Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

You mean where Hermione accused Harry of cheating on her with Draco? The entire school In-Universe took that one out of context.

@ The Handle, about blocking the Killing Curse. Something like Accico Meatshield is already sufficient for most purposes, and you can get more the natural way. (Kidnapping or babymaking, depending on which version of 'get more' is needed.)

The killing curse isn't unblockable, it's just mildly annoying to block.

Edit: Yes, this means you do not want to be alone with me in a cabin when there's a month long blizzard raging.

edited 9th Sep '15 12:35:58 PM by DNC

Ugh, dude, impractical. KK is slow but not that slow, you can't just instantly conjure up a gerbil in its path, hilarious though it may be.

about blocking the Killing Curse. Something like Accico Meatshield is already sufficient for most purposes

The two solutions I could think of are

• A) The (normal) killing curse requires intense hate at the target and thus only affects that target
• B) Killing curses are just too fast to react to. Moody's fake curse and Voldemort killing Quirrel were both specifically being mentioned as happening far too fast for Harry to react to. Though in those cases he didn't have his wand out and wasn't expecting it; a duel would be different.

P.S. I read today about a living organism with a proto-nervous system but no true neurons. It would be interesting (though unethical) to test where exactly the boundary lies with susceptibility to AK.

edited 9th Sep '15 2:46:14 PM by storyyeller

If the killing curse was targeted, going through walls wouldn't matter, and it's specifically mentioned in HPMOR that the killing curse goes through concrete etc. until it hits something with a brain.

If it's about reaction time, unlike the killing curse, something like 'Accico Meatshield' can be prepared ahead of time. You can't 'prime' a killing curse and have it go off the exact instant you want to, but floating cannon fodder in front of you can be done whenever, even in the safety of your own house/evil fortress.

In any case, hiring bodyguards to take killing curses for you would be expensive, but shouldn't be difficult considering how damn stupid the population is. Do some creative money making, possibly helping the magical economy in the process, and bam, legions of disposable meat shields that, sadly, only works against killing curses. (And not, say, an wide area of effect earthquake spell or whatever.)

Of course, something like blocking killing curses only matters if you're the kind of person who walks into battlefields in the first place, rather than remote managing the world in the safety of your hidden planetary fortress inside Pluto or whatever.

edited 9th Sep '15 4:26:11 PM by DNC

the killing curse goes through concrete etc. until it hits something with a brain.

Perhaps this was referring specifically to the killing curses cast by Voldemort, Mc Dowell, et al? Most wizards wouldn't know there's a difference.

At any rate, it's hard to square this with the description of AK 1.0 and 2.0. I think EY slipped up there.

I don't remember about AK 1.0 and 2.0. Refresh memory?

Traditional is cast with hate, and is emotionally draining. 2.0 is cast with indifference, and can be cast indefinitely.

edited 10th Sep '15 9:54:26 AM by Hyp3rB14d3

...did he win? Did anybody keep up with this? Just found this due to the Naruto thread of all places.

It didn't win any Hugos, but I'm sure Yudkowsky can say "Well, Citizen Kane didn't win an Oscar either..."

So I have to wonder, does Slytherin here stand for the Republican Party, evolving from the Party of Business to the Party of Bigots through pandering to easy xenophobia and alienating the rest?

So I reread recently. Does anyone else fine some of the minor character weirder then the mains? Also multiple school kids talk about polyamory like it's not a big deal, but there aren't any examples.

And I got reminded of all the weird shit Quirrell did just because. Like how he caused harry to almost be killed by a bunch of yaoi fan girls, so that he could save him, by knocking down 100 school girls, and get away with it.

A lot of the kid talk about romance feels like it's just showing that everyone lives in Fan Fiction Land, rather than any real attempt at worldbuilding.

He caused it on purpose? How?

And the thing about first-years in this story is that they talk a lot about romance but aren't allowed to have any, and aren't equipped for it anyway. So they get Puppy Love at best.

Older students have no such excuse, but there really ain't that much couple talk in this book at all.

Agreed; the female students seem cribbed from models of the people writing fanfiction rather than average girls of school age.

(6) I feel like there's some barely repressed undercurrent of hatred towards this fic, and it amuses and baffles me, because this fic is so highly-reviewed and seemed to be "part of that 10 percent." I never cared for it much so it's strangely vindicating to hear it mocked after so long.

I guess I don't frequent fanfiction circles anymore either so I wouldn't hear about it as often.

edited 6th Jan '17 4:17:46 PM by Soble

It has both good and bad aspects. I enjoyed reading it, even though it has obvious flaws. That being said, it doesn't take much to be in the top 10% of fanfic. Heck, even correct spelling will get you most of the way there.

I didn't care much for it either, but I love the idea of rational fics. I'm more forgiving of good ideas with bad executions over bad ideas with good execution, but even then, I have my limits for what I'll stand. Towards the end, when I abandoned it at chapter 72, it felt physically painful for me to read further.

Why?

I tried reading it both as a sort of parable and as a story meant to entertain (first as the latter, then the former) and I didn't like it in either of those mindsets. I did like the fun with time travel, him pranking himself.

I thought it would have more exploring the magical world with science, but then it turned into Ender's Game in the Potterverse, which wasn't what I thought I was getting, and I thought it had a rather misinformed critique of canon, instead of a more loving critique, like in The Great Alicorn Hunt. In order to critique canon, you need to know it intimately, so you know what you're talking about.

Yeah, it definitely changed tack partway through. I know the bait and switch turned a lot of people off, but I found the Enders Game arc to at least be funny, even if it wasn't what the story started as.

The Ender's Game arc was only temporary, though. The story changes track again after the Dementor's visit and Harry's trip to Azkaban.

@The Handle about your post from a month ago, Quirrel says he somehow spread the idea of drawing Harry to each of their arms.

I think Luminosity is a better introduction to the concept of Rational Fiction. Mo R is trying for too many pop culture references and explicit education of the methods to the audience. It falls into many of the writing errors of Hard Sci-Fi.

Yeah, but Luminosty falls into the errors of modern YA novels. Namely, an emotionless blank slate of a protagonist who just keeps making the smartest and most sensible decisions, and a story that, while suspenseful, is ultimately shallow and doesn't leave you feeling like you've learned anything about the world or yourself. HPMOR is emotionally intense and fulfilling; it makes you laugh and cry and get HYPE, rather than merely making you wonder what comes next.