this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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God I cannot believe that Harry Potter fanfiction is such a big part of Rationalism.
I made the mistake of reading too many comments down in a Reddit thread and a ~~ephebophile~~pedophile showed up. I looked at their profile and was just totally blindsided by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfiction and it apparently being their second favorite book ever. I think their first was Lolita but I don't remember.
I've heard that (maybe?) SBF had Harry Potter orgies, detailed on his girlfriend's cryptofascist tradwife Tumblr blog. I know I shouldn't but I kind of want to see if I can dig around the Internet Archive and find out how much of that really happened. Just making myself suffer for fun
In the period when I didn't see the LW/SSC community as negatively as I do now I also noticed there were quite a few ~~ephebophiles~~pedophiles there, even had a long discussion with one who was being very cagey about it. It was weird. A well, as a cryptoneoreactionary said: 'if you build a place free of witchhunts, don't be surprised a lot of witches show up'. Liking Lolita (which isn't a bad book per se, it is great in the 'this is what lies pedos/bad people tell themselves/others to get away with it' unreliable narrator sense) is certainly a red flag, esp when people are not aware of the parenthesis (I have reach peak reference game, I now reference my own sentence from inside the sentence).
And I think a lot of fascination of the Harry Potter from inside the LW community is just age, for a lot of these people Harry Potter was an important series in their early teens, which is an important period in growing up for these kinds of things, it is also massively popular (I guess less so now due to Rowling deciding that transphobia is cheaper than going to therapy for her abusive ex). Of course this doesn't explain HPMOR in the first place as Yud is old (or at least older than the people I'm talking about, who would now be in their 30s max while Yud is in his 40s, I myself am also one of the 'grew up before HP olds btw, noticed that younger people I knew were very into HP (and some game where you capture wild animals and have them fight cagematches for you, weird shit forgot the name)').
And well I think SBF having orgies and being into polyam stuff is fine (and I wish those on everybody who wants them as long as everybody consents), I think the theft, fascism and all that is the problem. On that note, you clearly should only make yourself suffer more if you want to do that and enjoy it. But on some level I guess you do, as everybody here is a bit masochistic by staying here and reading this stuff. Her being all cryptofasc tradwife was weird, esp when Musk was going all in on 'see the left is evil because SBF donated to the democrats', but I guess if the rich technologists of the world would spend more time actually understanding how politics works they wouldn't be rich.
Edit: Apologies for the somewhat long and rambling reply, I think the coffee was too strong and im sliding back into stream of thought reddit posting habits.
As an aside, I believe Harry Potter, while marketed as YA, was actually read a lot by a more adult audience.
I read the first book aloud to my stepkids, but as the next books arrived they lost interest while I read them all. By the last few ones it was in morbid curiosity.
Ow sure, but it doesn't seem to have a big an influence. I have read the first HP book seen most of the movies I think (can't really remember if I have seen them all or I knwo everything due to cultural osmosis) and I have read HPMOR, but it isn't something that super excites me.
It was a hype at the time, but given the size of the target audience, it's not surprising that quite a lot of people found the universe engaging enough to generate a vibrant fandom (which I believe is mostly comprised of adults).
In fact I believe a big drag on HP as a franchise is that "kids today" see it as something their parents like.
Kim Newman has written 2 books (Drearcliff) that expand on the general concept (magic in English public schools) which I feel are deserving of more readership:
I also found Lev Grossman's Magicians series highly entertaining
I was schooled in a British school (with houses!) and read quite a lot of interwar stuff (Swallows and Amazons, for example), so a lot of the tropes in HP felt familiar. JKR caught lightning in a bottle and was savvy enough to bank on it.
@gerikson @gnomicutterance
Naomi Novak wrote the Scholomance trilogy ( starts with Deadly Education), and I really enjoyed that one ( though it's aimed at young adult, I think, it hits the spot).
I have never cared for HP, but a lot of people have extremely strong positive emotions on it, and I have no interest in fighting them over their favorite books.
Such a shame the author then also turned into such a visibly terrible person.
@gerikson This is to say nothing of the whole English public school/boarding school genre, much of it written by the hyper-prolific Charles Hamilton (1876-1961) from 1907-1940.
Rowling is just a straightforward Hamilton rip-off, with added magic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_(writer)#Literary_output
@cstross @gerikson Don't forget Enid Blyton, who also wrote large numbers of such (Malory Towers, St Clares, & the background to most of the other "adventure" book protagonists) who JKR undoubtedly read & whose career is quite comparable.
I've read some Blyton, along with the other Edwardian children's book author whose name I cannot remember now but is in the same vague area. I also read Tom Brown's School Days (wisely skipping the first chapter, per the introduction, to get to the good parts), and to be honest my view of public school life was also colored by watching "If....." which gives it altogether another spin.
Harry Potter is an anomaly in that being sent off to boarding school is an escape from a horrible family situation. Weasley has a support network in the form of family there, and Hermione seems to be just fine without her parents around, but you gotta wonder about all the other poor 7 years olds who had to live far away from home for the first time...