Am I the only one who sees obvious parallels between Sartre's use of Greek mythology as a shared reference point to describe his philosophy more effectively to a lay audience and Yudkowsky's use of Harry Potter to accomplish the same goal? Or is it so obvious no one bothers to talk about it? Was that conscious on Yudkowsky's part? Unconscious? Or am I just seeing connections that aren't there?
You might like to read, "maps of meaning" by Jordan Peterson. He proposes that meaning sometimes will come from the stories that we tell help to form the meaning that we make for ourselves. All stories help us with meaning.
Yep.
And, in the Maps of Meaning lecture series, Peterson gives a shout-out to Rowling's Harry Potter series as being an excellent example of a retelling of an archetypal myth. So, it was a good choice of material for Yudkowsky to use as he did.