Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8

Unnamed

Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

The hiatus is over with today's publication of chapter 73, and the previous thread is approaching the 500-comment threshold, so let's start a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. This is the place to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic and anything related to it.

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The fanfiction.net author page is the central location for information about updates and links to HPMOR-related goodies, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.

As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.

Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.

Huh. My first thought was simply to argue that a work of fiction is rarely improved by attempting to make it meet certain moral standards; The Kreutzer Sonata isn't any less great for espousing despicable beliefs, and plenty of terrible novels inspire laudable ideas of human society. So, if artistic quality and moral quality are unrelated, better that an author write what comes from their heart rather than attempt to teach what they haven't yet interiorised themselves, and risk coming off as insincere or overzealous.

However, MoR is ostensibly meant to be an educational and inspirational story as much as an entertaining one, so in that particular light the suggestion carries more weight. Even so, it wasn't Eliezer's decision that the fated hero be male and the well-meaning-but-over-her-head companion be female. Perhaps more importantly, had Ron kept his canon role instead of being replaced by Draco, there would have been a second, male WMBOHH companion, Hermione's frustration would not have been framed in terms of perceived sexism in the first place, and there probably would not have been a S.P.H.E.W..

Even so, it wasn't Eliezer's decision that the fated hero be male and the well-meaning-but-over-her-head companion be female.

Actually, insofar as he decided not to gender-flip everybody or change the prediction, he did decide to make the fated hero male and the companion female.

Not that I think he should have done otherwise, all things considered, but this kind of argument annoys me in general.

12Raemon15y

I mostly agree with this. But with an extremely lengthy qualifier: My take, as a storyteller, is that your collective work should meet your moral standards. (I mean, they're YOUR standards, your work should be meeting them, whatever they are). That doesn't mean jamming morals down people's throat, it doesn't mean making sure each work conveys every single positive thing you believe in. But I think it does mean that you should consider what impact your story might have on the people who read it, and given the chance, you should try to make that impact positive. Some of my favorite stories are ones where the main character's judgment is obviously questionable. The Eisenhorn trilogy (from Warhammer 40k) is set in a world whose morality is completely orthogonal to mine. There is so much wrong with the Imperium of Man I don't know where to begin. (Basically imagine a medieval catholic church managing an entire galaxy). But the main character is not a 20th-century American reacting to his crazy world, he is a product of that crazy world. He does things I'd consider completely immoral in 20th century America, but I certainly wouldn't blame him for given his upbringing. In the face of a bizarre world, he makes choices, whose rightness and wrongness correspond to my notions in about the same way that pebble-sorters' choices would. And by the end of the story, he might or might not have become incredibly deluded, so anything he 'learned' should not be taken as an Aesop. Still, it's a story that deals DIRECTLY with morality, by completely ignoring what is actually right and focusing on the way humans make decisions in response to their environment. My reaction to the characters is an interesting sort of Rorschach test. I think a SF-loving conservative christian who read it would come away with completely different reactions to many key choices, but still enjoy it, feel like her "political/moral" neurons had been satisfyingly tickled, and not feel like the author was presen

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8

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