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Comment by morsch | Hacker News Reader

If you liked this, you'll probably like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

If you like a satire, will you probably like that which is being satirized?

If you don't already know the original, then yeah, chances are that you will like it, it has the same theme and genre as the satire.

I've spent years with a child and wife in love with the Harry Potter books, I read them (in Spanish, to improve my understanding; very rational), I've seen the movies, and I must say: the start is certainly good.

I mean, sure. I like Harry Potter and I also liked HPMOR. Although imo it goes off the rails in the second half or so and kinda fails to live up to its promise.

Satire / parody doesn't necessarily have to be a merciless polemic against the target - and as a matter of fact, it would be pretty hard to read HPMOR and not come away with the feeling that the author was a pretty big Harry Potter fan.

Another thing that comes to mind is the horror movie Cabin in the Woods, which sends up lots of horror tropes but is still fun and enjoyable for fans of the genre.

The parent was saying "Superrational" is a satire of HPMOR, not that HPMOR is a satire of Harry Potter.

Thank you for getting it.

I understood, I was just using one less level of meta parody to make my point. I thought TFA was funny, if not hilarious. I also enjoyed HPMOR. So I'll make my point again, which is that you can like a thing and also like its parody.

Word. "Hot Fuzz" is such a great parody of buddy cop movies because it was written by someone who loves buddy cop movies.

I thought about that, but I don't think it's actually that similar. HPMOR is at least supposed to be educational (though I think that's somewhat dubious [0]). This is basically an in-joke for people who read Thinking Fast and Slow or similar. The character should have talked to someone who was in the military about the importance of high-quality footwear.

[0]: Though carrying 4 combat application tourniquets in your clothing at all times is probably a good idea. The part about time pressure and disregarding time-wasting social activities in emergency situations is also reasonable[1], but the characters should have come up with contingency plans and gone over checklists and emergency conditions with the authority figures beforehand to prevent them getting in the way.

[1]: i.e. if you got stabbed and are bleeding out, don't tell someone "it's fine" (it's not fine at all) and let them go first because it's "polite".

I think it's more like this is intended for people who thought hpmor was ridiculous self-insert fan fiction.

I liked this story and think HPMoR is the worst thing I've ever read in its entirety.

The first few chapters of HPMoR are fine, I suppose. It's pretty lighthearted. But it rapidly devolves into unhinged ranting at extreme length. The last five hundred thousand pages are a vehicle for the "wisdom" of one of the most insufferable, unjustifiably arrogant, and misinformed people to ever draw breath.

Just go read Elon Musk's Twitter feed. Same experience, whole lot shorter.

the fist few chapters are interesting, but then! it's meh.

https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor

tl;dr the science is bad, the writing is bad, the pedagogy/didactics is atrocious.

(interesting tangent https://shatterzone.substack.com/p/rationalist-harry-potter-... )

Wait ... it's not a stab at rationality? It had me LOLing at the ridiculousness. I thought it was in the same vain as the OP.

That's mostly just an advert for the cryogenic preservation/upload industry from my reading. AKA the nerds version of the rapture.

An advert for rationalism, yes, but that is a way bigger topic than the things you mentioned.

To me that seemed to be the payload. The rest is just window dressing.

It's been years since I read it. How does it hype up cryogenic preservation? I don't recall it being a major theme and it doesn't seem to fit into the HP context.

You are right that it doesn't fit in. You are wrong that it isn't a major theme. Probably the last third of the book is about cryogenically preserving someone while looking for a way to revive them.

Ok. It's possible I read it before that part of the book was released, but it's equally possible I forgot about the plot.

See comment below regarding dementors. When I read those passages it suddenly clicked for me what the whole thing was about. Easy to miss though, it's not as if they are advertising it.

This is a story where our hero is the heir to an ancient tradition of seeking immortality, where the most vile creatures in the universe are afraid of him because he thinks death sucks, and who spends the entire ending trying to heal a cryogenically frozen person and bring immortality to the masses.

It's not "easy to miss". The author beats you 'bout the head with his ideology. It's heavy-handed even for something explicitly didactic.

No, the thing it was most supposed to be an advert for is AI alignment (at the time, particularly MIRI).

"A True Patronus can destroy them, because it is fueled by the thought that Death does exist and that we must face it, but that we will one day defeat it."

https://hpmor.fandom.com/wiki/Dementor

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