Open Thread, November 1 - 7, 2013

witzvo

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

So I get home from a weekend trip and go directly to the HPMOR page. No new chapter yet. But there is a link to what seems to be a rationalist Death Note.

The way he saw it, the world was a pretty awful place. Corrupt politicians, cruel criminals, evil CEOs and even day-to-day evil acts made it that way, but everyday stupidity ensured it would stay like that. Nobody could make even a simple utility calculation. The only saving grace was that this was as true for the villains as for the heroes.

I am going to read it. Here are my next thoughts:

So, it seems like Eliezer succeeded to create a whole new genre of literature: rationalist fiction. Nice job!

Wait, what?! Is "a story where the protagonist behaves rationally" really a new genre of literature? There is something horribly wrong with this world if this is true.

Discussing with my girlfriend about which stories should be x-rationalizated next, she suggests HPMOR. Someone should make a HPMOR fanfic where the protagonist is even more rational than the rational Harry. Would that lead to a spiral of even more and more rational heroes?

What exactly could the MoreRational!Harry do? It would be pretty awesome if he could somehow deduce the existence of magic before he was contacted from Hogwarts. For example, he could start doing some research about his biological parents; after realizing they were killed he could try to find out the villain, and gradually discover the existence of magic.

Only one problem: MoreRational!Voldemort would have killed MoreRational!Harry as a baby. Using a knife.

In addition to the other's already listed, DataPacRat's Myou've Got To Be Kidding Me follows a perspective of a character thrown into a setting and trying to analyze the basic rules in order to optimize them. There are some interesting concepts, but I don't know that I can recommend it : It has not been updated in over a year, and was part of some big conglomeration of fanfic writers which had some pretty widely varying quality (although thankfully nothing necessary to Myou've plotline).

6DanielLC13y

Erfworld is a piece of rationalist fiction not related to HP:MoR. It was discussed on here a while back. There must be others. Also, I suggest calling it Rational!Rational!Harry.

13Ishaan13y

This leads to another comment on rationalist fiction: Most of it seems to be restricted to fan-fiction. The mold appears to be: "Let's take a story in which the characters underutilized their opportunities and bestow them with intelligence, curiosity, common sense, creativity and genre-awareness". The contrast between the fanfic and the canon is a major element of the story, and the canon an existing scaffold which saves the writer from having to create a context. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, just an observation. [...] So, the question becomes, how do you recognize "rationalist" stories in non-fan-fic form? Is it simply the presence of show-your-work-smart characters? Is simply behaving rationally sufficient? Every genre has a theme...romance, adventure, etc. So where are the stories which are, fundamentally, about stuff like epistemology and moral philosophy?