This is a special post for quick takes by Mohit Gore. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
I tried reading HPMOR and didn't like it. As a vehicle for rationality, it's definitely conveying its message wholeheartedly, but I really don't understand the decision to disguise it as a Harry Potter fanfiction, especially when the fanfiction element feels strangely written and empty. That being said, I am absolutely in the minority here, so it's likely I'm simply missing something. Since I'm only a few chapters in I'll try and continue it - but my hopes are not up at all.
What would be your proposed alternative to Harry Potter fanfiction? Something else fan fiction? Original fiction? Not a fiction?
As I see it, choosing the Harry Potter universe that many readers already know allows it to use the contrast between how the different versions of Harry Potter behave.
Harry Potter in the books is frankly an idiot. Every year the most powerful dark wizard is trying to murder him, and he always only survives because he gets lucky... and yet the only thing he worries about is quidditch. Voldemort doesn't seem very smart either; his only smart move in the entire series was making the horcruces. Otherwise he is just a bully who can say "avada kedavra" faster than anyone. It seems like if he really tried to kill Harry, then Harry wouldn't have a chance. Seriously, if you can possess people, including teachers at Hogwarts, how difficult it would be to say "Harry, come here" and then stab him with a knife? The entire society of wizards seems to have a huge collective blind spot about doing anything that does not involve magic. Which is weird, considering that many students are coming from muggle families.
So I guess if your message is that people are idiots, it can be well delivered in a fan fiction from the universe where all people are idiots, and the book had millions of readers who didn't mind this fact, probably because in similar circumstances they also would have acted the same way.
I don't dislike the decision to make it Harry Potter fanfiction; I agree with everything you're saying about the original series and I think it fits with Yudkowsky's goal. My gripe is with how diluted the fanfiction element is in HPMOR. So far, the dialogue is stiff and uninteresting, the pacing is unbelievably dull, the story moves in sudden stops and starts, and our protagonist is insufferable. It seems as though the fiction part of the project was a hand-waved afterthought, which is strange because it's the thing that houses the thought the series is meant to inspire in the first place.
Looking online, it seems like most members of the rationalist community adore HPMOR and most members of the fanfiction community despise it. That makes sense; Yudkowsky's goal does not seem to be to write an effective piece of fiction, but rather to communicate personal philosophy... but if he was going to use the medium of fanfiction at all, I don't see the point in forgetting about its standards entirely. If he wasn't going to adapt to the medium he chose, why use it at all?
I tried reading HPMOR and didn't like it. As a vehicle for rationality, it's definitely conveying its message wholeheartedly, but I really don't understand the decision to disguise it as a Harry Potter fanfiction, especially when the fanfiction element feels strangely written and empty. That being said, I am absolutely in the minority here, so it's likely I'm simply missing something. Since I'm only a few chapters in I'll try and continue it - but my hopes are not up at all.
I don't dislike the decision to make it Harry Potter fanfiction; I agree with everything you're saying about the original series and I think it fits with Yudkowsky's goal. My gripe is with how diluted the fanfiction element is in HPMOR. So far, the dialogue is stiff and uninteresting, the pacing is unbelievably dull, the story moves in sudden stops and starts, and our protagonist is insufferable. It seems as though the fiction part of the project was a hand-waved afterthought, which is strange because it's the thing that houses the thought the series is me... (read more)