You have one half of that right.

 

One third, really.

Not engaging, not a story. It's an attempt by the author to drum up publicity, which may or may not be going a little too far into the legal gray area covering fanfiction because he's using it for real material gain based on the publicity his research gets.

He also isn't joining the conversation, he's just fucking with us, trying to get a response.

LessWrong: Obvious Troll, or most obvious Troll?

@Myaldee: We take things like 'cesspit' as a compliment from our own people, but when some pseudo-intellectual eighth grade dropout comes on here and tells us that he's received much more accurate (read: Favorable) analyses of his 'story', threatens to attack DLP's reputation (as if anyone cares) and insults us, we don't.

 

Meh. Unless the author gets drunk and tries trolling again*, I'd propose we spend less time on his real life self (or else maybe move it to another thread).

*In which case he's fair game and I'd be happy to contribute some of my own lulzy finds.

 

He may not try trolling again, per se, but rest assured that the potshots will continue from the relative safety of his author's notes.

That being said, I'd prefer to never have to look at/hear the dude again, so I agree.

 

Tried to read it, saw the name 'Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.', clicked the 'X'. That was the first attempt.

Tried to start a second time, which is frankly rare as there are /much/ better options in the WbA, and I didn't get far. Frankly, all the Science got to me. Hey, I'm a simple guy, I like my entertainment free of it (Most of the times. E.g. Dexter's Lab was an awesome show). I don't like Harry in this fic either. Which is a must for me as I like to get into the protagonist's shoes when I'm reading Fantasy fiction.

So, in short, not very interesting nor captivating in any form. 1/5 from me. Especially for the name 'Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.' I liked Harry Potter-Slytherin-Gryffindor-Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw-Myrridin better and those fics almost allways have swords. For me Swords > Science (again, almost allways) in Fantasy fiction.

 

"It seems that someone signing themselves "DLP Anonymous" - i.e. Dark Lord Potter - edited my Wikipedia article to note that I wrote "mediocre Harry Potter fanfiction". Stay classy, DLP! I'd be tempted to retaliate in kind, only the Dark Lord Potter forum doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, because they fail the notability test, because nobody ever mentions them in newspapers or anything, because they're completely unimportant."

Stay classy, Less-Wrong.

Whoever took the time to go over to his wiki-page and troll is an idiot. I can't, however, see how that would warrant an attack on an entire community. Its unreasonable to take the actions of one idiot as a reflection of the whole- especially when said idiot could be anyone- be it a newbie who seldom makes useful contribution to DLP discussion or a misguided lurker/fanboy-crusader (they exist). Considering how much attention DLP gets in his author notes its not completely out of the realm of possibility that the troll in question is not even a DLP member at all, he/she might just be a troll that found a banner to ride under.

Anyway, regardless of the true culprit, there were better ways to handle this. There are times when DLP deserves to come under fire, this isn't one of them.

This is that arrogance, that unjustified self-importance that rubs me the wrong way and makes MoR difficult to fully appreciate. I mean, fair play to Less-Wrong, he's an intelligent guy with good ideas and admirable drive- I just wish that a few thousand reviews, a facebook page and some honorable mentions later the guy wouldn't forget that he didn't in fact create Harry Potter, or make it interesting, and despite his at times, commendable use of rationality, the lion's share of the attention comes from the interesting world and characters that JK created and the fact that she allows us to use them without cost.

I'm not quite sure Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Methods of Rationality would have enjoyed the same success.

 

I lol at how proud he is of his Wikipedia page and its "notability" given that - if you look at the Discussion page for it - it's very clear that he's been policing and censoring it for quite some time now. Apparently he keeps removing any attempt to mention anything bad about him, such as his lack of formal education. Note that his page reads like a CV rather than an encyclopaedic entry.

I especially like this comment:

 

In all due honesty, Sesc, you're right, and frankly, this is getting more than a bit sad. As far as I know (and after my previous, misguided experience with this thread), nobody on DLP proper gives a damn about this, and I can't fault them.

And whoever DLP Anonymous is... well, fuck, that's just juvenile. I can think of far better things to do that edit Wikipedia articles regarding a fanfiction author.

 

To DLP Anonymous: you're a fucking idiot. Please die.

That being said:

​

 

Considering that account was created the same day the edit in question happened and has sat idle since, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a false-flag operation or even that he did it himself to try to drum up more Less Wrong vs DLP. Did a bit of further internet sleuthing, and of the other troll-edits to his Wikipedia page, two are TV Tropes members (Takerial and Seiya, if anyone cares) and one's a Berliner with a rather varied history on Wikipedia.

Now, considering TV Tropes has trolled his article exactly twice as often as 'we' have (assuming DLP Anonymous isn't a false flag operation because, come on, why the fuck would a troll from here name themselves that?), why hasn't he tried throwing a rebuttal at them instead? Oh, right, maybe because they suck his dick and he returns the favour in his author profile. Quid pro quo, Clarice.

Further Wikisleuthing: the talk article's history is interesting. Twenty minutes after the first criticism in the talk page, he wrote a six-paragraph rebuttal and lord did he suck his own dick hard, and got reaaaaaaaaaal touchy about his lack of credentials in the field. Did you know he dropped out of school in grade 8?

Ye fucking gods. And that's just one of the rants on that page. If you cut out his whining the discussion page would be reduced in size by a half, easy.

In other news, you can see him flipping his shit over this Wired article here and here. Yes, he deleted all biographical information from the internet because one Wired article failed to suck his dick hard enough. Well too fucking bad, because this is the internet, and thus the whole shebang is right here. And you know what? If you took the entire self-righteous, self-pitying spiel and put it into the mouth of his Harry Potter-shaped mouthpiece in Methods of Rationality, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. It's a self-insert fic.

 

Wow.

I actually had no idea who Eliezer Yudkowsky was until I checked out that Wikipedia article and discussion page. I didn't know he was a Singularitarian. Gads.

I finally got around to reading a little more of MoR and it's mediocre -- the writing is decent for fan fiction, subpar for professional fiction -- but I can't overlook the ridiculously precocious Harry who is obviously an author insert.

It's interesting that so many people (like David Brin) are recommending it. It's apparent they are recommending it for the ideas in the story, not for the story itself. And the ideas are kind of cool at times, but using Harry Potter fan fiction as a platform for epistemological soapboxing does not a fine tale make.

Much as I don't like "Why don't you write real fiction?" lectures to fan fiction authors, his goal seems to be less telling a story about characters he loves than selling his Big Ideas to an audience through a medium he thinks will get them to pay attention. In which case he really should just write his own damn fiction and get it published -- the really brilliant writers/thinkers do that. The LessBrilliant ones settle for self-publishing and whining that they aren't taken seriously by academia because academia is a closed club of fuddy-duddies (and not because someone who doesn't have his ideas peer-reviewed is far, far more likely to be clever crank than a brilliant revolutionary).

Main problem: dude takes himself far, far too seriously. People who have no sense of humor about themselves are not to be trusted. Authors who can't take a hit with a smile wind up on fandom_wank.

 

DLP doesn't have a wiki page because no one is arrogant enough to think that any fanfiction site short of FFN deserves an article. It's the same reason that Spacebattles, Twisting the Hellmouth, Fanficauthors, and pretty much any other fanfic site lacks a page.

He shouldn't have a wiki page, as he's not notable enough to have one. He has absolutely no formal credentials (Which I think is actually fairly impressive, as without a highschool education you can't become a janitor or garbageman, at least here in the great white north) and while he insists that he knows the math, this means very little. I could insist that I'm fully capable of building nuclear weapons, but there's no evidence proving that I'm not just a delusional idiot. Pers, on the other hand, was in the TITANS program, and therefore has real evidence that he does, in fact, have the capability of building aforementioned nuclear weapons.

But him being an autodictat isn't the only thing keeping him from being recognized as an academic. If he'd actually got something - no, anything - published in a scientific journal, or published by an organization that he didn't claim to co-found, he would have some sort of claim to a wiki page. But he's a pretentious blogger, and nothing else.

It is far more likely that he's a crack-pot than a genius who was simply too intelligent for America's education system. Technically speaking,I have better scientific credentials than he does, having passed grade 10 science and grade 11 physics.

 

DLP does have wiki, though.

 

He meant a page on Wikipedia - not our own personal wiki.

 

Huh? Personal wiki? Someone care to explain that to me?

On topic: Personally I like the fic. The characters vary between mature and acting their age, though it's gotten better lately. The politics, ideas and everything else is wonderful. The actual plot, is sadly, still not very clear other than a general direction. It's like LW is still trying to decide whether the conflict will be against Voldemort or around correcting all he perceives to be wrong about the HP world.

So I'd rate it a 3/5.

On LessWrong: Personally I could care less about the author of any story I peruse with very few exceptions. Everyone here agrees that LW is sort of pathetic, none of us really care what he thinks of us or of himself, so wouldn't it be better to let this discussion on him die? Let him troll for a while if he wants to, DLP is a forum for improving one's writing capabilities not dissing every nobody that posts a comment about us somewhere.

Or you can ignore the last portion and just let me know what the difference between a wiki page and a personal wiki is?

 

Personal vs. Wiki

 

...maybe DLP doesn't have a Wikipedia entry because that site is a bit shit... I can't be the only one who knows you have to take anything you read on that site with a pinch of salt?

Hmm.

 

@Xantam: Thanks dude.

 

Random links don't make your post any retarded, but I'm going to attribute that to the cocaine.

That book you posted a link to is also one of the most retarded published works I've ever read, and yes, that includes the works of the illustrious Glenn Beck.

In response to that pile of steaming shit, I'd like to post a wiki, made up the flaws that Lessig and his readers found in that piece of crap. Those are, at most, one one hundredth of the actual flaws in the book, as it is as incoherent, fanatical, and controversial for the sake of controversy, as the aforementioned pundit.

EDIT: I decided to quote Jeff Jarvis' blog post, the part of which I'm going to quote contains a quote from the book that shows the overall sanity/intelligence of the author.