>Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
(disclaimer: have not read HPMOR)
This is the sort of thing where if somebody here was mimicking Big
Yud and wrote this statement, I’d be like come on, that’s unrealistic.
But there it is. He’s the rationalist instantiation of Poe’s Law.
Oh god, I skimmed the comment at first and didn’t even realize it was Eliezer, I thought it was some rando stanning for him. Jesus.
There are some pretty arrogant authors out there, but I can’t picture a single one saying “Go ahead and try to improve my writing; you can’t” with a straight face. Not even Anne Rice or Harlan Ellison are that bad.
why, I am frankly shocked that people think eliezer has a problem
with overconfidence, clearly he is just being honest about writing the
*perfect fanfic*
Terry Goodkind at least can occasionally make you burst out in fits of unintentional laughter, with e.g. the Chicken of Ultimate Evil. Yud doesn’t even have that going for him.
It’s OK to be imperfect, just not so imperfect that people notice. So
I challenge you (or anyone) to exhibit any paragraph in HPMOR, and
delete a sentence from it, in a way that makes it better. I’m sure I
made some editing errors on the unnecessary-sentence level. But did you
notice any?
Alternatively:
[23] And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to
time to Our servant, then produce a fanfic like thereunto; and call your
witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides rokos basillisk, if your
(doubts) are true.
What’s sad is that on the HPMOR subreddit, a fan rewrite of the first several chapter has been previously posted. In general, HPMOR suffers from inconsistent tone, and fan rewrite partially fixed it.
For the curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1m4np1/as_promised_heres_my_take_on_a_rewrite_of_hpmors/
And, oh wait, EY is the top comment responding to it, so he has no excuse...
If the only edit you do to a paragraph is deleting a sentence, I would not be surprised if finding a way to do that is not likely to be successful. Dumbass.
Re-posting my extremely good suggestion for improvement here in case
it gets deleted:
You could easily get rid of like the second line in the first
chapter, “each bookcase has six shelves, going almost to the ceiling”.
If you’ve already said every inch of wall space is covered by
bookshelves (and you did, in the first line) then it follows that the
bookshelves extend to the ceiling. So the second sentence of the first
chapter is redundant at best. In fact the word “almost” in the second
sentence makes the first two lines contradict each other. Either they
cover “every inch of wall space” or they “almost” do. You can’t have
both.
I only read a paragraph of your story, do you make mistakes like this
often?
I’ve never read a page of HPMOR - assuming I’m as comfortable with
bad plotting, characterization, and prose as a particularly generous
reader, is there enough intellectually interesting material going on to
make it worth my time? I’m a sucker for “draw out one premise to
fascinating conclusions” like Borges or Chaing stories and that’s always
what I assumed Big Yud to be attempting with this, but with a thousand
different spells from Rawling’s canon. Worth it for that or no?
Not really. It's basically just Harry potter+ pop science=sci fi.
There's some mixing and matching of magic and sci-fi to get cool toys but it doesn't really go anywhere and most of it is "by the power of Feynman, my magic is now better than yours".
The ending is literally forgettable. Something about a magic wire I think?
If you want ridiculous fantasy scaled up into sci-fi utopia, try the comics miraclemen by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.
It's significantly better than the average HP fanfic simply by virtue of being legible. There are a few interesting moments, but really it's not a HP fanfic at all, just a rationalist wet dream wearing the loose skin of HP canon to draw eyeballs. It's probably not really worth your time.
It's more like an extended narrative showcasing how very very un-rational the HP universe is [plus Yud's hero fantasies]. And if there's one thing Rationalists like, it's showing that popular things are dumb.
It intentionally makes the other characters as dumb as possible to make Harry look as good as he can be. It also erroneously uses a large part of the scientific theories and principles it's supposed to be teaching/explaining.
The draw of the series was to take a look at the Harry Potter universe through the lens of rationality, and the conclusion is 'most of this seems dangerous and irrational.' That's it. The rest is horribly simplified politics and poorly thought out scheming.
He tries to experiment with spells about twice that I can recall, and decides that it's too dangerous after [hover your mouse for spoiler.](#spoiler "learning how to partially Transfigure things - something that people already did in canon while learning Transfiguration. Oops.")
Does deleting every sentence count, I wonder?
This is the sort of thing where if somebody here was mimicking Big Yud and wrote this statement, I’d be like come on, that’s unrealistic. But there it is. He’s the rationalist instantiation of Poe’s Law.
why, I am frankly shocked that people think eliezer has a problem with overconfidence, clearly he is just being honest about writing the *perfect fanfic*
Counterpoint: HPMOR would be improved by the inclusion of a porny bdsm side plot à la Terry Goodkind.
Alternatively:
omg, totesmessanger bot—so much negging.
Re-posting my extremely good suggestion for improvement here in case it gets deleted:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/a21jrp/what_was_the_purpose_of_this_description_of_the/ebaa5er/
maybe i have a different process from Yud, but when i’m editing and i take something out, i usually put something else back in afterwards
I’ve never read a page of HPMOR - assuming I’m as comfortable with bad plotting, characterization, and prose as a particularly generous reader, is there enough intellectually interesting material going on to make it worth my time? I’m a sucker for “draw out one premise to fascinating conclusions” like Borges or Chaing stories and that’s always what I assumed Big Yud to be attempting with this, but with a thousand different spells from Rawling’s canon. Worth it for that or no?
the empty souls brigade
!
Have you ever laughed so hard you coughed blood?
It’s been forever since I read HPMOR, can anyone confirm or deny if Quirrel taught Harry judo? Or is that a fever dream?