NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Unnamed 27 May 2010 12:10AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 June 2010 11:41:24AM 3 points [-]

Have you updated any of your underlying premises?

I suggest that for a lot of the people you want to attract at this stage, consuming a lot of sf is proof of normalcy. As for fanfic, I suspect that the type of fanfic matters a lot-- if it had been slash of comparable quality to the existing work, there would have been a substantial yuck factor to surmount as well as people who were enthusiastic.

I don't know what the result of HPMOR is going to be if SIAI ever wants to get bank loans-- there are a lot of steep weirdness hills to climb at that point.

Comment author: gwern 01 June 2010 01:03:00PM 1 point [-]

Have you updated any of your underlying premises?

I don't especially think I have; suggestions welcome.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 June 2010 01:14:39PM 2 points [-]

I had one in my comment-- that respectability varies more between mainstream culture and the people who are likely to read HPMOR than you realized.

Comment author: gwern 01 June 2010 03:06:12PM 4 points [-]

Harry Potter fanfiction and its readers is way closer to mainstream culture than the sort of people who could read that crossover fic; keep in mind, Harry Potter fanfiction novels have been published as have entire books just predicting what would happen in book 7 or comprising dictionaries of Harry Potter-ania (you may remember the lawsuit over the latter).