Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

^ How would that make you a donkey?

Also, the Snape sequence was awesome. I also managed to get a Sadist Teacher fired. Such people shouldn't be let near fragile children.

edited 11th Jun '10 10:29:59 AM by RawPower

Up to about halfway through chapter 19...Quirrel's about to teach him how to lose. And I must say, I'm loving this so far...and it actually makes a lot more sense than the books did, regardless of how much I liked them.

^^ Starting with the ears and then working inwards from the extremities.

I suspect that the reason the Snape sequence rubs me the wrong way is that it moves from the impossible to the merely improbable, and therefore has a lot more to answer for.

edited 11th Jun '10 12:51:28 PM by Kizor

^^ I hope you don't get too upset about this. People react wierdly around this chapter.

Personally, I don't get what the big deal is. I went through much worse at school.

...really?-You-were-beaten-up-as-part-of-the-curriculum-at-eleven-years-old?

No, I was systematically humilated by a few teachers and by most of the students, some of whome were implicitly encouraged by the teachers. I remember that one time the bullies pulled my pants down in the middle of class and the teacher laughed with everyone else.

I'm sorry were you taught by Quirrel or Snape? What particular sense of perspective is this meant to throw on any chapter? Is this bringing child abuse in the earlier chapter up to the standard of the child abuse in the later chapter or the other way around?

I guess I'm thrown off by the work wanting to deconstruct what was essentially the use of the Evil Gym Coach trope in one place and then use the whole "character building" line for himself in another. Hold cake, eat cake. One or the other.

I think the point is that what Quirrel did is supposed to work because Harry is special, and what he did was only to Harry.

What Snape was doing, he did to everybody, including guys like Neville.

It's a lot simpler than that. This Harry will not stand to lose in a situation where he can win. He will pull every weapon in his sleeve to do the right thing/protect his pride. Sometimes going to insane lengths.

Now, Voldemort doesn't want that. He's a lot smarter than canon. He sees a Harry liek that. He has plans for him, that are not necessarily about killing him. He may need his cooperation. So he tames him. He's smart enough to talk Harry into collaborating. Anyone with less eloquence wouldn't have gotten away with it. But Voldie managed to convince Harry to do it.

It's not about teaching readers how to lose by proxy, it's simply about furthering the plot.

Chapter 25 is out.

Way ahead of ya.

The old wizard shook his head in despair. "And this is the hero. We're all doomed."

Well, Harry is a smug bastard.

edited 12th Jun '10 11:01:20 AM by RawPower

I'm pretty sure Harry approves of the Machiavelli school of Manipulative Bastard, let's see if Draco can outmaneuver him with all those tutors.

I'm curious of what the twins have cooked up, it can't be as simple as it looks...

Let us speculate.

I think Harry fed the Quirrell bullshit to Rita (he really wants to get the Dark Lord accusations out of the way so he can pull some Clark Kenting and Devil in Plain Sight), while the twins were preparing something else entirely. How about "Harry Potter is actually imbued with a piece of Voldemort's soul" or even "Voldemort transferred his soul into Harry Potter entirely"?

Would a Draco/ Mc Gonnagal fic be awesome? Y/N?

Conclusion at the end of the video.

I think Quirrel has the power to stop any article that could actually inconvenience him. Even if through Lucius has a fellow Slytherin. So I think this "Quirrel" that Skeeter just met is either one of the twins or Mr. Flume under disguise.

Of course I have basically nothing to support this and I'm not sure how this could turn Harry Potter level of prank...

One anonymous reviewer wrote: "I know I've arrived a bit late, but this story is incredible and I'm really liking it so far. Still, for your literary genius, I don't think you're capable of shipping Draco and Mc Gonagall."

That would be completely wrong and it wouldn't fit into the story at all and it would be impossible to set that up while keeping everyone in character and it took my brain around thirty seconds to think of how to do it anyway and now I'm tempted to actually do it and didn't I tell you not to say things like that around me?

His will is weakening, a few more anonymous suggestions and  ^*

I did a few myself.

^Anonymous tips? ...for a Draco/Mcgonnagall slash!? Have you gone into the Dark Side of the fic?

At least one of them is not anonymous. I use the same handle there.

You're Eeeeevil.

...I'll drop the silliness now...

Not evil. If reverse psychology won't work, direct requests should.

and said that as the Boy-Who-Lived I was doomed to have weird and dangerous adventures so I was safer if I got into them on purpose instead of waiting for them to happen by accident

edited 14th Jun '10 4:04:14 PM by willyolio

New chapter is out.

...

Yudkowsky is evil. That's all there is to it. Talk about Kick The Son OFA Bitch...

My main issue with the story is how the author kinda backtracks on some of Harry's actions. For example, when Harry dresses up and freaks Neville out, Harry only admits to it being wrong... several chapters later, after reviews came in. Same thing with Chapter 19 and Quirrell. However, the rest of the story is awesome.

I think the story would suffer a lot for some sort of omniscient arbitrator confirming "This is wrong, this is right" every time someone makes a difficult moral judgment. Life is complicated, utility calculations can be really difficult, and it's easy to rationalize things your decisions if you have a vested interest in justifying a particular conclusion. There's a reason that his original shared blog was called Overcoming Bias.

Quirrell stared at her for a moment.

Then he smiled.

"Miss Skeeter," said Quirrell, "I had hoped to find some lever that would prove persuasive. Yet I find that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of simply crushing you."

I'm gonna say he read her mind in that stare, and found where she was going to be...

Also Harry, with his insistence of knowing the news first hand missed the previous newspaper, the one with news about Quirrel, the one Quirrel was so mad about.

And Harry let him know the twins were to blame about one of the articles, how hard can it be to link them to the other.