Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Also, if you don't know, the author of Methods is Eliezer Yudkowsky, (<a href="http://yudkowsky.net/" rel="nofollow">http://yudkowsky.net/</a>) research fellow of Singularity Institute (<a href="http://www.singinst.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.singinst.org</a>) and a founder of Less Wrong (<a href="http://lesswrong.com" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com</a>), a community advancing applied rationalism. If you live in the Bay Area, the SingInst community is excellent.

I was very spectical about this. It sounded like a typical "atheist misantropic know-it-all" thing. I gave it a try reading on my mobile phone on train rides. As it turns out this is a very well written (!), entertaining, witty different take on the whole Harry Potter universe. Harry Potter actually is the "atheist misantropic know-it-all" (yes, I am using wrong words, sue me) but the story is not. It actually evolves around his struggles with himself because of those character traits. It is very exciting, funny and as I said, professionally written. Highly recommended!<p>The epub is missing some formatting and paragraphs (as in empty space) though, I read it in fbreader. Nothing too bad but you might stumble on them.

This seems to crop up on HN every 6 months or so.

This is one of the few things that occasionally made me happy when I was depressed a few months back. I wish there was some way for this to see wider circulation.

Some new chapters have come out since the last time this hit the front page. So it could be argued that this is new content.

Is there a way to download the whole book? Train journey coming up...

In some countries I am pretty sure it is illegal to laugh at work as much I did while I was reading it. Was it just me or did anybody else hear the voice of the nerdy kid from Inbetweeners while reading this?<p>But really really well thought out and well written.

Harry Potter played by Sheldon Cooper

This makes me sad. I feel like the author is a smart guy who should probably be finding something better to do with his time than to write Harry Potter fan fiction.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was recommended to me at Ephemerisle (<a href="http://ephemerisle.org" rel="nofollow">http://ephemerisle.org</a>) by a Singularitarian (<a href="http://singinst.org" rel="nofollow">http://singinst.org</a>) because I was relating a curious fact about my own childhood. I grew up in a cupboard under the stairs in a school of witchcraft and wizardry and have a funny birthmark scar on my face, but I studied science in my cupboard to become a rationalist who uses games to re-enchant people with science, making me a sort of reverse Harry Potter rationalist and making me the precise target audience of this particular fanfic.<p>I have been recruiting Singularity Institute people ever since, including one of my cofounders.