Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild

I figure I would do my due diligence for the sake of the community, or whatever, so I downvoted this post. Note that I'm a newer user of Less Wrong who isn't very familiar with Mr. Newsome's history of shenanigans on this website. So, I didn't have an automatic reaction to cringe, or something, when I encountered this piece. I downvoted this post based upon its own, singular lack of merit.

Mr. Newsome, here is some criticism I hope you appreciate.

Nothing about this first chapter here is enticing me to care about 'post-rationality', whatever that is. Eliezer Yudkowsky took a premise everyone was familiar with, and turned it on its head during the first chapter. He used a narrative format that was familiar, and actually wrote well. While the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality didn't immediately begin with a introduction of what the "methods of rationality" as applied to magic would be, per se, there was enough of that in the first chapter to keep others reading.

In hindsight, Mr. Yudkowsky couldn't have expected his fan fiction to become so popular, or so widely read. The fact that it has might be biasing me into thinking that his first crack at writing the fan fiction was better than it really is.

Anyway, it seems you're trying too much with this piece. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is the premise everyone here is familiar with, but you've done more than just turn it on its head. You've turned the very idea of one having a deep familiarity with the tropes on Less Wrong on its head. The first paragraph is just a blast of memes; I'm familiar with all of them, but I don't understand what all of them mean. The first part is incoherent, and is signaling that you have the knowledge to mock (in jest) the Less Wrong community. That in itself isn't clever, and the rest of the piece isn't clever enough as a parody to keep us, the readers, engaged.

I perceive the second part of this chapter to be a bit funny, but it doesn't build upon anything to get me to care. I don't believe it will be sustainable to have Potter-Yudkowsky be aware that he is in a meta-fan-fiction. If the protagonist confronts you, the author, as the controller of the world he is simulated within, he can at best only engage with a caricature of yourself as you've written it. It's difficult for me to think of how you would handle that without it becoming boring, lest you're very talented, and creative. If Potter-Yudkowsky realizes he can use his awareness to gain superpowers, that destroys the suspension of disbelief in the fantasy world the reader immerses themselves in quickly, which would also be boring. Finally, based upon how this chapter has played out, it would be difficult to maintain great continuity into the next chapter, which I would personally find frustrating, and challenging, as a reader.

This reads as the first part of some absurdist fiction. Still, it contains little foresight. The fact that you were drunk at the time this chapter was written, and posted, leads me to suspect that such an aspect made you want to post something which would be entertaining to yourself, but wasn't crafted with much thought to how it would be received by whatever readership you were hoping for.

In short, this doesn't strike me as a direct parody of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but a parody of the rationalist community itself(?). That's such an odd thing to do that I find it off-putting, and I consider it this piece's undoing.

If you think I'm being unfair, note that HPMOR isn't posted here, just referenced to it. If you actually want to work on writing as you've claimed, rather than trolling, maybe fanfic.net is the better place.

It seems to me you're aware of your own writing, compared to the body of fiction you're already familiar with, such that you know how to write in the typical style, or cadence, of long-form narratives. That is, you can, or could, write good fiction. I don't even know that you need to work on your style. Maybe what you need to hone is the broader strokes of planning a piece with a consistent theme, or structure, that would be appealing to the readership you're hoping for. Obviously, from among the rationalist community is the readership you're aiming for. Presumably, you have the knowledge to produce funny content that would be better appreciated. Starting on FanFiction.net might be the place to start.

Need a Worm crossover here.

(Seriously. Drop an EY avatar into Worm. Shards of vastly greater applied intelligence than humans, but with questionable self-awareness. What does this do to the AI goal? Edit: and, of course, the nicest character in the whole saga being an actually friendly AI.)

Thanks for the laugh. The idea of self-aware characters is an interesting one. If you take your main characters seriously, it shouldn't be long until they're convinced they're either insane or in a simulation centered on them. Especially given smart characters, there's a suspension of disbelief in them not noticing that the world is only a quest-backdrop for them to interact with. Once the protagonists were aware of their plot-powers / plot-armor (which they may interpret as having some reality-altering powers of unknown origin), the author would have little choice but to bend the plot. Not unlike the Hunger-games stand-off threatening suicide. The alternative, effectively lobotomizing the main characters' agency, would be worse than just compromising your story, it would compromise your characters.

In effect, the model of a character you create isn't unlike a tulpa, a voice in your head. If you make them sufficiently smart, a necessary consequence would be some kind of self-awareness, or the very suspension of disbelief you wanted to avoid in the first place ("smart" characters acting dumb).

This doesn't really seem useful here. I didn't come to LW isn't to read drunk fanfic (or fanfic-fic), and I doubt most people do either.

If you think I'm being unfair, note that HPMOR isn't posted here, just referenced to it. If you actually want to work on writing as you've claimed, rather than trolling, maybe fanfic.net is the better place.

I KNEW it! I KNEW I was a wizard!

(This fanfic is really about me, right?)

But I digress, you asked for criticism. Here it is: what good is a Talmudic approach to everything if you are an atheist and this is a simulation? The whole point of even living in a simulation is there isn't enough processing power to support a fooming uAI.

Dafuq did I just read.

If I'm being honest (and I do hope that that is what you asked for) then I'd like to mention that personally I didn't really enjoy the story above. The idea of self-aware characters sounds awesome, but I was a bit disturbed by the fact that the main character was named after Eliezer Yudkowsky. Making brilliant characters with nigh-impossible rationality skills is fine (and lots of fun to read!), but this seems to cross that subtle border between interesting fanfic and uncomfortable devotion. My did-I-just-join-a-cult-sensor is going off. I think changing the name of Harry Potter-Yudkowsky would be a good idea.

The above is a bit exaggerated, I'd still read the story and enjoy it if you kept the name. But the initial flinch was real.

Wow.

Just wow.