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thomblake comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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Was it supposed to be obvious that David Monroe, Quirrell, and Voldemort are the same person all along? Is that why he was named "David Monroe"?
Is there a joke to that name that I'm not getting?
David Monroe was the name of a character from A Black Comedy who (rot13 spoiler for A Black Comedy) jnf ernyyl ibyqrzbeg'f qvnel ubepehk pbcl, ghearq serrqbz svtugre.
Should I read this?
I'd say, not if you have any intention of reading A Black Comedy at any point in the future. It's the answer to a fairly important riddle.
And I'd strongly recommend reading A Black Comedy, I thought it was hilarious.
You make me smile.
Everything's funnier with -bottom tacked on, I find.
How long is it? Any previous knowledge needed?
The page tells you how long! "Words: 246,320"
Ah. Now I feel silly.
I've read a few chapters, and it did nothing for me. Is there any likelihood of improvement in my enjoyment if I press on?
I read it the other day. If you didn't like the first few chapters, I can't see why you'd like the rest.
Probably not. I do recall the later chapters being better than the earlier ones, but if it's doing nothing you may as well stop.
A Black Comedy is pretty well-written and funny. It's on my short list of HP fic recommendations. It's silly almost to the point of crack, but not fourth-wall-breaking silly.
I've read the first few chapters of it now. It's decent enough but I didn't find it exceptionally funny or engaging. Possibly I'm missing the cultural/fandom references it's supposed to be parodying. Soem fo teh departures from canon (e.g. ghost ginny and Harry's general character) seem bizarre.
What others would you reccomend? I've had trouble filtering through the dross
Backward with Purpose part 1: Always and Always has been aptly called one of the greatest works of human literature. (And that was by people in the future).
Tied for Last.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (incomplete).
Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time (complete, but sequel currently in-progress)
That's the short list. I should actually keep my "favorite stories" up to date so I can answer this better, now that I've read enough of them to have some taste.
ETA: Of course, now that I look at it, all of these stories are on Eliezer's "favorites" on ffdn, so you might want to look there.
TV Tropes has fanfic rec pages that are worth filtering through for many of the higher-trafficked fandoms. (They'll give you most of the fic demographic information without you having to even click through, and widely-read ones have a bunch of reviews right there if you want to control harder for quality.)
Here is my strategy to filter through the dross: I use the "favorite story" lists of people who seem to have similar tastes in stories as me. How do I know if someone has a similar taste in stories as me? Well, if someone has written a story in a style that I like, probably they have a similar taste in stories. (Basically, I assume that people like to read the same style of stories that they write.)
I got started out reading fanfiction other than HPMOR by reading some fics from EY's favorite stories list, and then for each of those stories that I liked (that is, basically all of them, seeing as I like more or less the same kind of stories EY likes), I read other stories by that author, and I read stories on that author's "favorite stories" list, and then read other stories by authors of those stories, and stories from their favorite lists, and so on.
I hope this advice helps you. If you want specific fanfic recommendations though, you can check out my fanfiction.net favorite stories list.
I have automated this method, but my current weighing scheme isn't very good. In case anyone can suggest a better one, below is my setup.
Each user has a rank that describes how similar their taste is to mine. Each story has a rank that describes how much I like it. We start with user ranks being all 0, and with story ranks reflecting my preferences. First we set each user's rank to be the average of the ranks of the stories he likes ('average' can be replaced by any other function of the number of those stories and the sum of their ranks). Then we set each story's rank to be the sum of the ranks of the users that like it. Then we normalize, so that the sum of all story ranks is, say, 100. Then we repeat.
The main problem with the above is that any user who likes only the top-ranked story will come on top. If instead of using the average of the story ranks we use the sum, people who like more stories will have an advantage. When I have the time, I'll try functions like sum/(sqrt(a^2+n^2)-a+1), where n is the number of stories the user likes. I'm open to other suggestions. But note that the ranking procedure takes ~5s per repeat, so fiddling with parameters until it works isn't a good option.
One disadvantage of that method is that the stories it gives you will mostly stay local to one fandom, unless you're lucky enough to spot a talented multifandom author, and those are pretty rare. (Eliezer is one, though, which helps.) Good if you're only looking for Harry Potter fic, bad if you're looking for good writing and aren't too concerned about milieu.
Another possible disadvantage is that you might end up with a reading list full of remarkably weird kinks: favorites lists tend to be weighted towards unique tastes. This is probably less of an issue on ff.net with its content policies, but something to keep in mind if you spend a lot of time sifting through (e.g.) AO3 or LJ.
Good points. Out of familiarity, I tend to stick to Harry Potter fanfic, so I don't find that so problematic. (Although all in all, it could be a problem, case in point, note that Luminosity (A rationalist Twilight fanfic by Alicorn, which by the way is an amazing story, even if (like me) you have not read the Twilight books and have no intention of doing so) is an example of a very good non-Harry Potter fanfic that I read that I did not get to by this method. (I got to it from talk here on Less Wrong.) )(Although, that said, I could have gotten to it this way, as EY did add it to his favorite stories list.)
I stick to fanfiction.net for the most part, so as you said, the weird kinks thing doesn't really affect me. (And I doubt I would want to read much of the weird kinks stuff in the first place.) But you do make a good point in saying that this strategy works only within a certain context, and yes, you should be aware of its limitations. (As you pointed out.)
Frankly, I read Luminosity because of how much everyone raves about it here, and it didn't appeal to me at all. Put it down after a dozen or so chapters.
I think my biggest problem is that I'm not a fan of stories as pure vehicles for teaching. Teaching on the side is fine, but trying to embed large amounts of rationalist pedagogy in the middle of a story, to the point where it takes over, is frankly a good way to ruin a story. HPMOR manages to be good despite it, as far as I'm concerned, not because of it. But all Luminosity had was rationalist classroom teaching and Twilight - there's better venues for both(Sequences and landfills, respectively), and it has none of the insane humour or early plot that brought me into HPMOR.
You're missing a close-parenthesis.
Looking for fics with a theme you like (such as whodunnits or backstory vignettes or hurt/comfort or wingfic where the characters are American high schoolers) can locate good authors in any fandom, which you can then use as sources for search inside the fandom.
You can also pick original works you like in the first place and see what the most popular fics thereof are like.
Archive of Our Own is so far above FF.net that browsing at random habitually nets good stories. Downsides are the much smaller volume and variety of fandoms, and the prevalence of really weird porn.
Dumbledores Army and the Year of Darkness is good. Its basically Half-blood Prince from the viewpoint of Neville and several other side characters. Its finished as is the first sequel. The third sequel looks stalled.
I anti-recommend DAYD. It falls on my list below watching paint dry.
I also found it to be not worth reading past the first chapter. The antagonists felt like complete caricatures and it made the whole situation at Hogwarts feel too melodramatic to take seriously.
I recommend Amends, or Truth and Reconciliation-- the year after the end of the original series, from Hermione's point of view. It's not finished, but it's being updated.
By the way, we were discussing this in the last comment thread based on a much smaller reference. (The whole "erfphvat gur zvavfgre'f qnhtugre" thing). With this new, massive reference of Quirrell to David Monroe, it suddenly seems a lot more likely that EY is specifically trying to point out to us the similarity.