What is the appeal of Rationalist fics?

I really don't see the appeal at all. Personally, there is no fanfic that drives me away from fandom and towards canon faster then the Rationalist fic. Most of which has to do with how most of the time, the characters that are now "rational" become very OOC in order to make room for their new-found "rationality". Some other reasons I don't like Rationalist fics is that in real life, people hold onto the Idiot Ball all the time and most of the time, the "rational" characters don't have the Unreliable Narrator thing they have in canon, that is, they know information they shouldn't know because the author knows it.

So yeah, for me Rationalist fics are Alternative Character Interpretation at best and Canon Defilement at worst.

I enjoy (and write - see my signature) what's considered more or less "rational" stuff. I think for me, the appeal is the avoidance of a lot of tropes that are present in canon. Reed Richards Is Useless and Status Quo Is God plague a lot of universes where there's some fantastical element, and sometimes you're just left thinking about all of the things that people didn't do in the story.

So in a lot of ways, I think that rationalist fics tend to be a subcategory of the Fix Fic, in that they try to strip out all of the Fridge Logic and Idiot Plot that define a lot of well-loved properties. There are some varieties that try to drop anvils (which can be nice if you're into that kind of thing and is otherwise probably annoying), but I think the biggest definitional requirement is that the characters are shown to be actual thinking through their problems, and that the audience can agree that the solutions they come up with make sense given the character's values.

(And yes, that's not always true to how people behave in real life. Some people act on their emotions and others just don't think things through. I think the best rationalist fics find a way to reflect that as well.)

Which fics, then, would you recommend that demonstrate that notion, that a person can espouse a/the philosophy of rationality but still sometimes behave irrationally? And can you explain how they demonstrate it?

It's probably more so that a "rational" fic tends to read as a combination of Possession Sue and Author Filibuster. I am more rational than this character and that is good so this character should be rational too. (Read: Me. they are wrong and I am right.) They are essentially calling out a character rather than a world which makes it very personal and tends to lead to more extreme Anvil Dropping than resolving of Idiot Balls.

edited 10th Dec '14 11:18:43 PM by Slysheen

"Which fics, then, would you recommend that demonstrate that notion, that a person can espouse a/the philosophy of rationality but still sometimes behave irrationally? And can you explain how they demonstrate it?"

I would say that HPATMOR does that, if you read carefully between the lines.

Like, so far between the lines that you're evaluating the author's issues as expressed through the story rather than the story.

Rational fiction is nice when you want to have at least a level 1 intelligent character.

edited 27th Dec '14 8:10:50 PM by higurashimerlin

,Question from someone who's been wondering for a while (but doesn't actually read fanfiction enough to want to find out himself): how representative is that story of the "rationalist fic" sub-genre in general? It's definitely given me a bad impression, but I don't know how much that's genuinely the genre and how much that's the author's particular... personal idiosyncrasies?

I'm not really sure of how you would define a genre like that.

The three stories I know of that have been described as rationalist are HPMOR, Luminosity, and Worm. And they are as different as night and day. The only thing they have in common is an attempt at consistent world building and lack of obvious idiot balls. Heck, Worm isn't even a fanfic.

Luminosity was supposedly inspired by HPMOR, but even it has little in common, style wise. I'd describe it as essentially, what Twilight should have been. It takes the same world building as Twilight, but it throws out the vapid romance and focuses on cool superpowered vampire fights instead. Also of note is that unlike HPMOR, the author of Luminosity is actually a fan of Twilight. You won't find any lectures about psychology or science here.

edited 10th Dec '14 10:29:10 PM by storyyeller

No sometimes the story is pretty blunt that harry's screwing up. The best example is probably trusting Quirrellmort for so long.

Also implied with his loss to Hermione in the first battle.

Rationalist fics are for people who hate forced Idiot Ball plot twists. You can have characters making reasonable decisions that still turn out wrong, which is already far more interesting than a character suddenly forgetting that eating poison isn't healthy or something.

I wouldn't even say that the Idiot Ball needs to be forced. What I'm mostly seeing in Rationalist Fics is that the author wishes the characters would do what is "obviously" the most logical course of action, without taking characters emotions into account. Like it or not, emotions make everyone hold the Idiot Ball at one time or another and making it so certain people never hold the Idiot Ball really wrecks the believability of that character.

Isn't the idiot ball breaking character and being stupid for the plot? I am not sure how you can hold one in real life.

The appeal is to ~25 year olds what the God Mode fics are to ~12 year olds. It's just that instead of hammering through the plot because they are the son of a dragon and can shoot lasers from their tonsils, they can do it because they are more logical. Because it uses logic rather than laser tonsils, the reader feels they are more sophisticated.

You've already done so dozens of times in your life. Every time you got stubborn or had a crush or whatever there is a significant chance of it. Trying to interpret other people by your standards can do it. Regular reasoning that discards the wrong data points as important can do it. The rationalist approach itself puts an idiot ball on people by assuming certain things about optimal modes of behavior without consideration for the behavior and reactions of others. (Something that can be painfully obvious reading Methods is that the world has been manipulated to avoid this.)

edited 12th Dec '14 9:53:23 AM by Night

Technically not an idiot ball sense it's not for the plot. But point is that people sometimes have bouts of stupidity. The difference is in real life it happens for in-universe reasons.

No, Harry steps-in-it a fair bit.

Good rationalist fics are to those God-rationalist fics what good action fics are to action god mode fics.

edited 12th Dec '14 10:41:16 AM by SuperMerlin100

Considering he more or less just described Methods, what IS a good Rationalist fic then?

HJPEV isn't really human, but then again, neither is Quirrel, so it balances out.

Characters don't have to be realistically human. Superhero comics exist for a reason. For that matter, many characters in fiction are far more virtuous than anyone in real life as well as being unrealistically skilled. It's only a problem if it makes the plot too easy, and that hasn't happened in HMPOR.

Edit: Just came across this on Yudkowski's blog and thought it might be relevant.

Edit: Also this

edited 13th Dec '14 1:36:21 PM by storyyeller

Yudkowski's right. You cant hold a work of fiction to realistic standards, because no one would read that. The question isnt whether Yudkowsky's Harry is a realistic character, because beyond a certain point there are no realistic characters. The only question that matters is whether or not Yudkowsky's plot and world and characters work together to produce the effect that Yudkowsky wants. Are the readers convinced enough to become fully immersed in the story, while they are reading it? That's very obviously YMMV, and no rationalist fic will appeal to you unless you can relate to rationalism.

I dont know where you got the idea that Harry and Quirril arent human.

What I mean is that they often demonstrate abilities that seem superhuman. Like the ability to model someone else so accurately that you essentially become them. I mean, actors are a thing, but they treat it like a casual skill anyone should be able to do.

Then again, it may be that I'm just really bad at people skills. I've failed spectacularly when playing Mafia quite a few times.

edited 14th Dec '14 9:29:40 PM by storyyeller

Your point would stand regardless; they are not acting as such, nor are they back-engineering a person from behavior, but rather forwards engineering someone as though humans are rational actors (which realistically they are not, especially under stress).

In fact, the explanation makes matters worse. It does so in several ways. First, the obvious; it explicitly treats Harry as a mouthpiece rather than having real desires. Second, he fails his ideals because he has been engineered to, not because his ideals are difficult or he is yet another all too mortal human. (That is the explicit statement of the author. It is quite revealing too, in relation to the actual attempt to overcome one's own heuristics, that the author thinks this way. See below.) Third, it reveals the author approaches this character not as one capable of failure in themselves but that must be made to fail. Fourth, the obviousness of the author's ideological commitment expressed through all these things; even if one were to agree, the success of an argument is based in its ability to appeal to the undecided and this requires at least a basic ability to engage with some other viewpoint and to at least seem to entertain the possibility you are wrong, both of which the author's obvious commitment would fail at. A work of didactic nature by this person cannot help but fail.

And of course, demarquis is wrong. The idea no character is realistic beyond a point is ridiculous; the point is always whether a character seems realistic. (Arguing for a lack of fine-grain detail is silly; you are surrounded by people in real life you lack that detail on. You work with them, eat and drink with them, sleep with them, and probably know them less well than you do Harry Dresden; at least you are privy to Dresden's thoughts.) Superman seems real because he incorporates all that is best in us, all that we aspire to be. He is at his best when he is viewed through that lense and that struggle, our struggle. James Tiberius Kirk is not the man who punches the threat in the face and gets the green girl, though we like to remember him as such. He is human; clever, inventive, violent, peacemaker. He fails, not because the author says he should but because there is no way to win perfectly, and he cannot accept less than perfection from himself, with his responsibilities. He does good, because his desire for vengeance is crushed by his will to do what is right. He struggles. He overcomes.

Methods Harry doesn't struggle. It is a great irony as well; a true attempt at rationalism is literally nothing but the struggle to maintain it through everyday life, much less great stress. This story should be always, constantly about Harry struggling and sometimes failing in small or great ways equally to uphold his ideals, to compromise when the reality of human society and circumstances beyond control prevent him from doing so.

It isn't that way because that would require acknowledgement of something less than absolute certainty of belief. Something less than absolute belief in one's own rightness. Harry's not human, for as in so many other doctrines there is no heresy more offensive than a human being. There is a reason why people who are not Christian can read and praise C.S. Lewis; he understood what Methods and its author doesn't.

edited 15th Dec '14 1:44:31 AM by Night

I'd say Harry is just as realistic as say, Sherlock Holmes, let alone Superman.

I read quite a bit of MOR, up to around chapter 80 or so, and while it was somewhat interesting, what finally broke my ability to keep reading was the simple fact that after more text than the first two books combined, Harry had yet to finish the first half of one year of school. That, along with too many times of Harry acting like a Vulcan instead of an adolescent, made it unbelievable, and the Author Tracts littering it made me walk away.

@Night: Wow. I am actually amazed. In all that long post, there is not one single statement that I agree with. But I dont time to address that right now, I will try to return here sometime tomorrow.