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Alicorn comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
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All right, all right, I'll at least give this a try. In keeping with the books' title themes, what do folks think of "Luminosity" as a title? (With luminosity as a theme over HP:MOR's emphasis on science, because I don't have the background to competently pull off the science.)
I did it.
Also, I hate fanfiction.net's interface for publishing stories SO MUCH. I'm probably going to just put the rest of this on my own webspace. EDIT: I am still updating on ff.net to get readers from conventional Twilight fandom, but made the story its own website and have changed the link above.
Also-also, my only account on fanfiction.net is Alicorn24. I am not affiliated in any way with anyone else using the word "alicorn" in their username.
Also-also-also, I'm not quite as much of a review junkie as Eliezer is. However, I a) am unlikely to bother with the story if I'm the only one enjoying it, as I do have creative projects with audiences that could benefit from my attention, and b) plan to treat this as a somewhat experimental work. (For instance, the first chapter has no actual in-quotes dialogue, which I did because dialogue is my strongest suit as a writer and it was challenging to work without it.) Info on what works for readers and what doesn't would be good, as well as periodic reminders that someone's paying attention.
Interesting. You might want to revise the description a couple chapters in, once the story has its own identity, but the character seems like someone who might be entertaining to follow.
(As with Harry Potter, I'm coming in with zero knowledge of the base material - Twilight bored me no less quickly than Philosopher's Stone.)
Here goes.
Since I had not read any of the books or seen any of the movies, I lacked confidence that I possessed the prerequisites for reading your fanfic.
It turned out that I did possess the needed prerequisites (for reading Chapter 1) but I almost concluded otherwise and almost stopped reading when I got to the first reference to Charlie because I did not know who Charlie is.
But then a few sentences later it became obvious that Charlie is Bella's father, and I read to the end of the chapter.
In summary, my feedback to you is that this particular reader would have benefitted from a replacing of the first occurance of "Charlie" with "My father, Charlie."
I want to know what happens next :)
Seconded.
Fixed that, and also two typos and the italics.
In medias res this one. Start it in the middle of something interesting happening.
I wanted to do that - the original book does it - but I haven't yet gotten very well acquainted with my Bella and by the time interesting things start happening, I wouldn't expect her to let me hug so close to canon. I might go back and add something like that in a few chapters.
Is this fic understandable for those that don't know a thing about twilight?
Yes. Neither knowledge of nor affection for the original Twilight series is a prerequisite for reading, understanding, and (potentially) enjoying the fic.
New chapter.
Vote this comment up if you would like a Luminosity fic discussion thread here on LW analogous to the HP:MOR one, and down if you would not.
New chapter. I think I'm going to update daily for a while, but no promises.
I'm having trouble making Bella conspicuously luminous because fictional characters in general are more luminous than real people. (Authors have perfect access to knowledge about character minds, and since the dearth of luminosity in real humans isn't known to most authors, they don't restrict the characters' access to this information much if at all.) I've resorted to some tricks, most notably the notebooks - how do people find Bella's visible luminosity?
I wonder if real people could become more luminous by occasionally narrating their thought processes from a third-person perspective, treating themselves like characters that they're writing. If nothing else, it'll be a cute gimmick for getting someone to examine their own motivations.
I'm going to try this later today, while exercising. We'll see how this wild-ass idea fares. (I will define failure as not turning up anything surprising.)
That could be interesting. Do report back.
I tried out my idea, and it worked. It wasn't too spectacular, but it was well worth the effort.
I decided that, in order for this to be a proper test, I would look at something that I wasn't really comfortable with: my shyness and difficulty in social situations. I figure that there had to be some obvious irrationality clunking around my skull there.
I started describing this guy (myself), and laying out the reasons for his social discomfort in a straightforward exposition dump. Several times, I had to pause and ask myself if the explanations actually made sense -- was this true, or an incorrect rationalization by an unreliable narrator? The process was surprisingly adversarial!
I came to two surprising conclusions. First, the deeper cause of a lot of my problems is that I have difficulty quickly finding topics of common interest with most people in most situations, so conversations with strangers tend to end quickly and abruptly, which sucks. A previous thread had advice for improving this skill; I'll see if I can find it, and give it a try.
Second, there's an even deeper problem that underlies my shyness: I want to not be disliked by anyone, but that's paralyzing and leads to crippling shyness. Far better to be more open with my personality, and accept that someone is probably going to be pissed off by any sufficiently cool person. I'm going to try letting my quirkiness out more, since some people seem to find it really charming, and I enjoy it.
Even though this method worked, it seemed pretty much equivalent to the introspection method where you explain something to an imaginary person, while listening to yourself carefully for anything that sounds like bullshit. I think that method is easier since it doesn't require the third-person pronoun shift, which turned out to be superfluous.
Really, the most important things seem to be:
Come up with an explanation for something, and put it into words. Explain clearly, as if your listener doesn't know what you're talking about.
At all times, ask "Is that really true?" Are there any alternate hypotheses? Does it sound like a rationalization? Is it fallacious? Does it sound like motivated stopping? (That's a really common one, I found.)
Be honest. The truth is valuable. You can do stuff with the truth. When you come across a surprising truth, figure out if it's useful. It might be!
So, definitely a worthwhile exercise, but the third person narrative gimmick isn't necessary.
I do something vaguely similar to this: a lot of my introspective thought takes the form of imagined dialogues with someone who I think would take the other side of the argument, or at the very least need convincing. For example, in a lot of my thinking about metaethics recently, (an imaginary construction of) Eliezer gets cast in the dissenting role. This seems to help me avoid arguments I can't justify, though far from perfectly.
(I may have a metaethics post in the pipeline.)
Winston Churchill was said to occasionally narrate his life in the third person from the perspective of a future historical text.
Moar.
Yet moar.
Chapter six on ff.net; on my webspace (navigation and prettyfulness coming soon).
I made Luminosity its own website. Also, chapter seven exists now. If you prefer e-mail updates over RSS, fanfiction.net will continue to update with new chapters, and it is still the correct place to put reviews, but for other purposes I believe my site will be better.
Could we please not have white text on a black background?
I don't mind the color scheme, but here's a tool called Readability that tries to reformat websites to be more readable. (Among other things, it uses [nearly] black text on a [nearly] white background.)
You could always disable the CSS.
In ch7 Bella determined that Alice's skin feels like rock, but she didn't notice that in ch5. Was she just too distracted or something?
In chapter 5, Alice and Bella don't come into direct skin-skin contact - they both have on long sleeves, and Alice hauls on Bella's arm, not her hand.
Typo fixed - thanks :) (Note that I'm fixing typos on Luminosity's own website only, not on FF.net due to interface hate. This one was a current typo, but if you're spotting them on FF.net instead of the Luminosity site, they may already have been caught.)
This link is dead right now. (I also got emailed it by the fanfiction.net subscription thingy.)
Chapter 3 typo alert: "disintersting" --> "disinteresting".
The link works for me. I'm not sure what might be wrong with it. I will fix the typo, but FF.net takes for-freaking-ever to push adjustments to content. Here are the chapters extant on my own webspace, where they should behave. (I will continue to update on FF.net too in order to attract the attention of more conventional fic readers.)
Works for me now too!
I think she comes off as in control of her life and very insightful about other people, but not particularly insightful about herself (at least in contrast to other fictional characters - your theory about why this is makes sense to me). On the other hand, her insightfulness about other people didn't seem at all forced, so her social modeling abilities seem to be working.
I'm skeptical of the claim that most authors don't know that real humans are unluminous. The authors that I have met in person haven't seemed particularly luminous to me, and I see no reason that they would think that people in general would be so. I suppose that they could all model their writing on other writing instead of on the world as it exists, and thus excess luminosity in fiction could quickly propagate, but this seems somewhat implausible.
Being unluminous is actually not useful in determining that humans are unluminous.
Why would authors model fictional minds with unusual high-level skills that they do not possess and, in all likelihood, have neither heard of from other sources nor conceived independently?
Because the lack of skill is not transparent.
By way of analogy, it takes a reasonably uncommon bit of knowledge to be aware that human vision includes blind spots and to know how they work. Even though every single human has blind spots (if indeed they can see at all), and can determine the existence of these blind spots through easy tests, many authors will not think to write fictional characters with visual blind spots, because it is not obvious to people going about their ordinary lives and looking at things that they exist. The author knows what's within visual range of the character, and if the character has his or her eyes open, (s)he can see all of those things.
Luminosity is rare. Knowledge that luminosity is rare is rare. Most people trust in naive introspection. They believe the first approximations that pop into their heads when they think about themselves, in the same way that they accept what their visual cortices tell them. And they know what's in the character's mind, and if the character introspects, (s)he can see all of those things.
I think I might not get it. How could someone be introspective but not luminous? I haven't put any real effort into reading the luminosity sequence because it seemed so fundamentally obvious to me. It is possible that I am low-level and deceived in ways that I am totally unaware of, but it's always been easy-- trivial, even-- for me to see through my brain's "fake explanations" and understand the actual reasons behind my thoughts or traits.
Sounds like you're an anomaly, if what you say is true. Naive introspection is generally fallible.
There's some "obviousness" to it, yes.
I think that's not necessarily a fault; it's easy to grasp the idea of luminosity, but sometimes people don't do it. Can you do it under stress?
It's simple -- but not necessarily easy.
Well, there's the joke that authors understand themselves more than anyone else does-- not necessarily better, just more.
I do think it's possible to be fascinated by one's own internal processes while not noticing a few hot button areas.
katydee:
Warning: bombastic (but sincere) sentence ahead.
[There were two paragraphs here, but Less Wrong is better without them. It is not that I concluded that on second thought, what I wrote here is wrong, but rather that if I just assert it in a shorthand way like I did, and do not provide any arguments for why I believe it to be true, well, most are going to find it ridiculous, and I do not have time to advance the arguments or even to explain with sufficient care what my assertion is. Another factor that had a slight effect on my decision is that I have not read Alicorn's luminosity sequence.]
I would wait until we have a definite sign of interest - e.g. a conversation about something in the story on an open thread that attracts a fair amount of conversation.
Reviewed. (My fanfiction.net account is "Ronfar".)
I like. Rhymes with sparkles.
I'm in favor of this obviously wrong use of 'rhyme'.
It's a conceptual rhyme.
Here's a limerick following the same principle. (I think I read it in Metamagical Themas; not sure if Hofstadter was the original author.)
It's usually attributed to W. S. Gilbert (as in Gilbert and Sullivan).
It's more allegorical than wrong.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
-- Unknown (though attributed without source to Mark Twain)
Huh? "Luminosity" doesn't rhyme with "sparkles".
"Rhyme" was the wrong word, but I don't know what the right one is. Anyone?
"Allude", perhaps?
Close enough :)