[LINK] Author's Note 119: Shameless Begging

Evan_Gaensbauer

[Contains No HPMOR Spoliers]

[http://hpmor.com/notes/119/](http://hpmor.com/notes/119/)

I was at first confused by Eliezer's requests at the end of Ch. 119. I missed his Author's Notes, which his explains his rationale behind them. I thought I would share in case others missed it, especially because readers on LessWrong may have more elite or broader networks to help Eliezer achieve his new goals.

Eliezer is seeking the possibility of gaining J. K. Rowling's permission to publish HPMoR in some form, and have the profits donated to a U.K. charity. To this end, he wants to contact someone who can put him in touch with either J. K. Rowling, or Daniel Radcliffe.
If you're attending or supporting Worldcon through 2015-17, and think Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is worthy, please nominate it to win Best Novel for the 2016 Hugo Awards.
The Machine Intelligence Research Institute is looking to hire at least one new executive, and very competent mathematicians for its research.
Eliezer is thinking on what fiction to next write. He would re-edit an old script of his if and only if someone contacts with him to make either a movie with high-quality special effects, or an anime. Otherwise, he is seeking to work with the Collective Intelligence (the problem-solving force composed of the HPMoR readership). Check it out if you consider yourself part of the CI.
Eliezer is seeking to contact John Paulson the hedge-fund manager, to represent a financier as their angel investor, and other investment opportunities.

Eliezer has several other projects he might be interested in. Learn more by clicking the link.

Eliezer is seeking the possibility of gaining J. K. Rowling's permission to publish HPMoR in some form, and have the profits donated to a U.K. charity. To this end, he wants to contact someone who can put him in touch with either J. K. Rowling, or Daniel Radcliffe.
If you're attending or supporting Worldcon through 2015-17, and think Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is worthy, please nominate it to win Best Novel for the 2016 Hugo Awards.
The Machine Intelligence Research Institute is looking to hire at least one new executive, and very competent mathematicians for its research.
Eliezer is thinking on what fiction to next write. He would re-edit an old script of his if and only if someone contacts with him to make either a movie with high-quality special effects, or an anime. Otherwise, he is seeking to work with the Collective Intelligence (the problem-solving force composed of the HPMoR readership). Check it out if you consider yourself part of the CI.
Eliezer is seeking to contact John Paulson the hedge-fund manager, to represent a financier as their angel investor, and other investment opportunities.

Eliezer has several other projects he might be interested in. Learn more by clicking the link.

Obstacle #2 to my writing more fiction is that my writing so far has had negative, as well as positive, consequences for public relations. My writing tends to be controversial and stomp all over certain sorts of minefields. Worse, there is some quality of it that seems to attract a certain sort of Sneer mindset – not just social-media sneertrolls, but the seething pools of corruption that are mainstream journalists.

This is something that has made me feel rather conflicted about HPMOR - on the one hand, I've really enjoyed reading it, but on the other I fear it makes a whole range of important beliefs look ridiculous by association.

But most of the damage that can been done, already has been done. The ways to minimise the damage are fairly straightforwards:

(1) Make it obvious that HPMOR is not a day job, so that people can't say "MIRI gave EY time off work to work on HPMOR! People donate large amounts of money to MIRI to produce fanfiction!"

(2) Stay out of politics. There are mines that don't actually need to be stomped on. This means removing small sections of writing which do not advance the plot, but make a political point, such as in three worlds collide rape is legal (I struggle to imagine how this could work), or the section of HPMOR where it is explained that not believing in open borders (which the average person does not believe in) makes you as bad as Voldemort and that if you don't want someone in your country that means you think that they are not even worth spitting on.

Does he realise that there are non-racist reasons for wanting closed borders?

EY wrote 'politics is the mindkiller', which makes it even stranger when he mindkills his readers.

This came out more critical then I would prefer. But I just don't like to see pointless landmine-stamping in otherwise pretty awesome fiction.

But most of the damage that can been done, already has been done.

In my experience, this is an amazingly good assumption to avoid ever making.

10Nornagest11y

There's a certain irony in phrasing it this way.

7alexanderwales11y

I think part of it is that EY writes for fun, rather than solely with some direct aim in mind, and he really likes stomping on landmines. (And who can blame him? Stomping on landmines is fun!) The fic includes a fair number of things that his average audience member dislikes, but which is there because he likes it, and would likely be unable to write as much if he kept restricting himself. There's a reason that there's a significant word count devoted to anime references, and I believe it's mostly related to what produces hedons for him.

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[LINK] Author's Note 119: Shameless Begging

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[LINK] Author's Note 119: Shameless Begging

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