like it by chapter five, wait until chapter ten, and if you still don t like it by then, get out That s exactly what I m doing.This isn t the first book so to speak where the idea is wonderful but it s executed horribly For starters, the writing is a bit sloppy at times, and when I say at times, I mean every [...]

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4. Recently I ve been wondering just what exactly I wanted from literary fiction Surely I did not expect life changing epiphanies, at least not from every single book But neither did I want my books be merely means to cheap escapism, which I had, perhaps mistakenly, long associated with genre fiction Somehow I seem to be asking both too much and not enough, and therein lies the reason for my inability to rekindle the kind of pure unadulterated love I used to have for reading No longer can I simply [...]

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5. Great idea terrible execution In fact, I think the summary is completely misleading While some scenes had me laughing out loud, I spent most of my time cringing or raising one eyebrow or the other HPMOR is saturated with Yudkowsky s blatant disdain and a condescending tone Characters are, for the most part, wildly out of character Harry completely fails to act like an 11 year old boy, and reads like a thinly veiled, sociopathic self insert Draco is also worrying sociopathic, even beyond the rape [...]

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6. I wanted to love this book, I really did I mean, the premise itself was what got me hooked I m sure we ve all thought that there was something to be desired in the Plausibility and Possibilities department of the original Harry Potter series, so I jumped at the idea of a realistic story inspired by the methods of rationality Turns out it wasn t inspired by it so much as it was drowned by it Spoiler Alert I didn t finish the book Yudkowsky left a note about how the series hits its stride at chapt [...]

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7. Update 15 March, 2015OMG It s over It has been a wild ride, one of the best I ve ever been on The ending was satisfying in ways I cannot express Yudkowsky has wowed, amazed, and blown minds through this epic, and I can t wait to read of his work in the future I have never felt the need to take fan fiction seriously They are, at best, exercises of creativity in a predetermined world, and the best of them usually do not stray too far from the established lore As it stands, Harry Potter and the Me [...]

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8. This is the funniest thing I have ever read I have never read something this funny before It was extremely difficult to do anything except read it until I had finished it, and now it s hard to do anything but think about it and wish there was a lot of it for me to read.I guess I ll just read some of his rationalist essay series instead

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9. I can t decide if this was really good or really bad As a novel or the majority of a novel it was pretty terrible As fanfic it seemed pretty good to me, which doesn t mean anything, because I am not the kind of guy that reads fanfic at all I guess I ll go with three stars which seems to say both of those things at once.Concept that I like take 11 year old Harry Potter, about to enter Hogwarts Make him an incredibly astute and science minded young boy, and then see just how he d react to all of t [...]

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10. Imagine if Ender Wiggen were put in Harry Potter s place, and the cunning of other characters upgraded in a similar way Yudkowsky is a gifted writer, and he plays off the tropes of fanfiction and the idiosyncrasies of the world of Hogwarts in a way that transcends the genre The books is at times laugh out loud funny, touching, inspiring, and always very smart Writing fanfiction in order to get people to read your blog about obscure logical fallacies You d have to be a genius to actually succeed [...]

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11. I wanted to like this fanfic As a mathematician and an atheist I should have liked this fanfic.I didn t The writing is poor even for fanfic and the characterisation worse The author has turned Harry Potter into the most unsympathetic and unlikeable child I can possibly imagine which I would guess from his bio is also a blatant Mary Sue.Should have been called Harry Potter, the Snotty Little Git.

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12. HPMOR as it s known to fans is the perfect book for nerds funny, clever, rife with allusions to other great nerdly works, and yet seriously capable of teaching something real In this case, the real value add are principles of reasoning that can lead to better decisions by genuinely emotional, non Spockian humans in real life Shockingly, this story also has a plot It runs roughly parallel with the HP canon, but the relationships are different and the entire arc of the Potter stories seems destine [...]

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13. Eliezer has completely turned the story around with a fabulous mixture of real science and JKRverse The book is peppered with real life use of rationality , Bayesian Logic and psychology It s quite a learning experience, especially if you look up the bits you don t understand.

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14. This is an enormous fan fic version of the first book in the Harry Potter series, rewritten portraying Harry as a hyperrationalist.Not worth five stars as a work of fiction per se, but fascinating enough to get bumped up to amazing because of several other factors Folks with mildly compulsive rationalist and or scientific leanings often have trouble with the nonsensical goings on of magical worlds Occasionally Yudkowsky nails this so well that I was laughing convulsively That the author sometime [...]

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15. Alright, my first complaint is that it should warn readers that it contains sensitive issues I almost choked on the chocolate I ve been eating when I read Draco s nonchalant threat of rape I mean, hello Isn t he still eleven And okay, maybe there are lots of open minded eleven year olds in the world but saying that to an almost complete stranger is too much Harry was very close to being bad here it made me wonder what that idiot Petunia had been teaching him He is rude to his elders, which I can [...]

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16. Harry Potter science philosophy slightly mind boggling very entertainingAll of the above is true However, whether or not I have truly read this fan fiction is a different question In one sense, I have read it In another, I have not The reason for my discontinuity can easily be explained I have read all of this work that exists up to this point in time However, this book is far from complete In any case, though, I will accept that I have read this book because I can t be currently reading somethi [...]

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17. Okay, so this gets tricky.The first, say, ten fifteen chapters were AMAZING I was cracking up I snorted my soda at pretty much the same times Harry hacked up his Comed Tea at the many absolutely hysterical moments that come up when Harry is a complete brilliant jerk with negligible people skills he has them in theory probably because he read about them and he can manipulate, but otherwise Then, by about chapter 15 maybe not til chapter 20 I just started getting bored The writing was getting repe [...]

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18. Update I m forced to rate this down after reading danluu su3su2u1 hpmor I do hope he doesn t mind my sharing the link , as it turns out that Yudkowsky was actually rather sloppy with his science, many of his claims are unsupported by research and or incorrectly applied to the situation Which is a total deal breaker.Quite fun, but lots of wishful thinking by the author.I never thought I d say this, but Rowling is way realistic True, she made lots of irrational mistakes, some of which are taken u [...]

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19. Simply Brilliant Arguably one of the best books I have read so far Definitely better than the original Harry Potter itself It s not meant to be a spoof, but an espousal of the author s philosophy of rationality This book is so realistic, even though it s based on magic It makes you reflect on life Above all, it keeps you guessing till the very end because the author refuses to categorize characters in the book as being good or evil And the best part is, the book is free to download from hpmor an [...]

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20. Although I think it s rather well written for a fanfic not quite good enough for a novel , Harry was too Mary Sue ish The main example of this is when 11 year old Harry creates a human Patronus that literally kills Dementors There is also a bit too much Dumbledore and Ron bashing for my tastes, plus Harry is extremely condescending.

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21. At the time of this review the story is 103 chapters, and counting, long longer than the actual books , and still within the timeframe of the first book Set to end March 2015.An alternate world where the role of Harry Potter is played by a somewhat sociopathic Sheldon Cooper Instead of marrying the repugnant mr Dursley, Harry s aunt Petunia married a respected physicist resulting in Harry being raised in a loving environment where knowledge is praised and making the most of your life an acceptab [...]

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22. A fun take on the Potterverse from someone obsessed with all the ways that humans fail to behave in ways that make sense for a rather strict meaning of make sense Leaving aside the usual fights over the legitimacy of fanfic in general, the big question is how much Yudkowsky s Potter is an idealized author stand in a Mary Sue , or Marty Stu in the parlance My answer Quite a lot, but not fatally On the minus side, this Harry Potter talks and thinks quite a lot like someone in his late twenties wit [...]

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23. Not only is this the best fanfiction I ve ever read, it is among my favorite novels of all time, and so far I ve only been able to read up to chapter 85.This is a reimagining of the canonical novels of Harry Potter where the main character is extremely rational Although he is a preteen, this version of Harry Potter has a mind on par with an extremely gifted 18 year old, and it shows His nemesis, Voldemort, is similarly increased in intelligence by a dramatic amount The Tom Riddle of this fanfic [...]

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24. I will keep this review brief and to the point First off, all the negative reviews come from people who are either too stupid to understand it or are too in love with the Potterverse to accept something better Keep that in mind Written with a magical version of Ender Wiggin, Harry Potter is a child genius who is skilled in the ways of science and Yudkowsky s brand of rationality Naturally, Eliezer toys with all the loopholes of Rowling s original works, and adds far depth to the characters and [...]

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25. 2007 25700 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2007 , , , , , 10 10

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26. Finally finished this I think I ll have to do another read somewhere down the line to see if I actually learned anything out of this.Cognitive psychology is not my thing, but this is the closest HP fan fic that attempts magical realism, and I admire it for that There are certain background story changes that I consider to be canon in the back of my head Things like the secret of Philosopher s stone, Salazar Slytherin having taught Battle Magic, the True Patronus charm, the safety rules of Transf [...]

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27. This book is flawed in many ways It s too long The protagonist is in periods being too annoying It strains suspension of disbelief pretty regularly, and it s a pity that boys men hold the 3 most important positions Despite these flaws, there s no way I can give this book less than 5 stars There s just too much that is hilariously good fun, and it s just too skillfull in spearing many of the silly aspects of the original HP series, yet it does so good naturedly and with respect and kindness to t [...]

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28. If you are a geek, you will most likely enjoy this book far than the actual Harry Potter series This is especially true if you re a fan of smart characters who don t make stupid decisions that leave you screaming at the author I always get this unbelieving look in my eyes when, in the first movie, Harry keeps leaving his invisibility cloak on the ground in random places Also, this is the book that sparked my interest in science and rationality So there s that, too.I ve always considered The Hit [...]

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29. I read this simultaneously with Bruce Sterling s Distraction, and they re a bit intertwined for me They both feature male protagonists who are special by birth Oscar Valparaiso is a clone with extrahuman abilities, Harry Potter is The Boy Who Lived And Was Then Raised To Be Rational They both involve a lot of political maneuvering, interpersonal manipulation, and being terribly clever They re both quite funny.This is a web serial, reimagining JK Rowling with a single point of divergence Petunia [...]

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30. , , , 30% , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , EXPECTO PATRONUM,

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