Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

LessWrong aka Eliezer Yudkowsky

Feb 2010 ·

About this ebook

Petunia Evans married a biochemist, and Harry Potter grew up in a house filled to the brim with books, reading science and science fiction. Then came the Hogwarts letter, introducing strange new opportunities to exploit. And new friends, like Hermione Granger, and Draco Malfoy, and Professor Quirrell. 

HP:MoR is now complete at 122 chapters and 2000 pages.

Authors notes, fan art, alternative formats, and other information may be found at http://www.hpmor.com/ .

This mirror contains both the the flowing text directly from https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108, and the book style PDF from the tex code at https://github.com/rjl20/hpmor

If you have suggestions, or wish to report a problem regarding this version of HP:MoR, contact me at [e-mail] and I will try to fix it.

Ratings and reviews

This read like a fanfiction written by a college student only just starting to study ethics and logic. The references are far too heavy-handed, coming across as unnatural and canned to the point of being a drag to read. There's no art to the prose, just a forced he-did-this-and-then-that-happened. What's more, the whole thing is rushed, as if the author had started the book with an idea of one or two scenes they wanted to get to, and everything in between was just thrown in as filler. This book isn't even worth its "FREE" status. It shouldn't even be available here.

I'm honestly having trouble finding the words to describe this. It's so thoughtful and so...human. In Rowling's series, amidst the otherworldly creatures and magical powers, I found Professor Snape to be the one grounding element. He was the one character who thought and acted like a real person. He had a bad childhood, internalized the muggle/moodblood-phobia his dad had and became an awkward, angry teenager that alienated his one friend/love interest. He's so dysfunctional that he's not even capable of a single healthy and loving relationship and probably wouldn't recognize one even if it was modelled before him. He's a mess. He's miserable and restless and maladjusted. The way you are when you experience bad things and no one has given you any healthy coping tools. This book takes you inside each character's mind the way Rowling has guided us through Professor Snape's. You get to see why they do what they do, and for how much. Also, humor. It's like Terry Pratchett...but dark.

I find it very rare to be interested enough in a book to read it more than once, let alone twice. I've read HPMOR four times and counting--which is especially telling considering the "book" weighs in at over 2,000 pages. HPMOR does many things well, but two things exceedingly so that are almost never found, anywhere: portray characters at least attempting to make feedback-based smart decisions, and weave diabolus ex machina plots as if they were normal. As the author, and even the main character point out, the latter is the counterpoint to the former; make your main character intelligent, and your villain must also be intelligent. Though HPMOR has it's flaws (Harry is not likable is the most common one I hear), it more than makes up for it by being interesting. Above all, however, you must enjoy rational fiction, or this book will simply fall flat for you.