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MathiasZaman comments on [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 122 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (162)
(copy-pasted from my tumblr)
The ending to HPMOR isn’t bad. It fits the story and, while open-ended still gives a lot of closure.
It just doesn’t measure up to, like, the rest of the book. Part of it is probably the hype. The final chapters probably fell a bit flat just in comparison to what people expected. But even correcting for that, I still find that it’s slightly disappointing. The best parts, for me, where the buildup to the “there is light in the world” speech and the Stanford Prisoner Experiment arc. They are both intense emotional moments. I literally cried while listening to the podcast version of Azkaban.
The other great parts are the cool, big action sequences.
The ending provides none of those. And yet it sorta promises them without ever delivering.
Welp, different strokes I guess. I didn't like the Azkaban arc so much, and I quite like the ending. On the one hand, I agree that if a substantial fraction of readers are unsatisfied, there's probably something Eliezer could fix. On the other hand, I got mine, mwahahaha.
It's not that i dislike the ending. I just don't think it's as emotionally moving as it should be/as I predicted it would have been. I was expecting something that would make me go "Yes, goddammit, yes!" while I start planning to improve my life and be a better person.
Instead I got an ending that was a completely functional ending for this story with some jokes in it.
Something like, say, the ending of Chapter 27? (Just trying to get a feel for your position here.)
Something like that, yeah, although that particular example does little for me. As additional data points: The Sword of Good, the Humanism arc, the short "There is light in the world..." speech and I Shall Wear Midnight (by Terry Pratchett) were things that incited that sort of emotion in me.
This is pretty exactly how I feel.
The closest I get to that emotional peak is when Hermione starts optimising, but even that feels a bit abrupt. Maybe it's because we're only seeing Hermione from the outside; my brain is not content to just interpolate her journey from being eaten by a troll to reinventing heroic responsibility in more humble language.