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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Harry Potter & The Methods of Rationality spawns non-profit to teach cognitive rationality!
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To be honest, I never got really hooked on that fanfic. It was recommended to me by a friend (I'm an avid fanfic reader and she thought I might like it) and I read the first few chapters but I just couldn't get into it. It's a mouthpiece for the author and I find that really annoying. On the other hand, I found the corresponding Twilight fanfic/rewrite to be much better (still gets a bit mouthy in the later parts, and the second book was a bit nauseating).The Minicamp itself sounds like an interesting idea. I am familiar with the tenets of the Center for Modern Rationality and I've read quite a bit of the materials offered on the Less Wrong website. Solid theories and nice application to everyday life.
It's TOTALLY a mouthpiece for the author. However, the corresponding entertainment value of the story does increase. Some of the chapters and conversations are so good I get tingles down my spine reading them.
I'll take your word for it because I doubt I'll try reading it again. There's way too many chapters by now and as I understand it, there's no way it'll ever be done. And I like my stories finished, tyvm.Thinking back on it, there was one chapter I did like, maybe the twentieth or so (I read the first five and then I'd periodically skip to a totally different chapter just to see if anything's changed for the better) - I seem to recall it having Harry lead Draco around interviewing portraits and such regarding theories on the slow disappearance of magic and ultimately discarding the idea altogether. It was an interesting thought exercise.
Weird. I've never heard of this fanfic nor any of these groups. Might look into some of the groups (Center for Modern Rationality?!) but sounds like the books might be ok to skip...
You might still want to check it out, Kristin (is Kristin okay? terp kinda sounds like derp and I always giggle when I read it out loud, sorry), maybe you'll find ti more interesting than I did. And I do admit that the story might be a better way to get yourself acquainted with the modern rationality branch of philosophy, especially if you find it difficult to focus on dry non-fiction.
There are a couple scenes that immediately come to mind as awesome: Harry breaking IN to Azkaban, then escaping by transfiguring a rocket to fly away in - remembering a little too late that rocket trajectories follow the rules of physics, not magic. Conjuring a Patronus based on Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, capable of destroying Dementors. The War Games chapters are so much fun, too! And several discussions about "The next great adventure" perhaps being not so great after all...From ch 77: "There was a Muggle once named Mohandas Gandhi," Harry said to the floor. "He thought the government of Muggle Britain shouldn't rule over his country. And he refused to fight. He convinced his whole country not to fight. Instead he told his people to walk up to the British soldiers and let themselves be struck down, without resisting, and when Britain couldn't stand doing that any more, we freed his country. I thought it was a very beautiful thing, when I read about it, I thought it was something higher than all the wars that anyone had ever fought with guns or swords. That they'd really done that, and that it had actually worked." Harry drew another breath. "Only then I found out that Gandhi told his people, during World War II, that if the Nazis invaded they should use nonviolent resistance against them, too. But the Nazis would've just shot everyone in sight. And maybe Winston Churchill always felt that there should've been a better way, some clever way to win without having to hurt anyone; but he never found it, and so he had to fight."
[...]
"the point is, saying violence is evil isn't an answer. It doesn't say when to fight and when not to fight. It's a hard question and Gandhi refused to deal with it, and that's why I lost some of my respect for him."
[...]
"Don't you see, if evil people are willing to risk violence to get what they want, and good people always back down because violence is too terrible to risk, it's - it's not a good society to live in, Headmaster! Don't you realize what all this bullying is doing to Hogwarts, to Slytherin House most of all?"
terpkristin wrote: "Weird. I've never heard of this fanfic nor any of these groups. Might look into some of the groups (Center for Modern Rationality?!) but sounds like the books might be ok to skip..."You'd probably enjoy it. It's set in an alternate universe where Petunia marries a college professor instead of Vernon and raises Harry to view the world scientifically.
Agatha wrote: "You might still want to check it out, Kristin (is Kristin okay? terp kinda sounds like derp and I always giggle when I read it out loud, sorry)"Kristin is fine. :) In the other online forum I frequent using the same screen name, they call me "tk" which also works. I've had people from that forum, when we do meetups, use tk as my name...and same on Facebook.
Sounds like they could be potentially interesting but LOOOONG. I'll have to take a look when work allows me to have a life again (fingers crossed for August!).
The Center for Modern Rationality is (the tentative name of) a new nonprofit seeking to invent new ways to teach modern-cognitive-science-based rationality – the skills of overcoming cognitive biases and thinking sanely using a human brain.
Hp&TMOR is one of the most popular stories on Fanfiction.net with almost 18 THOUSAND reviews, has spawned at least three Google PR4 sites, podcasts and audiobooks, been translated into ten languages and is followed by some of the biggest fiction and non-fiction writers today.
Rather than try to start a topic asking what people think about fanfic, I thought I'd share this example of a fanfic that is read by lots of people that have never even read the original books.
It's even spawned a 29-episode (so far) machinima! (and I see, is even listed here on Goodreads!)
Anyone else reading it? Anyone else thinking about what would happen if you applied this way of thinking to The Magicians? "You want me to put a WHAT right next to my brain stem?"