Quibbling: the ESR blurb looks as if it dates from fairly early in the story, when it looked as if it might be all about how Harry did Science to the magical world, understood everything, and conquered -- excuse me, optimized -- the universe. Someone who decides to read the book because that sounds cool is likely to be surprised and perhaps disappointed at much of the later plot.

The blurb from Rachel Aaron has a similar but (I think) much less serious problem of the same kind: that what-if question turns out to be not quite the right one, although the author has taken some trouble to make it look for a while as if it is.

1. Are you going to print it yourself or pay a printing company? Printing it yourself can be some work (binding all the pages and the cover) but maybe a printing company wouldn't want to print it due to licensing issues.
2. Will you be using the HPMOR PDF? It was (probably) made to be identical to the style of the original HP books, but it's your choice if you want to keep it that way.

Possible quotes:

"It's a terrific series, subtle and dramatic and stimulating. Smart guy, good writer. Poses hugely terrific questions that I, too, had thought of... and a number that I hadn't. I wish all Potter fans would go here, and try on a bigger, bolder and more challenging tale." - David Brin

'This is a book whose title still makes me laugh and yet it may just turn out to be one of the greatest books ever written. The writing is shockingly good, the plotting is some of the best in all of literature, and the stories are simply pure genius. I fear this book may never get the accolades it deserves, because it's too hard to look past the silly name and publishing model, but I hope you, dear reader, are wiser than that! I must-read." - Aaron Swartz

"Oh Thoth Trismegistus, oh Ma'at, oh Ganesha, oh sweet lady Eris... I have not laughed so hard in years! Read it and laugh. Read it and learn. Eliezer re-invents Harry Potter as a skeptic genius who sets himself the task of figuring out just how all this 'magic' stuff works. Strongly recommended. And if you manage to learn about sources of cognitive sias like the Planning Fallacy and the Bystander Effect (among others) while your sides are hurting with laughter, so much the better." - Eric S. Raymond

"Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is the sort of thing that would technically be called a fanfic, but is more appropriately named a work of sheer genius. It takes the basic Harry Potter story and asks 'what if, instead of a boy locked in a closet, he was a child genius raised by a loving pair of adoptive parents who brought science, reason, and modern thinking to the wizarding world?' LOVE. IT. Read it, seriously. It will change your way of looking at the world." - Rachel Aaron

So basically it is eternal september, then. It's just that lesswrong's "september" took the form of excessively/inappropriately contrarian people.

Excellent post. Agree with all major points.

I think Less Wrong experienced the reverse of the evaporative cooling EY feared, where people gradually left the arena as the proportional number of critics in the stands grew ever larger.

I'd think it was primarily not the proportional number of critics, but lower quality of criticism and great users getting tired of replying to/downvoting it. Most of the old crowd of lesswrongers welcomed well thought out criticism, but when people on the other side of an inferential distance gap try to imitate those high-criticism norms it is annoying to deal with, so they end up leaving. Especially if the lower quality users are loud and more willing to use downvotes as punishment for things they don't understand.

[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.

Fun next question: Assuming this line of reasoning holds, what does it mean for EA?

I figured anti-polyamory propaganda did not need annotations on LessWrong. It's telling that all but one reply took it as something which needs to be suppressed/counterargued, despite me calling it propaganda and saying it was interesting as an example of psychological tricks people pull.

If a trick is trivially seen, there likely no update made by seeing the trick in action and I don't see the argument for the value of seeing it in action. To the extend you claim you saw new tricks that you weren't aware of in the past that does raise the question of how you conceptualize those newly seen tricks.

I take the negative feedback as meaning content people are politically sensitive to is not welcome, even if it's rationality relevant (resistance to manipulation tricks)

Political sensitivity has nothing to do with my assessment.

You could label any bad source on the internet rationality relevant by saying that it serves to see bad reasoning in action. You haven't provided any argument why this particular piece of propaganda is more worthy of attention than other pieces of propaganda.

Apart from that I'm doubtful that the mechanism you propose actually leads to resistance to manipulation tricks. Adopting new habits is hard.

If the article lead you to see manipulation attempt at content that supports your own position that you previously haven't seen that would interesting information to talk about. Till now I haven't seen that the video had that effect on you and even less that the video has that effect on other potential viewers.

It's also a good idea to have accurate models of why people come to the views they do, and what reinforces their norms.

If that's your goal, read a book like Cialdini's Influence. It's time much better invested into understanding tricks then directly watching propaganda yourself. Especially propaganda that isn't annotated.

(I don't think this is super important at all, but noticed a few tricks which I had not specifically thought about before, and figured other people may get something similar out of it)

If you notice tricks you haven't thought before, why don't you write about them when directing people to the propaganda piece? Written reflection is a quite useful tool for building mental models of concepts.

That way we had something to talk about here and I wouldn't object to having the link as an illustration.