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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong
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I am curious about your concern.
Do you want to save EY from a hubris born smackdown?
Do you want to keep public attention off fanfiction so you aren't tempted to publicly defend it and publicly identify as a fanfic fan?
Do you fear a loss of face for the Singularity Institute?
Forgive me for visiting your intentions, if that is unwelcome.
You only get one shot at the awards. My best calibrated guess is that MoR has a chance at best novel somewhere between 'not a chance in hell' and 5%, while best fanwork moves the odds of victory to 50+%. Which one do you think is better?
(I'm also a little concerned that EY is casually making what looks to me like an incredibly obvious mistake.)
I expect you meant that as a rhetorical question, but I'm not sure it is. I generally agree with your confidence estimates, but of course it's also worth looking at the payoffs. It's also worth comparing the payoffs for being a Hugo nominee for best novel and a Hugo award winner for best fanwork.
I don't have an informed opinion about those payoffs, just saying that it's not as simple as "50+% chance of winning an award" vs "<5% chance of winning an award."
Which is precisely why I am asking these questions, because there are many ways Eliezer could conclude it's a good idea:
he has non-public information
the rules favor MoR in some way I am unaware of
etc.
My theory is that Eliezer is overestimating his chances of winning best novel.
5) is not a believable option, since the legalities of fanfic prohibit any conventional sort of publication, and just slapping "Book 1"/"Book 2"/etc. on top of chapter headings does very little.
The rest is good analysis, though.
No, they don't. They just mean it takes a publisher with a little guts, willing to defend it under fair use grounds (in MoR's case, parody).
They would lose, and probably correctly so. If that defense worked for MoR, it could be applied to any situation where someone just made up their own story using someone else's characters, and the whole concept of copyright would be effectively abolished.
(Not that abolishing copyright wouldn't be a policy worth considering...)
Actually, in fact, it seems obvious to me that any publication at all -- "conventional" or not -- of fanfiction is blatantly illegal, just like distributing your own modified version of Microsoft Windows would be.
(Note that "is illegal" is not the same thing as "should be illegal".)
Are you under the impression that fair use has never worked before or parody in particular? Because otherwise I don't understand why you are so certain of what you are saying.
I think it's clear that MoR is not (merely) parody, but a literary work in its own right that happens to be derived from an existing work by someone else.
It's a kind of thing that I think ought to be allowed, but which I don't think actually is.
Something that could be said with equal justice of The Wind Done Gone.
It wouldn't abolish the whole concept of copyright - just characters-and-scenarios copyright, of which I am not sure what the actual legal basis it originates in is, or to what extent it has been tested in court.
Yes, I meant for the word "whole" to modify the word "concept", not the word "copyright". That is, my sentence was meant to be read as:
Distinguish between the scope of copyright (i.e. what kinds of items it applies to) and the force of the same (how much activity it prohibits within its scope). The emphasis of my claim was on the force rather than the scope.
All you need to vote is a supporting membership, cost $60 or so. You don't have to attend.
As soon as HPMOR is finished (hopefully not soon), I will buy a supporting membership to the next year's worldcon. On that note, let me urge Eliezer to finish HPMOR in the summer of some year, so enough supporting memberships can nominate it by January 1.
I'm not sure that materially increases the number of votes one could expect. Gee, only $60...
You only need 100 votes to get nominated, and then the nomination itself will get more people reading it.
That page is old, as I noted in my other comment, and if you read the Constitution (article 3) which governs the Hugo award, the nomination is not so numeric; for example:
and
Going back to the 2011 data (and being mindful the vote counts have set records frequently in the 2000s as the convention apparently grows), we see the last place novel is 306 ballots. pg17 gives us the original nomination votes: last place novel there was 78 ballots.
So, yes, MoR could probably get on the ballot if >78 people all remember to register by 31 January of that year (good thing MoR isn't finished yet because it's too late for 2012) so they are eligible to vote on nominations, and actually put MoR #1 on their ballots; see the Constitution again:
I also think this is a good idea, and hereby vow to buy a membership when HPMoR is finished for this purpose of voting it for Best Novel. As pointed out, even being nominated would get it a lot more attention.
I'm hoping for something like Neil Gaiman had when he won and then they banned comics/graphic novels afterwards.
I think the main thing you're missing is that nothing bad happens to me if I don't win. This could serve as a mantra for a whole lot of things in life that are worth trying.
'Nothing bad happens to' two-boxers either. Do I really need to explain that loss of a gain is as bad as a gain of a loss?
Dumbledore would say that is why you go for multiple gains in parallel.
I didn't understand what you meant so I asked on IRC and you seem to be referring to multiple plots.
Yes, that is the story reference. As it applies here, is there any reason that Eliezer could not attempt to win multiple awards?
Yes. First, the Constitution specifies that if a work is ever successfully nominated, it cannot be nominated again, so MoR can only be done once. (Examining the categories carefully, pg 6-7, it may or may not be technically possible that MoR could be nominated in one year for Best Novel and then Eliezer himself - on the strength of fandom arising from MoR - nominated for 'Best Fan Writer'.)
Second, the rules get very complex on pg 8 about multiple categories, which is why I did not bring it up before:
I... don't actually know what all that means. Clause 3.8.4 seems to indicate that putting MoR up into multiple award categories would have the effect of splitting and diluting all votes, which seems like a bad thing.
Why, so you did. Careless reading of me... my apologies.
You're assuming that Best Fan Writer and Best Novel are equally valuable awards. This is not even close to true.
There are people who make a practice of reading all the Best Novel nominees, for years after the award is given, and I think people are much more likely to read Best Novel nominees before voting than to get around to the fan writing awards.
If anyone can track down number of votes in the different categories, it would be a way of checking on my opinion.
I have twice already pointed out that possibility.
It would be good information, yes. As far as I can tell, there may be some very recent records of recommendations by the Nebula members (and also claims of considerable politicking, so an appeal by Eliezer to fans would be far from unprecedented nor especially effective).
The Hugo voting system is pretty complicated, but apparently they've released detailed statistics since the 1980s - one of the first quotes in that 1997 analysis is
The most recent data is for 2011. Best Novel took 1813 ballots, with 779 vs 753 for #1 vs #2 (as I said, complicated - it's IRV).
The fan categories are fanzine, fan artist, and fan writer; the last had 323 ballots, with 70 vs 40. So in other words, just to get within spitting distance of Best Novel #2, you would need almost twice as many ballots as were cast for the entire category of Best Fan Writer.
You see why I would give MoR for Best Novel 0-5%, and EY for Best Fan Writer 50+%?
I can't find your mentions that the Best Novel Hugo might be worth more than the Best Fan Writer. This doesn't mean I think you're lying or mistaken, but where are they? Were they in some other thread or sub-thread?
I'm not sure if my point that just getting nominated for Best Novel is a huge win in terms of readership has registered. For these purposes, there is no difference I can see between coming in second and coming in last.
I agree that HPMOR doesn't have a great chance of winning Best Novel. It depends tremendously on what the competition is, and I'm assuming we're talking about at least two years from now, so what novels it would be up against are hard to predict. I don't think there are any predictable blockbusters in the immediate pipeline.
Subthread.
As I suggested, it may be a good idea - but Eliezer did not present that as a reason, has not presented it as a reason, and has not justified it. What makes you think the nomination is better than winning a fan Hugo, besides anecdotes about peoples' reading lists including nominees?
I'm assuming that the purpose of going for a Hugo is to get publicity and increased readership for HPMOR. If I'm mistaken-- possibly the point is that having a Hugo award is Really Cool-- then going for the win in a less important category would make sense.
I've been in fandom since the early seventies, and it seems to me that people talk about the Best Novel a lot more than Best Fan Writer.
I may be biased, but I think Fan Writing is very much a sub-culture within the sub-culture.
To be fair, even print sf is minuscule compared to tv, movies, and comics. From yet another angle, fanfic has become a huge thing by fannish standards, but I think it's something of a separate branch compared to the sort of fan writing (typically essays, I think, rather than fiction) which gets a Hugo.
I suspect the real logic is: having a Hugo award is Really Cool, having a Hugo for best novel is Even More Really Cool, and Eliezer isn't the type of person to settle for Really Cool in that situation.
Wait, 800 votes is sufficient to win Best Novel? I think I'm with Eliezer on this now. That may actually be attainable with this fan base(if only because it's vastly easier to mobilize for online works than for paper ones, due to logistical issues)
Edit: I was unclear on the voting process, and am retracting the above.
What kind of expectations about the voting for a Hugo did you have that when told it's 800 (rather than 8, 80, 8000, 80000...) strikes you as fantastic? And do you think that there are 800 dedicated MoR readers who would go to Worldcon and rank it #1 in the vote? Remember the infamous 1% rule: for every reader, there's 1% who will leave a comment or review, and out of those, 1% will do something additional. Going to Worldcon and voting is quite something additional.
(Well, one way to answer this would be to put up a poll on hpmor.com asking how many readers attended Worldcon 2011, Worldcon 2012, etc. Liars will inflate the numbers, but it would help get an upper bound.)
Oh, you can only vote in person? I knew part of the Hugo process was online, and assumed that the whole thing was. 800 votes for an online poll is "small-town newspaper sidebar survey" range, winning a major award with that kind of number would be absurd. It makes far more sense if it's embedded in a con.
Correction to my above: Trying to win Best Novel is unbelievable hubris, and it'll be first off the ballot in the rather unlikely case that it makes it on at all.
No no, see my other comments - you can vote without being physically present... if you don't mind paying $60 by January 31 for the membership which comes with few other benefits than being able to vote. You see the problem.
Keep in mind that "this fan base" would probably vote Methods (or EY, I suppose) in for Best Fan Writer pretty much uniformly, but is likely to be fragmented for Best Novel.
I'm curious as to what would have been your original probability estimate for "Given that Eliezer writes a Harry Potter fanfiction, it becomes the most popular Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet." Or, for that matter, getting out of the AI Box. Not everything impossible that I try, works - nobody coughed up $1.6 million to get faster HPMOR updates this time around, which I tried because, hey, why not - but to me, not trying for Best Novel, given feedback so far, just seems horribly, horribly non-Gryffindor. To me it seems like you're the one making this obvious, horrible mistake whose reference class of timidity errors could put a shadow over someone's entire life. Don't ask her out, don't interview at the hedge fund, don't try for the scholarship, go for Best Fan Work instead of Best Novel...
Offer 20-to-1 odds against HPMOR winning Best Novel and I'll buy in. Hm, now I'm curious as to which side of the bet Zvi or Kevin would take.
I would have assumed that the proper reference class was all your other fiction, which as much as I enjoyed them, were all short compared to MoR even the popular ones like 'Three Worlds Collide'. (One of my favorites, the Haruhi fanfic, was, what, 2 pages on FF.net?) Short fanfics cannot become the most popular, so I would have assigned it a very low probability. Had you asked an estimate for 'wrote a full trilogy of HP fanfic novels', my estimate would be quite different. I won't pretend to know what it would have been. (I remain surprised and amused that it has become as large and popular as it has been, and that you now procrastinate on both your rationality book(s) and the Center by writing MoR. Truly, fortune passes everywhere!)
Oh, I would've bet for you back on SL4. You already had succeeded in getting SIAI running, after all. (Although here again the counterfactual gets hard - I barely remember what I was like back in 2003-4 when I joined SL4 and IIRC you had already won an AI Box by then.)
Sure. I am poorer than a church mouse, so I can risk no more than ~$100. How's this:
"For any Worldcon 2013-2017, MoR will win the Hugo 'Best Novel' award. The stakes will be $100 against $5 (non-inflation adjusted). Payment by either Paypal or Bitcoin (at that day's exchange rate on the largest exchange eg. Mt.gox) to the winner or a charity of the winner's choice. In case of any dispute, the verdict will be judged by Carl Shulman or another person mutually acceptable to Eliezer Yudkowsky and gwern."
I've pinged them.
Eliezer has conceded the bet & paid me $5.
Okay, it's on.
Can anybody get in on this bet? I would take it as well.
I think the odds of HPMOR winning the Hugo (edited to say: for Best Novel) are far less than one percent. This has nothing to do with my estimation of the literary merits of the fic, and everything to do with my understanding of the literary establishment and its unwillingness to tangle with copyright law.
You know, on reflection I think that this was possibly a kinda snotty way of saying what I wanted to say: that I think gwern is right, and that you'd be better off applying in the Fan Writer category than in the Best Novel category. And I don't think it's true that going for the Best Novel is without cost, because you'd be giving up the chance at the Fan Writer award.
I mean, I'm happy to make the bet because I am very confident that I'll win it, but I don't actually want to punish you for putting your work out there or shooting for a high goal--which is what it sort of feels like, if I make you pay me when you lose.
I have looked up the rules and apparently, instead of a plurality vote or a majority vote with runoff voting, people rank all the candidates and can put "No Award" above anything they think sufficiently underserving. This does change my odds, but not enough that I wouldn't try to for a nomination. I'm also not sure that it should change my odds enough not to bet at 20-to-1. How much would you want in for?
Cute story I saw 12 days ago on
urth.net:$500 against $25?
I've added it to the registry & PredictionBook.
You should make sure, first, that MoR would be eligible for the Best Novel category, given that it's a fan work. I couldn't find anything on the site that stated definitely that such a work wouldn't be eligible, but there was some implication that the award is for original work. Looking over the past winners, I can't find any that aren't a) original, and b) published in a magazine or as a book (i.e. pro or semi-pro, by the Hugo's standards).
Anyway, it seems some provision should be made in case MoR isn't eligible.
If MoR doesn't win Best Novel because it isn't eligible, then gwern wins, that's clear to me at least.
EDIT TO ADD: I think that, conditional to MoR being an official nominee, I'd assign 40-50% chance to it winning Best Novel. But I think it's the "official nominee" step that's the hard part. I'd assign only 20% chance or less to the commitee allowing it as such an official nominee for Best Novel. For fear of JKR's potential ire, for fear of losing status for the Hugo awards by having fanfiction compete on it, for fear of setting a precedent for other fanfictions.
On the basis of your past experience Hugo award winners and nominees? I don't have any familiarity with the genre, so I don't know how MoR stacks up.
The first is probably nothing to worry about: JKR has said she's okay with fan fiction, so long as no on tries to make any money and no one tries to publish it in print (whatever that means). This does mean that EY can't count himself a pro or semi-pro author, which might exclude him. I'm not sure.
JKR's statement does not, I believe, have the force of law, it only describes her current disposition, and she's free to go back on it any time. She may consider being nominated for a Hugo to be equivalent to the other things she disapproves of.
So 2+ years on, has your opinion changed any? I think the probability has dropped a fair bit*, but I'm trying to simplify my finances, so I'm going to make you an offer: I'll sell you my side of the bet for 20% off, or $4. (Offer good for the next month or so.)
* to expand: I think the decrease in post tempo has destroyed much of the virality & reduced fan ardour, and more specifically, I haven't seen any prominent endorsements of MoR by elites like David Brin over the past year or so, which are necessary to legitimize MoR and make it a contender. You can't win a Hugo just by appealing to some people online, you also have to win over the niche of voters at the convention.
Nope.
That's what you'd call a liquidity preference. *rimshot*
I admit, it never occurred to me that part of liquidity preference is simply that liquid assets are easier to manage from an overhead/data point of view.
I'd take the Eliezer side of the bet if I was confident that HPMOR could compete against an unusually weak slate of nominees.
Very low. It struck me as a jawdroppingly stupid idea. Then I read it and it was rather good.