I read the Harry Potter one a few years back, it's fanfiction, but far from terrible.
It's basically a "what if harry wasn't raised by horrible people" story, and he actually questioned things (Like I can turn back time?? Cant this be abused?? Why do words matter for spells? Etc.) Don't know anything about the other ones.
Yeah, in the fanfiction he could have casted it due to his connection to Voldemort (it stained him in a more profound way than in the original books). There is a lot in the book that doesn't work, but the point of the story is to actually think and question what happens, and not simply explain it away with "it's magic".
It does have HORRIBLY tropey fanfiction tier things in it tough, like Harry being 10x times as powerful as he should be in the book (cause he UNDERSTANDS more).
I prefer to view it as a matter of wille not macht.
Curses aren't firearms. There's no such thing as a misfire. You can say the words all day and nothing will fucking happen without the intent. The macht gives it the potential to work, but only the wille can realize that potential.
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
C.S. Lewis
Acting like something is beneath you for having a simplistic appeal is honestly quite absurd. You can certainly be disinterested in something because the subject matter is not interesting to you, but framing it as "being too adult to care" frankly reeks of a juvenile mindset.
LessWrong is what happens when people mistake pedantry for intelligence and think the more asinine and pedantic they can act the more intelligent they must be.
It's a website for the sort of person who will throw a screaming temper tantrum over you calling a car "blue" instead of "blue on the parts I can see from this point of view in this lighting at this altitude..." ad nauseum.
Re: that fanfic, I vaguely remember seeing a passage where Draco tells Harry (both still just first years, in other words they're 11 when this goes down) that he wants to rape Luna Lovegood (a 10 year old) to teach her dad not to mess with the Malfoys. Instantly killed any desire I had to read any more of HPMOR, and it hasn't come back ever since.
As for LessWrong in general, the last thing I remember is that they collectively shat their pants over the concept of Roko's Basilisk - that recreation of Pascal's Wager by 'rational' atheists who've clearly been hit on the head with an anvil - to the point where Yudkowsky banned all mention of it and the guy who came up with it. Seems like they rapidly fell into total obscurity after that debacle, itself coming on the heels of the implosion of Internet atheism around 2012-14 between Elevatorgate and the rise (and fall) of Atheism+. I don't think I've seen Yudkowsky's name mentioned anywhere, by anyone, in the past four or five years, and it only came up when people wanted to mock him and his notion of rationality for a year or two before that.
I followed LW a bit back when I was more into Scott Alexander. I abandoned it when someone posted about having a problem sometimes putting his underwear on backwards, and people generalized that to declaring that society needed some sort of designated person(s) to ensure that doesn't happen.
Technocrats thinking every problem is solvable as long as you technocrat enough.
HPMOR is pretentious and Mary Sue-ful. The writing is highly questionable at times, including 10 year olds discussing raping other 10 year olds.
For MLP you're better off worshipping Cupcakes than FiO. Or more realistically, something like Fallout Equestria if you want overly long grim-derp fanfic.
I tried to read the Methods of Rationality, but only a few chapters. He's basically just a Mary Sue who has deductive capabilities like Sherlock Holmes and the knowledge base of a particularly autistic university student. As interesting as a "rational" look at the Harry Potter universe might be, I'd rather have a realistically smart character, not the generic pop culture idea of what a genius is. Also having Draco just casually say he was going to eventually rape Luna Lovegood in his first meeting with Harry just threw me out of it.
I enjoyed Yudkowsky's written works (HPMoR is an interesting read with a classical overpowered protagonist because plot, Friendship is Optimal is frankly horrifying when you strip away the cutesy MLP trappings since the AI is actively murdering people, digitizing a copy of their consciousness, and then altering the digitized person to be "more pony-like", and the Baby-Eating Aliens short story is a fascinating bit of sci-fi with actual alien cultures instead of "like humans but...") quite a bit.
The LessWrong community can go suck start a shotgun while taking a long walk off a short pier while wearing concrete shoes, though. It's fucking absurd that a community that originally formed around HPMoR's hot take of "examine everything rationally through a skeptical lens" became a cult of personality.
Though, honestly, you can probably apply that to most larger fan communities; lowest common denominator comes in, gets catered to, and the fandom slides further and further down until it hits rock bottom (and, occasionally, begins to dig).
The only one I know anything about is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I read it several years ago, enjoyed it, and that was it. As others have said, the premise is that Harry Potter is raised by intellectual parents, Harry is super smart and super logical (and definitely a Mary Sue), and he plays with the "rules" of magic in some really fun ways.
It's kind of like Harry Potter meets Ender's Game. I would recommend reading it if it's at all your thing.
The author is a transhumanist / Singularity / life extension type person. I don't go in for that stuff. It's been my experience that many religious people often struggle with death and loss the most. I think the "transhumanist" people are kind of the same--driven by a fear of death and loss. ~shrug~
I've read Friendship is Optimal. It's much better than it has any right to be, and I didn't really detect any wokeness. I've also read Methods of Rationality, and enjoyed it too, though the other criticisms of it are correct. It is full of itself and Harry definitely has Mary Sue tendencies. Still, I stand by my assessment that it's an enjoyable read for a fanfic. Not really sure about LessWrong.
LessWrong is a propaganda outlet of the cult of Scientism. Until around 2012 this cult was ascendant in academia and in the media until it was split in two and overrun by the cult of Wokeness. These two cults are almost identical, the only difference is that one parasitically exploits notions of science while the other parasitically exploits notions of justice.
Note that "atheist"/"rationalist" opponents to the woke cult are in fact just trying to push it back so their own cult can regain its position of dominance.
Friendship is optimal is fairly interesting as it is a long form work about a paperclipping scenario, and a fairly early one at that. It actually probably works a bit better if you don't like MLP as the padded cell where you will never want for anything, and the resulting insipidness of such an existence is brought into sharper relief. Kind of old hat these days if you're already versed on paperclippers though.
Hpamor was okay I think. You kind of have to accept that it's largely a snarky takedown of Harry Potter's world building. I liked it's take on the character of Draco Malfoy and his father. The battle scenarios were fun if kind of silly. It gets up its own ass a lot, but I wouldn't dismiss it as a waste of time to read. I have fond memories of it.
As for LessWrong, I never interacted with the community, but I read some of the articles, and they are a mix of insightful computer science research and a the texts of a AI doomsday cult.
There was also Twilight fanfic of a similar nature I read around the same time which I also quite enjoyed, despite never having read Twilight. Of course being Twilight making the character more intelligent makes her less of a Mary Sue. Luminosity was the name I think.
I don't know anything and I'd like to keep it that way.
I read the Harry Potter one a few years back, it's fanfiction, but far from terrible.
It's basically a "what if harry wasn't raised by horrible people" story, and he actually questioned things (Like I can turn back time?? Cant this be abused?? Why do words matter for spells? Etc.) Don't know anything about the other ones.
He would have died in the firefight in the Ministry.
The Harry that could make Crucio work on Bellatrix is a Harry that just lost his entire family in one go.
"You have to mean it, Harry."
Yeah, in the fanfiction he could have casted it due to his connection to Voldemort (it stained him in a more profound way than in the original books). There is a lot in the book that doesn't work, but the point of the story is to actually think and question what happens, and not simply explain it away with "it's magic".
It does have HORRIBLY tropey fanfiction tier things in it tough, like Harry being 10x times as powerful as he should be in the book (cause he UNDERSTANDS more).
I prefer to view it as a matter of wille not macht.
Curses aren't firearms. There's no such thing as a misfire. You can say the words all day and nothing will fucking happen without the intent. The macht gives it the potential to work, but only the wille can realize that potential.
Shrug
Well if talking about fandom universes is beneath you, then gtfo you joyless buzzkill.
C.S. Lewis
Acting like something is beneath you for having a simplistic appeal is honestly quite absurd. You can certainly be disinterested in something because the subject matter is not interesting to you, but framing it as "being too adult to care" frankly reeks of a juvenile mindset.
But yet here you are.
Then why would you start a thread about them?
LessWrong is what happens when people mistake pedantry for intelligence and think the more asinine and pedantic they can act the more intelligent they must be.
It's a website for the sort of person who will throw a screaming temper tantrum over you calling a car "blue" instead of "blue on the parts I can see from this point of view in this lighting at this altitude..." ad nauseum.
Re: that fanfic, I vaguely remember seeing a passage where Draco tells Harry (both still just first years, in other words they're 11 when this goes down) that he wants to rape Luna Lovegood (a 10 year old) to teach her dad not to mess with the Malfoys. Instantly killed any desire I had to read any more of HPMOR, and it hasn't come back ever since.
As for LessWrong in general, the last thing I remember is that they collectively shat their pants over the concept of Roko's Basilisk - that recreation of Pascal's Wager by 'rational' atheists who've clearly been hit on the head with an anvil - to the point where Yudkowsky banned all mention of it and the guy who came up with it. Seems like they rapidly fell into total obscurity after that debacle, itself coming on the heels of the implosion of Internet atheism around 2012-14 between Elevatorgate and the rise (and fall) of Atheism+. I don't think I've seen Yudkowsky's name mentioned anywhere, by anyone, in the past four or five years, and it only came up when people wanted to mock him and his notion of rationality for a year or two before that.
I followed LW a bit back when I was more into Scott Alexander. I abandoned it when someone posted about having a problem sometimes putting his underwear on backwards, and people generalized that to declaring that society needed some sort of designated person(s) to ensure that doesn't happen.
Technocrats thinking every problem is solvable as long as you technocrat enough.
HPMOR is pretentious and Mary Sue-ful. The writing is highly questionable at times, including 10 year olds discussing raping other 10 year olds.
For MLP you're better off worshipping Cupcakes than FiO. Or more realistically, something like Fallout Equestria if you want overly long grim-derp fanfic.
I once tried to read Methods and cringed myself right out after a couple of chapters.
I tried to read the Methods of Rationality, but only a few chapters. He's basically just a Mary Sue who has deductive capabilities like Sherlock Holmes and the knowledge base of a particularly autistic university student. As interesting as a "rational" look at the Harry Potter universe might be, I'd rather have a realistically smart character, not the generic pop culture idea of what a genius is. Also having Draco just casually say he was going to eventually rape Luna Lovegood in his first meeting with Harry just threw me out of it.
I enjoyed Yudkowsky's written works (HPMoR is an interesting read with a classical overpowered protagonist because plot, Friendship is Optimal is frankly horrifying when you strip away the cutesy MLP trappings since the AI is actively murdering people, digitizing a copy of their consciousness, and then altering the digitized person to be "more pony-like", and the Baby-Eating Aliens short story is a fascinating bit of sci-fi with actual alien cultures instead of "like humans but...") quite a bit.
The LessWrong community can go suck start a shotgun while taking a long walk off a short pier while wearing concrete shoes, though. It's fucking absurd that a community that originally formed around HPMoR's hot take of "examine everything rationally through a skeptical lens" became a cult of personality.
Though, honestly, you can probably apply that to most larger fan communities; lowest common denominator comes in, gets catered to, and the fandom slides further and further down until it hits rock bottom (and, occasionally, begins to dig).
The only one I know anything about is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I read it several years ago, enjoyed it, and that was it. As others have said, the premise is that Harry Potter is raised by intellectual parents, Harry is super smart and super logical (and definitely a Mary Sue), and he plays with the "rules" of magic in some really fun ways.
It's kind of like Harry Potter meets Ender's Game. I would recommend reading it if it's at all your thing.
The author is a transhumanist / Singularity / life extension type person. I don't go in for that stuff. It's been my experience that many religious people often struggle with death and loss the most. I think the "transhumanist" people are kind of the same--driven by a fear of death and loss. ~shrug~
I've read Friendship is Optimal. It's much better than it has any right to be, and I didn't really detect any wokeness. I've also read Methods of Rationality, and enjoyed it too, though the other criticisms of it are correct. It is full of itself and Harry definitely has Mary Sue tendencies. Still, I stand by my assessment that it's an enjoyable read for a fanfic. Not really sure about LessWrong.
What do you want to know?
LessWrong? The people who logiced themselves into fearing that God AI from the Future was building a Hell-Matrix just for them?
LessWrong is a propaganda outlet of the cult of Scientism. Until around 2012 this cult was ascendant in academia and in the media until it was split in two and overrun by the cult of Wokeness. These two cults are almost identical, the only difference is that one parasitically exploits notions of science while the other parasitically exploits notions of justice.
Note that "atheist"/"rationalist" opponents to the woke cult are in fact just trying to push it back so their own cult can regain its position of dominance.
Haha, my damn kids listened to that shit so much. Now I have it in my head again....
TIL Tangled OST on vinyl is a thing. I could have done without that. My condolences to you!
Your past self must've done something truly awful to get karma like this
Read both a long time ago.
Friendship is optimal is fairly interesting as it is a long form work about a paperclipping scenario, and a fairly early one at that. It actually probably works a bit better if you don't like MLP as the padded cell where you will never want for anything, and the resulting insipidness of such an existence is brought into sharper relief. Kind of old hat these days if you're already versed on paperclippers though.
Hpamor was okay I think. You kind of have to accept that it's largely a snarky takedown of Harry Potter's world building. I liked it's take on the character of Draco Malfoy and his father. The battle scenarios were fun if kind of silly. It gets up its own ass a lot, but I wouldn't dismiss it as a waste of time to read. I have fond memories of it.
As for LessWrong, I never interacted with the community, but I read some of the articles, and they are a mix of insightful computer science research and a the texts of a AI doomsday cult.
There was also Twilight fanfic of a similar nature I read around the same time which I also quite enjoyed, despite never having read Twilight. Of course being Twilight making the character more intelligent makes her less of a Mary Sue. Luminosity was the name I think.
Degeneracy that's a result of a world that does not require that people grow the fuck up and become adults.