I grew up with the Harry Potter series and loved it as a kid, but I can’t pretend it’s actually good writing. It’s full of all kinds of plot holes, the wizarding universe doesn’t make a lot of sense, there’s thinly veiled bigotry (particularly prominent in the naming of characters), and Rowling as a person is all sorts of problematic that I can’t endorse giving money to.
But Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, or HPMOR for short, is a really unique and fascinating full length fan work for any fan of Harry Potter (and also anyone who read Harry Potter and just didn’t get the fuss). Though you don’t actually need to have read Harry Potter to enjoy HPMOR, as it mostly reuses characters and settings but is otherwise entirely original.
The premise is simple: what if Harry was actually smart? In fact, not just smart, but a child genius. The wizarding universe as a setting with all its flaws isn’t changed, but Harry recognizes those flaws and takes advantage of them. You can think of this book like someone very smart nitpicked over the Harry Potter universe trying to identify everything that doesn’t make sense or would be “overpowered”. It admittedly does often have “I am very smart” vibes that can sometimes get a little cringeworthy, but it’s overall extremely entertaining and a one of a kind work that I wish I could reexperience for the first time.
It’s also not just Harry being smart, because that would be boring if it was just him. Voldemort is also recharacterized to be much more competent and intelligent. This sets up interesting conflicts that I won’t elaborate on to avoid spoilers, but I can say that the way Voldemort is characterized is brilliant and far better than the actual Harry Potter books.
Overall, it’s one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read and a fascinating critique of sorts of the original Harry Potter series that many of us grew up with.
Eneasz Brodski has an excellent audio version of this. After a rough start the audio quality gets a lot better and there are actually different readers for the characters. https://hpmorpodcast.com/
I did enjoy The Methods of Rationality, but I think it wanders in to territory of intellectual masturbation in the hypercompetence of the main character, even though it tries to justify it, and wouldn’t recommend without reservations.
If you enjoyed this you should definitely check out Mother of Learning by Domagoj Kurmaic (aka nobody103).
Also there’s a fanfic of Twilight in similar vein to HPMoR. I haven’t read the original books, but this kept my interest. https://luminous.elcenia.com/
It’s definitely over the top at time, but it’s a fun read if you would enjoy thinking practically about magic.
Also good for setting up some really impossible situations for the characters to figure out.
Just don’t look up the author.
Why not? Seems to be an AI researcher that’s known for warning of some of the many issues related to ai. What am i missing?
As far as I know he’s not done anything specifically problematic. It’s just that the LessWrong community he runs is entirely made up of the type of people who are convinced they’re smarter than everyone around them and feel duty bound to say so.
He has no credentials (highest is being a high school grad) as an AI researcher and the issues he raises are just ai doomerist scenarios that belong in scifi books, written as blog posts.
Meanwhile actual AI ethicists work on realistic issues that either already exist or reasonably can be seen happening: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02094-7
Further: A thread on Yudkowski and a fun subreddit for following the antics of such people: /r/SneerClub
A few actually qualified figures in AI ethics critical of such doomerism: Emile Torres, Emily Bender, Timnit Gebru
Shaun on YouTube has a video on the problematic nature of Rowling’s world (if you’ve got a spare 2 hours)
It starts off interesting and devolves into being even more nonsensical and less rational than the original.
I might have gone over this series as much as I’ve read the actual books.
I often think about how the timetravel is used by the wizards in this book. In the original series this powerful magic is barely ever used.
This sounds interesting, I’m going to check it out.
I do like the series, but I recognize the problems you mentioned. It doesn’t bother me much as it’s still a fun fictional series. I just enjoy the lore for what it is.
The best part of Harry Potter is the universe that was created. It could be expanded upon so much, Harry and the gang can be entirely removed and a great story could be made.
