Can't agree more. After a few chapters into this PoS I realized that the point of the fic isn't about telling a story but an expose for the writer's current fancy. A personality masturbation. In essence a meta fic. That this product got such a response makes you wonder either about the motivation of people reading fan fiction or their "awareness".

 

I'd quote the guy above you to ask about the contradiction thing he typed as well but I've forgotten how to do that type of stuff on forums and don't want to make an overly messy post. I've gotten pretty good via lurking to tell that praising this piece of fiction is most likely to elicit a negative response from most people here though and don't want to get into one of those weird online arguments I see so much so I'll drop it.

To answer your question, it's not so much that I think only these type of people would like that particular fanfiction it's just that they are mostly the only kind of people I'm friendly with enough to try to introduce them to the world of fanfiction/online fiction (apart from family and random females). I recommend it mostly because it is one of the first HP fics I read where I not only liked the quality of writing and initial idea behind the story itself( there are at least 5 others I can think of that I encountered beforehand that I really enjoyed that were also well written) but it just seems safer(from my point of view) to recommend to someone who would normally not have the inclination to waste time reading fanfiction. The introduction into a slightly different way of thinking of things through fanfiction will be something I'll always remember and I think that I subconsciously want that to be their first experience with this whole fan subculture.

I kind of do the same thing with that Worm series to people I know who might enjoy that kind of stuff.It's a bit different though since it is an original work(I believe) and is the first piece of original work I've read online and liked. I actually haven't finished that either but I know how it ends so I probably won't try to re-read it.

Just realized I probably didn't answer the question fully. Umm, there are probably other fanfics that would be good starters for the uninitiated . I can't think of any that I would use off the top of my head though. I'm just now catching up with this stuff again and I've been reading alot of really bad CYOAs and self inserts which are taking up the majority of my free reading time .

edit: Didn't even really read the last part of your post which I think was the actual question and not the part I tried to highlight. Hmm, I don't know exactly what the general "methods of rationality" style is. But that might be a big part of it. Hell, it might be a huge part of it depending on exactly what that means. Haha, now I wish I could've just read the last part and made a much shorter post.

 

You like it is a good enough reason to recommend, and medics happen to be the people you recommend it too. From the phrasing I thought there was some further angle to it.

 

I read this a long long time ago, back when it was about 40 chapters long. I remember considering it average at best back then.

I reread the whole think over the last week, though admittedly that involved skipping any paragraph longer than 5 lines, as it was some long drawn out explanation of whatever scientific method just happened to be incredibly convenient at the time.

I won't go into detail, but if you read it as a crack/humor fic, and don't take it too seriously, it's actually really enjoyable. I enjoyed it just as much as I would a fic like "Oh God, Not again!", though the ending was actually surprisingly well done. Most fics end rather blandly, but I was pleasantly surprised by how this went down.

I thought what happened to Hermione was hilarious in a morbid sort of sense, this is just so far past her comfort zone. I'm looking forward to reading the conversation between Harry and Her, which is next chapter I would presume. "I'm sorry... you're now immortal"

It would get a 3.5/5 from me. (rounded down to 3) If you are in the mood to read something silly and not that serious, it's great. If you try to take it seriously, it's god fucking awful. I don't regret the time I spent reading it though.

 

Harry/Fleur forum brought me here. Taure saying everything that was wrong with this fic sold DLP to me. I couldn't read the first chapter, and it was the FIRST fic I read. And I read a lot of shitty fics after, but I just hated how it raped everything I loved about Harry Potter.

I think calling the author an arrogant prick is unfair though, after reading more about him. I now believe that the only reason the universe is in constant expansion is to try to fit this man ego, and the black hole that will destroy everything will be created by how far he stuck his head into his ass.

 

Just read the final chapter. This story was such an amazing adventure.

To be fair, it does get a bit extravagant with its theories of rationality and 'quick' explanations interspersed throughout - even in the final chapter. But for its humor, and its message, and the quality of the writing, I absolutely loved it.

 

The quote in the final chapter about mastery and practicing is a reference to another of the author's work, the final chapter of 'Conspiracy World'.

If anyone is looking for more Yudkowsky to read (including 'Conspiracy World', which starts with the chapter 'Initiation Ceremony'), it can be found at

http://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction

 

But traits like this do exist, even if they're rare. And their existence is kind of important historically, the discovery of them provided the scientific earliest model for any kind of inheritance at all.

In any case I really don't think it's entirely fair to say he "butchered it terribly" or that he got the science wrong here, he does directly address that most traits are more complex than Mendelian (when Harry tries to explain how no single piece makes you "tall" or "not tall"). Possibly in the next chapter or somewhere, when the narrative is following his thoughts, he justifies his hypothesis by reasoning that the source of magic is likely external, and the recessive allele would be a marker that enables you to have access to magic rather than it being source of your magic itself. The hypothesis also better explains Harry's observation that powerfulness seems to correlate with academic prowess and work ethic, rather than ancestry.

The larger problem of where Squibs come from isn't unanswerable either. Infidelity would probably be the biggest factor (mistaken paternity isn't exactly that unheard of in real life). A damaged allele from random mutation could be a rarer reason. Squibs are also supposed to be rare in any case.

And the Blood Purists would still be wrong about intermarrying with Muggleborns (or anything about Muggleborns really), since if someone is magical you would know for sure they had both alleles, regardless of their parents. Though they would be right about it being a bad idea to procreate with a squib or muggle if you wanted your children to be magical.

 

But for there to even be muggleborns, there had to be a time when Wizards had children with Muggles and noticed none of them had magic.

Which would quickly lead to them only intermarrying.

 

I mean, sure, but it's not that crazy that a few affairs here and there over the centuries lead to the allele existing at a very low rate in the human population around the world (keep in mind a single unknowing Squib carrying the allele could potentially become an ancestor to lots of others in the Muggle world with a single copy of the allele), so that very rarely, two people with that allele would procreate and create a child with both copies.

It's clear that wizards do mostly marry each other, Blood Purist and otherwise. (The Blood Purists just also exclude wizards who don't have long magical family histories.)

I don't want to derail the thread here too much, I mostly just wanted to say that I thought the criticism that he totally butchered his biology wasn't really all that fair.

 

But it only has a 50% chance of being passed on to a child, which would mean it's a lot less likely for a muggleborn to be born, than for the gene to just disappear.

 

The fact that it inspires this irritating overanalysis of little, completely unimportant tidbits, to such an extent that little 'scientific' spats pop up everywhere it's mentioned is the reason I am not very fond of this fic.

I am not saying that discussing, analyzing and interpreting elements of the HP-verse is bad, I wouldn't be lurking here if I did, but there is a difference between theories about central elements of the books and mindnumbing discussion of minutiae.

 

I find Scientist!Harry not being able to actually science a rather important part of the fic.

 

Hah. /10char

 

Everyone writing an article about how brilliant Yudkowsky is should probably be linked to this chapter-by-chapter critique of the fic by a physics PhD and former professor.

Etc.

 

I like that guy.

 

You know, I'm wondering just how well exactly would MoR!Harry's adventures have went in the Canon universe.

I mean, take this SuperRationalist!Harry and put him in the fully canon world of the Potterverse.

Like that physics PhD guy said: the author of MoR has created a stupid-insane universe for Super Rationalist Harry to overcome with his awesome science.

Well, I think that unlike the MoR universe, the canon world is not stupid-insane but instead wondrous and magical, so I suspect that MoR!Harry would have failed at not only every opportunity, but would probably have his teeth knocked out more than once.

He's just such an unlikable protagonist.

 

This is gold. It is way more entertaining than the fic AND it teaches me something while reading it? Thank you, Sir!

That guy is awesome. He should totally write Harry Potter and the scientific correct Methods of Rationality.

 

I suspect the reason why it's so popular is twofold

First off, it's a great stepping stone into fanfiction because, on a surface level, it seems far more complex and adult than what people normally think of as fanfiction. There's no need to be embarrassed reading this, it's a takedown of the concept rather than playing along!

The second part is that it's basically 50 Shades of STEM. Well, TEM; real scientists tear it apart, but for your average nerdy person who prides themselves on their logic and disdain for "jocks" it's pretty great at wanking their ego. It's an ideological screed meant to prop up a certain kind of person; it is to the tech sector what Atlas Shrugged is to businessmen.

It isn't a deconstruction in the least; those have to engage with the themes and fundamental values of a work or genre. It's a religious bashfic at best, but it manages to just hit the right notes to get a large fandom.


I mean, I think the whole rationalist movement/cult gets shit on a bit hard by certain corners of the internet, but this fic doesn't really do them any favors in that regard.

Oh, and SPHEW was extremely cringeworthy. Just good lord, who thought that was a good idea at any point?