https://x.com/alltheyud/status/2103060865062932741?s=46

Forget that he’s been completely vindicated about Ai x-risk and set aside whether he’s right about all that stuff for a moment. This dude still thinks HPMOR is the greatest fanfic of all time.

from the tweet: “Millions know your name as the greatest of heroes, millions more as the greatest of villains, and other millions know you solely as the greatest author of Harry Potter fanfiction.”

incredible one of one human.

 

not sure he's been vindicated about anything tbh

he's been a massive part of creating the problems he purports to solve

but yes, its kinda wild to think about how the dude who wrote an HP fan fic I read as a kid is now in this position

 

He's a cult leader. I don't know how he's accomplished that considering he seems to have all the charisma of a wet sock, but that's what he is. Beyond personally leading a cult he's also managed to inspire more than a few cults that I've heard of, definitely more that I've never heard of, and will undoubtedly inspire more.

 

Maximum Cringe.

 

I couldn't get through HPMOR. Once upon a time there was a tumblr blog that went through it and ripped apart his knowledge of physics chapter by chapter. That was way more entertaining than the story.

 

HPMOR is the first piece of fanfiction I ever read. I can assure you it's dogshit but somewhat entertaining. Yudkowsky is a pervert and so are all the people in his clique ahem polycule. He isn't wrong about X-risk, per se. His conclusions are overblown, but his hypotheses aren't. Recursive self-improvement just isn't possible. If it was, then yes, it would be a big issue. You have to understand that Rats (Rationalists) in Berkeley / adjoining areas are independently wealthy and don't have dayjobs. They dream up these scenarios to pass their time and often end up drinking their own kool-aid. I don't think he's a major grifter. He's a bit of a grifter, sure, but he's mostly honest and his contributions are overall a net positive. That being said, unless you're someone who can understand a substantial part of The Sequences on the first try, you shouldn't bother with Rationality. It's just mental masturbation for the most part. Read the top posts on LessWrong and call it a day.

Yudkowsky is the Rat but he isn't a cult leader. Scott Alexander is arguably more magnetic. People post on LessWrong and attend Rat events of their own volition. They join polycules and orgies of their own free will. They live in SF of their own free will. They're weird, cerebral people with a lot of money.

HPMOR is Yudkowsky's first public work. He has a "glowfic" called Project Lawful that is alright, or at least the first fifty pages I read were. They had more exposition than story. The protagonist is a self-insert who hails from a reality in which Earth's average intelligence is equivalent to Yudkowsky's. Yes, in that reality they banned AI. And the protag somehow jumps to a hell-dimension.

 

I don’t like HPMOR either, but in the year of 2026 it’s hard not to read this thread as “forget about <most important issue of our time>, he was still wrong about <least important issue of our time>!”

 

I think you can connect the quality of his thinking in the two. They are not seperate things.