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polymathwannabe comments on Open Thread April 8 - April 14 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Tenoke 08 April 2014 11:11AM

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Comment author: JoshuaFox 08 April 2014 03:17:02PM *  1 point [-]

Thanks for those answers; but they don't quite explain

  • why some people are induced to change their life by it (perhaps only because it piques their interest for other material on LessWrong)
  • why some readers get more enthusiastic about it than about some excellent non-fanfic books. (These readers are mostly not part of a group that might put social pressure on them to become fans.)
  • why Eliezer has described his own work as "fictional literature from what looks like an entirely different literary tradition." (That's in the April Fool's post, but he has said similar things elsewhere. And though this bullet point could be explained as arrogance on the part of Eliezer, some comments I've seen suggest that many fans agree with him.)
Comment author: polymathwannabe 08 April 2014 04:15:29PM 2 points [-]

My experience with HPMoR has been to find a story that is a) dementedly funny, b) loaded with a pile of mysteries to keep you wondering about crazy theories late at night, c) internally consistent and well narrated, d) useful for indirectly teaching people about rational techniques.

I was not aware of the number of rationalist novels circulating out there, and HPMoR was the first case I found of a fictional character explicitly defending my pet causes (empiricism, privileging experimentation, reductionism, atheism, the importance of SF in teaching creative thought). Among other effects, it naturally makes the reader want to know more about the author.

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