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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

Out of interest, how many people recommending this usually read fanfiction? Because I gave it a try a good while back but got a bit frustrated with it. It seemed to read more as a parody (albeit a good one) rather than something more faithful to the characters.

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I have never read any other fanfiction but I found this series a good primer on modern logic and fun idle reading.

Unfortunately, it has a few cringeworthy moments and tropes[1]. It is definitely precocious at parts and not hard to draw the parallels with the whole Übermensch/Singularity thing (though to my understanding, the author has distanced himself from the organization and is currently at MIRI).

My chief criticism would be that it is overly bashful of the original Harry Potter story logic but lacks a tight plot through the second half. (Admittedly something very difficult to do with serialized fiction.) Up until chapter 87 I got the feel the story went off the rails, but the last few updates have been very interesting (no spoilers.)

If you enjoyed Snow Crash and do not mind fantasy, you would probably be into this. Don't take it too seriously and keep in mind it is about 1000 pages now.

[1] In particular: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue / http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MartyStu

Yeah, I tend to flip past the extended preachy bits, which are really poorly done. The story itself holds up without all that, though, and it's quite engaging.

> to my understanding, the author has distanced himself from the organization and is currently at MIRI

MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute) is the new name of the SIAI (Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence). They shed the term "singularity" because it has basically been hijjacked by Ray Kurzweil and his Singularity University (totally not the same organzation). MIRI also gave (or sold) the Singularity Summit to the Singularity University.

I don't recall Eliezer distancing himself from any organization. It's the organization he works for that distanced itself from certain memes.

(Recall that "Singularity" historically meant one of 3 things: Event Horizon, Intelligence Explosion, or Accelerating change. Now, with Kurzweil popularity, it only means the third thing.)

Interestingly enough, Yudkowsky probably uses these tropes deliberately. He himself is a reader of tvtropes.org[1], he's made explicit reference to using tropes before[2], and it makes senes that someone like Yudkowsky would know exactly which tropes he was and wasn't including.

[1] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/EliezerYudkows... [2] http://hpmor.com/chapter/7

But that almost makes it worse! Knowingly writing a Mary Sue is almost inexcusable if you're trying to write legitimate fiction (rather than an educational parody). I have nothing against parodies, especially good ones, but I just think they should be labelled as such. It slightly pains me that it's being held up as a good example of fan fiction when, arguably, it's not.

I have mixed feelings about "trying to write legitimate fiction". Sometimes I have distinct feeling the author just abandons all pretense of writing literature in order to get the point across or turn the story in the way necessary for him. OTOH, I have seen stranger (in my opinion) styles being considered legitimate, and even commendable, examples of literature, so who I am to judge? I'd read it as long as it is entertaining and thought-provoking, and stop if it ever stops being so, and I think that'd be enough.

As for labeling, who cares?

I'm not sure if you're a fan of HPMOR. I personally am, and I think that this parody would lose a lot of appeal were non-Canon potter not a Mary Sue.

I also don't read fan-fiction at all (this is the only fan-fiction I've ever read), but I definitely don't go around saying it's good fan-fiction. I go around saying it's a good read that makes me laugh and makes me think.

I've never much read other fanfiction, and I don't mind the parody at all. Actually, it has kind of spoiled the plain HP for me because I just can't take their fixed gold-silver exchange rate seriously any more.

If any setting makes sense to keep a fixed exchange rate between gold and silver, wouldn't it be one where magic exists, including the actual philosopher's stone?

As long as it's not parallel to the standard economy it's fine. In the Harry Potter setting however, there are people with access to both worlds and can easily exploit it (especially if the magic world keeps producing more gold to replace all the missing galleons)..

I don't usually, and maybe that's why I wasn't concerned with faithfulness to character. I read the first Harry Potter, and this several years ago, when it was much shorter. I liked this one a lot better.

I hope, with all the additions, he hasn't gone too far in the direction of education over story.

I have read the whole thing. The story is still great, and the education doesn't bother me (it integrates well in my opinion).

I may be biased by my having read the LessWrong Sequences however.

It's not a single point of departure fic, many of the characters are deliberately significantly different.

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