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Protagoras comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 27, chapter 98 - Less Wrong
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I've felt like the whole story is too fast, but there are apparently reasons EY wanted to cram the story into a single year. To have only one defense professor? To avoid having to deal with Harry's sex life? I'm not quite sure what all the reasons are (I imagine they're multiple, and that some have probably been mentioned by EY and I'm forgetting), but while I think I would have preferred having Harry develop over 7 years as in canon instead of solving everything as an 11 year old, it's obvious that as the story is actually set up some things just are going to have to happen implausibly quickly.
Perhaps the reason is that a rationalist wouldn't waste time. A superior mind does not need 7 years to conquer the world with magic. It just needs to find the ways to recursively self-improve and then... FOOM!
That fine, except a perfect rationalist doesn't exist in a bubble, nor does Harry. Much of what's making the story feel rushed isn't Harry's actions, but rather the speed at which those actions propagate among people who are not rational actors.
Harry is not an above-human-intelligence AI with direct access to his source code. Therefore he cannot "FOOM", therefore he's stuck with a world that is still largely outside his ability to control, no matter how rational he is.
If that's the reason, then any implausibility in how rapidly it happened (I mean, aside from any that's the result of the people involved being wizards, Harry being superintelligent, etc.) is (weak) evidence against those claims about what a superior mind would do.