Paulovsk comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 17 March 2012 09:41AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (1174)
Tags: fiction fanfiction harry_potter hpmor

Comments (1174)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Furcas 18 March 2012 09:05:18PM *  3 points [-]

I want to quote part of a review on fanfiction.net by celopmuh that I completely agree with and that I think Eliezer should take into account:

"Let's not narrow down the hypothesis space prematurely." - Harry's way of talking is getting tiresome, I hope he learns to adjust it to his audience ("let's not rule out any possibilities too early"? I'm sure there is a non-lossy, good-sounding way to rephrase that). I understand this is intended, but his speech on "your brain just pattern-matches the hypothesis" turned out rather anticlimactic - it would sound much better if it was actually directed to Hogwarts students and not the readers.

Comment author: Paulovsk 18 March 2012 11:09:22PM 5 points [-]

I kinda like this way of talking.

And, after all, he's talking to us.

Comment author: moridinamael 19 March 2012 12:27:50AM 10 points [-]

Yeah. Harry talks this way. It's not an authorial accident. It's meant to be alienating and offputting to his peers, emphasizing the distance between Harry and a normal 11-year old.

I think when he's trying to communicate with someone Harry can speak on their level, but when he's upset he goes back to talking like a robot.

Comment author: Jello_Raptor 19 March 2012 08:03:42AM 6 points [-]

I think this is doubly emphasized by the bit where Draco struggles to rephrase his thoughts without using "Harry words", but given that the fic is meant as an evangelizing platform for rationality it makes me wonder whether there's a good way to lessen the turnoff of such speech.

Ideally we'd have Hermione and Draco speaking the same ideas in a more colloquial fashion, but that would seem forced in all of the ways I can imagine it being done.

Comment author: thomblake 27 March 2012 07:53:41PM 1 point [-]

I think when he's trying to communicate with someone Harry can speak on their level, but when he's upset he goes back to talking like a robot.

Yes. I had the same problem at that age. When not concentrating, I would forget to phrase things in ways children could understand.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit