What Eliezer Yudkowsky has done so entertainingly in Methods of Rationality (which I first wrote about last month) is to respectfully poke fun at J.K Rowling’s writing. I didn’t get this at first because I found her writing a bit annoying in the first book and didn’t get very far through it, so I haven’t read the Harry Potter books, although I have seen the movies.
But early on I suspected what Yudkowsky was up to. An early clue was a conversation in chapter 7 about Quidditch:
“So let me get this straight,” Harry said as it seemed that Ron’s explanation (with associated hand gestures) was winding down. “Catching the Snitch is worth one hundred and fifty points?”
“Yeah -”
“How many ten-point goals does one side usually score not counting the Snitch?”
“Um, maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games -”
“That’s just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game design. Look, the rest of this game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport I mean, but you’re basically saying that catching the Snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point spread. The two Seekers are up there flying around looking for the Snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else, spotting the Snitch first is going to be mostly luck -”
“It’s not luck!” protested Ron. “You’ve got to keep your eyes moving in the right pattern -”
“That’s not interactive, there’s no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else’s work moot. It’s like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position just so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King’s idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn’t understand the rules?” Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing…
Ron’s face pulled into a scowl. “If you don’t like Quidditch, you don’t have to make fun of it!”
“If you can’t criticize, you can’t optimize. I’m suggesting how to improve the game. And it’s very simple. Get rid of the Snitch.”
In other words, Rowling’s game design is iffy, and Yudkowsky is calling her on it, via his Harry.
The same thing was blatantly going on in chapter 18, when Harry meets Snape. So much so , that I had to compare that scene with the equivalent in the original. Here’s the original Rowling scene, emphasis mine:
‘You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making,’ he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word — like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. ‘As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses … I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.’
More silence followed this little speech. Harry and Ron exchanged looks with raised eyebrows. Hermione Granger was on the edge of her seat and looked desperate to start proving she wasn’t a dunderhead.
‘Potter!’ said Snape suddenly. ‘What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?’
Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as stumped as he was; Hermione’s hand had shot into the air.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Harry.
Snape’s lips curled into a sneer.
‘Tut, tut — fame clearly isn’t everything.’
The scene continues with Snape asking Harry more such questions, and him not knowing the answer. Now, here is Yudkowsky’s version of the same scene, into which I will interject:
“You are here,” Severus said in a quiet voice which the students at back strained to hear, “to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins,” this in a rather caressing, gloating tone, “bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses,” this was just getting creepier and creepier. “I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death – if you aren’t as great a pack of fools as I usually have to teach.”
This is almost word for word, except that Yudkowsky is more realistic about the loudness of a whisper and points out how creepy Snape is, and thus hints at his unsuitability as a teacher, which later becomes the point.
Severus somehow seemed to notice the look of skepticism on Harry’s face, or at least his eyes suddenly jumped to where Harry was sitting.
“Potter!” snapped the Potions professor. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
Harry blinked. “Was that in Magical Drafts and Potions?” he said. “I just finished reading it, and I don’t remember anything which used wormwood -”
Hermione’s hand went up and Harry shot her a glare which caused her to raise her hand even higher.
“Tut, tut,” Severus said silkily. “Fame clearly isn’t everything.”
“Really?” Harry said. “But you just told us you’d teach us how to bottle fame. Say, how does that work, exactly? You drink it and turn into a celebrity?”
This is a very good point! Rowling lazily has Snape talking about bottling fame without thinking about what that might mean, then has him belittle the concept of fame just a few lines later. It’s sloppy, and Yudkowsky calls her on it via his Harry. It’s beautiful. And it continues:
“Let’s try again,” said Severus. “Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”
“That’s not in the textbook either,” Harry said, “but in one Muggle book I read that a trichinobezoar is a mass of solidified hair found in a human stomach, and Muggles used to believe it would cure any poison -”
“Wrong,” Severus said. “A bezoar is found in the stomach of a goat, it is not made of hair, and it will cure most poisons but not all.”
“I didn’t say it would, I said that was what I read in one Muggle book -”
“No one here is interested in your pathetic Muggle books. Final try. What is the difference, Potter, between monksblood and wolfsbane?”
That did it.
“You know,” Harry said icily, “in one of my quite fascinating Muggle books, they describe a study in which people managed to make themselves look very smart by asking questions about random facts that only they knew. Apparently the onlookers only noticed that the askers knew and the answerers didn’t, and failed to adjust for the unfairness of the underlying game. So, Professor, can you tell me how many electrons are in the outermost orbital of a carbon atom?”
Which is awesome. Rowling’s Harry is a bit of a dunderhead. He just doesn’t know the answers. Yudkowsky’s Harry sees through Snape’s bullying.
In the Rowling version, Snape deducts points from Harry for being cheeky when he suggests that Hermione might know the answer. In the Yudkowsky version, he deducts ten points for Harry’s attempts at reasoning with him, and the situation escalates, with Harry ultimately threatening to leave the school unless Snape is fired for his bullying and abuse of students.
Without reading the rest of Rowling’s book I can’t be sure, but I have the feeling that Rowling has written Snape, at least in the first book, as an unsympathetic bully, and that her Harry just puts up with it. Perhaps her Snape is just a cartoon bad guy, and she hasn’t thought through the consequences. Whereas Yudkowsky knows exactly what the consequences of Snape’s actions should be and has his Harry explicitly treat him as he deserves to be treated.
In any case, Methods of Rationality is full of the right kinds of questions. Where Rowling briefly describes transfiguration, Yudkowsky thinks through the consequences: which are that if you turn a rock into a liquid and then drink it, it will kill you when it turns back into a rock.
And I’m not even half way through it, yet…
Incidentally, there’s a lot of stuff in Methods of Rationality about equality between adults and children. Yudkowsky’s Harry does not stand for situations in which children are treated as subordinates or children have to abide by different rules than adults. Again, I don’t know whether this is a dig at the way Rowling has written her story, or just a separate point Yudkowsky wants to make. There’s probably a more serious post I (or an education blogger) could make about that under the education category. Here’s a sample:
“This is not a request, Mr. Potter,” the Headmaster said. The full, entire force of the wizard’s gaze was turned on the boy. “This is your punishme-”
[...]
Harry’s visage grew even colder. “You mistake me, Headmaster, if you think that this is a joke. This is not a request. This is your punishment.”
“Mr. Potter -” Minerva said. She didn’t even know what she was going to say. She simply couldn’t let that go by.
Harry made a shushing gesture at her and continued to speak to Dumbledore. “And if that seems impolite to you,” Harry said, his voice now a little less hard, “it seemed no less impolite when you said it to me. You would not say such a thing to anyone who you considered a real human being instead of a subordinate child, and I will treat you with just the same courtesy as you treat me -”
Soccer has the same problem as Quidditch. The vast bulk of the game’s play means nothing, and usually no more than two or three brief patches of play (in which goals are scored) decide the game.
And Snape is a nasty and bullying character with a foolish grudge against Harry who turns out to be complicated. Like many real people.
Soccer does not have the same problem as Quidditch. (At least, not usually. Shootouts at the end are a different story.) In Quidditch it _doesn’t matter_ what anyone else is doing: If your seeker catches the snitch, you win. If you have a good (I’ll give spotting and catching the snitch as a test of skill) enough seeker, you could use field mice for the rest of the positions, and still win, regularly. In soccer, there may only be a few goals, but the entire team is constantly working at creating (on your side) and preventing (on the opponent’s) those few moments of opportunity. They are decisive, but they don’t come by luck, or without the rest of the team helping.
And sure, Snape is nasty and bullying person with a grudge, but if a _teacher_ is nasty and bullying to a _student_ because of a personal grudge, _in class,_ they would get fired, in any decent school system. Because they would be abusing their position, hampering the education and well-being of all the students in their class, and have therefore proven themselves unfit to hold that power.
Quite. And I think Rowling is implying by this that Hogwarts is not a decent school system. I think this becomes more explicit it book seven, when Voldemort outlaws home schooling and makes attendance of Hogwarts compulsory. It is pretty clear that Rowling things that this is, frankly, depraved.
What Michael Jennings said: Hogwarts is a Dickensian boarding school, an institution akin to a prison or a mental hospital (and look how nasty Rowling has to make her prison for it to be worse), and at the moment of Harry’s first interaction with Snape he doesn’t know much about the rules or costs of interaction there. He’s also been raised in a cupboard by a family of bullies so he’s been ideally prepared for a submissive role in such an environment. So I’d say that the reaction Rowling’s Harry has to Snape is not only reasonable, it’s also typical: internally he burns with anger and shame because of his humiliation, but externally he plays the penitent. Snape, of course, understands the whole dynamic well and uses it to discipline the rest of the class. He’s a bad person and a terrible teacher. But his classes are quiet and the kids are ready to perform at least what is minimally required to get them through their exams, which is more than can be said for Trelawney.
Perhaps I have been unfair to Rowling. It’s clear I will have to read the originals to better appreciate the fanfic.
Methods of rationality is doing some absolutely brilliant things–too much to type about, since you’ve read it–but what I love best isn’t just how the author is attacking the obvious holes in Rowling’s writing, but how he’s dealing with the faults of story structure…especially fantasy fan-fiction story structure. We KNOW that Harry is supposed to be this wonderful and terrible prodigy (I’ve just finished the “Harry-as-Ender” arc), but he keeps failing and being beaten. I love it. There are REASONS that EXPLAIN why impressive things happen when Harry snaps his fingers. In most Harry Potter stories, canon or fan-fic, it would be because Harry had inhereited finger-snapping powers through his connection to Voldemort, or he was part house-elf, or something.
There are tons of holes in Rowling’s writing, but that’s why there is so much great HP fanfic to read–if she’d defined her universe better, ff authors wouldn’t have been inspired to come up with the great stuff they have.
what makes the original series good is that everything was THAT the universe was poorly defined. Harry has no character whatsoever, she never gives the reader any sense of direction, no sense of how many students are at the school, no sense of how many teachers are at the school, no sense of how the wizarding world actually works at all, except in the way that harry interacts with it. This is by far the viewpoint of most people who were reading the series and it allowed the reader to be captivated but not bored.
What makes eliezer’s work good is not the way he pokes fun at the original series, but how he changes the way harry sees the world into the way a college educated pompous nerd (myself included) thinks of him/herself as seeing the world. Eliezer’s fic contains just as many dramatic flaws as the original series, including but not limited to, Harry’s complete disacknowledgment of magic’s being real. Any true rationalist would have simply thrown out everything and started from scratch, but Harry is relatively unscathed by the news that the laws of physics don’t apply. Eliezer projects himself onto Harry a little bit more than is comfortable, Harry could be a character in his own right, making his own decisions about life and death, rather than taking on the author’s immortality fetish, which comes off as a little preachy. Harry is forced by the plot to make terrible decisions all the time.
I shall end my spiel with a comment that is very difficult to justify n it’s entirety, so I will qualify it as an opinion.
It is my opinion that Eliezer leaves more plot holes open than does Rowling, and in his attempt to create a rational magical universe, he simply tries to discredit Rowling’s universe as irrational and make changes to it, rather than assume that Rowlings universe was ultimately through the eyes of someone who didn’t pay much attention to detail. Had he used his “methods of rationality” to create sufficient backstory to explain the original story, and not focus on how MAGIC is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, which we ALL KNOW, he might have created something actually worthy of publication, even though that would be impossible for other reasons. As it stands, the fic is merely fun to read, Harry is Bean, and god knows I liked those books, but don’t go making comments about rowling’s universe being riddled with holes, that’s extraordinarily too self-righteous.
Also Quirrel is a pretty awesome character.
I agree that the fic is more about changing the way Harry sees the world. The poking fun at the original just adds to the fun. And that is all it is: poking fun. There is no claim that the original is *riddled* with holes.
I’m not sure how much Eliezer has changed the universe. I had imagined he had mostly just filled in details that Rowling had not provided. Other changes are to make it harder for Harry, because Eliezer’s Harry is more powerful so needs more adversity for balance, and to get it all over with in one year.
There are scenes in which Harry is flabbergasted by e.g. magic’s apparent breaking of the laws of thermodynamics. Harry even plans to spend his life finding a unified theory of physics and magic. I don’t think a rationalist would throw away thermodynamics and start again — at least not straight away.
You know how to tell both Rowling and Yudkowsky did something really great?
Years from now, questions about what they wrote will still be for a larger audience than ‘just the fans’.
this is the first time Ive ever had trouble classifying something as either ‘college text book’ or ‘kids fairy tale’
the fact that could possibly be in any doubt means that it possesses a great deal of good qualities from both kinds of texts. I would recommend this to anyone, regardless of how I think they would react to the contents. The point is, you can’t read this and NOT react in some way.
For those who are pressed for time to read, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is also being put out as an audio-book, in the form of a free podcast (new chapter every Wednesday). There’s even a brief trailer up at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sozq1YsGgZ4
Zack, as another raging transhumanist, Harry’s stance on life & death makes perfect sense. It’s also a common enough set of goals among the college science set; Harry displaying it makes good sense in context.
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I think it’s very idiotic to assume that Rowling’s Harry Potter is a ‘dunderhead’ when you haven’t even read the books properly.
Harry, it is true, does not stand up to Snape in the way that “Rationality Harry” does, but mostly, it’s because Rowling’s Harry, unlike Rationality Harry has something to lose. Hogwarts is a fairy-tale to him and he can’t just hand out resignation letters if one stupid ld teacher decides to bully him. He uses slight cheek, which in the end, results in punishment in the form of points, which could anger the rest of his house, so he refrains from talking back more to Snape.
While Rationality Harry is indeed intelligent, he is also a hot-headed fool who comes from a completely different background than the real Harry Potter and, if he WERE to leave Hogwarts, he would be returning to a loving family, where he would probably continue to research his way to world dominance.
Please don’t insult us Harry Potter fans by insulting Rowling’s great work. Yudkowsky himself has stated that he is a fan of Rowling’s series. He has simply incorporated his knowledge and created an alternate universe. In no way is he “bashing” Rowling’s universe or her writing. Rowling, after all, is the brilliant mind who came up with this whole universe in the first place.
Read the series then post, harry potter noob.
Oh my. Isn’t it amusing when people rant about something they don’t even understand?
When Snape says, “I can teach you how to bottle fame” and then says to Harry “clearly fame isn’t everything”, this is not ‘laziness’ on Rowling’s part. It is a literary technique called irony, and it adds a depth to the story which less informed people cannot hope to understand.
If Quidditch were a perfectly sensible game, like basefall or football, then it wouldn’t belong in the Harry Potter series. It’s whimsical and fantastical, and the fun part about it is that when the snitch is caught, in most cases, it decides the winning team of the game without any help from the other teammates and previously achieved points.
So this Yudkowsky person “points out how creepy Snape is”. Erm, okay? Good for him? Rowling gives her readers a bit more credit. I hope to God that most of us are able to understand Snape’s character without it being pointed out for us.
I’ve never seen a student in any one of my classes since kindergarten (I’m in university by the way) call a teacher out on any unfair rulings that they pass. Is it really worth it for Harry to do so? No.
The realistic and great thing about Rowling’s Harry Potter series is that there is a lot of injustice throughout the novels that is solved in a minor way at the end of each book, and then in a major way at the end of the series.
Honestly, if you want to write about something and express your opinion, EDUCATE YOURSELF first. I have no idea why you would discuss this when you haven’t even read the books, nor do I think you have any liturature understanding or education in order to understand what you are reading.
Anonymous sums up everything I’ve just written with the direct words “Read the series then post, harry potter noob”. My point exactly.
I think most people are missing something. The author is not just poking fun at Rowling’s world. He’s making fun of the real world by use of Harry Potter. To a rationalist, the decisions most people make are utterly insane because they don’t think about what they are doing logically.
Yes, Harry could have fought bake against Snape. He had massive fame to draw on and massive amounts of money as a fallback. By not using it he not only accepts his own abuse but allows the abuse of other students to continue.
I’ve recently started this fic, and as a bonafied Harry Potter nutjob, I fully endorse reading the whole series before devouring this epic tale. (On THAT note, don’t read too many of the replies to this article, as there are some rather terrible inferences.)
I’d just like to point out something that does irk me. Please remember that JK’s Harry is a very typical eleven year old, with NO known/learned magical background. Furthmore, the writing and environment reflects his age. There is a vast difference between the first book and the last book.
So do read both the series, and this epic fanfic!!
Haha, I’m sure JK Rowling is a master of irony.
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