Since Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is apparently still a thing, I figured I’d spend a few minutes before fediverse monster-movie night to collect relevant links:
- Archive of su3su2u1 review, via here (among other things an easy intro to how the “science” in HPMoR is bunk)
- Spacebattles.com forum thread: The Wizard of Woah and Irrational Methods of Irrationality
- HPRick and Morty
- “If you think you can point to an unnecessary sentence within [HPMoR], go ahead and try.”
- Sneering at Yudkowsky’s advice about writing “awesome” characters
- Sneering at Yudkowsky’s retrospective interview (August 2025)
- Sneering at Yudkowsky’s presence on a TV Tropes fork
And this from our own bitofhope:
Tired of people misrepresenting HPMOR as a Harry Potter fanfic where Harry uses science to study magic.
Anyone who has actually read the fic knows it’s a Death Note/Waiting for Godot/Spaceballs crossover fic about aristocrat failchildren bringing glowstick swords into an airsoft match. There are zero superfluous sentences. Every sentence a painting, especially when Glup of the Most Noble and Ancient Judean People’s Front of Shitto casts Compelled Duel on Backgroundella O. C. Technicallynot of the Superlatively Posh and Antiquarian Judean Popular Front of Whatsherface.
In the words of Anton Chekhov: if you establish in the first act that you must never burn anything you have transfigured, you must have a character transform something into a rocket in the third act and then fire that rocket without any harm done. This will prove you’re a better writer than Chekhov.
Final exam question: You are facing the most reddit serial killer of all time and his dumbass henchmen. Armed with only your wits and a spell that can transform anything into anything else, devise an escape. For extra credit, invoke one or more of the following science fiction plot devices: nuclear fusion, carbon nanotubes/fullerenes, wormholes/warp drives, neutronium, wave/particle duality, brown notes, grey goo, the anthropic principle, quantum tunneling, Maxwell’s demon.
HPMOR: the only novel that has been fully read by fewer people than mistakenly believe to have fully read it.
And a question dug up from one of those old threads: OK, so, Yud poured a lot of himself into writing HPMoR. It took time, he obviously believed he was doing something important — and he was writing autobiography, in big ways and small. This leads me to wonder: Has he said anything about Rowling, you know, turning out to be a garbage human?
Yeah. I think the “uninterested in world building” comment came off harsher than I meant it. Not every fantasy author is going to be Tolkien and exhaustively craft the mythologies, languages, and cultures that make up their secondary world ahead of time. That kind of extensive detail should be able to answer at least some of the kind of questions Yud brings up here, even if they’re not relevant to the narrative. HP is more interested in getting into the action of the scene rather than the overarching design of the world, and so the world building plays out the same way. We learn about the kinds of snacks available on the train or the specific wand motions Harry practices in charms class, but not the details of how space folds around platform 9 & 3/4, or through what theoretical underpinnings wizards are able to contradict the otherwise-applicable laws of physics.
My biggest point of disagreement with Yud is that this choice isn’t actually a weakness of the story, even if it means it doesn’t meet this one particular form of scrutiny.
I’ve read some SF/F where the author is way more into worldbuilding than their readers are…