this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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My coworker at work asked me if I had read HPMOR and said it was "really good".
I know I work in silicon hell-hole, but that still surprised me a bit -- to have what I thought was the weird obscure drama corner of the internet brought up in real life.
For it to have also reached some evangelicals... well that could turn into a real problem.
HPTMOR is so obviously and unequivocally terrible that I can't help thinking I must be missing something significant about it, like how it could be scratching a very specific itch in young people on the spectrum.
As always, all bets are off if it happens to be the first long form literature someone read.
At the time, I rather liked the first half of HPMOR, because I thought it was going somewhere and it was taking the piss at Harry Potter. I also enjoy fiction where people aren't idiots for sake of the plot, so I was enjoying a bit of deconstruction of that.
And then it just... Stopped the story and spun in place for what should have been the second half of the book and turned into drivel that takes itself very seriously.
I may have even told people to read it. I'm so sorry.
I think when most people say a culture product was good, they mean that they were entertained. I found it entertaining way back when. Looking back at it now, I'm not sure why. It is objectively awful.
Thinking about it, I think it's a combination of:
I also think stories happens to a very large part in the mind of the reader/listener/watcher/player. So the story as perceived by me of ten years ago, or sailor's coworker, doesn't have to have much connection with what was actually written. That is also what I have noticed trying to re-read some of the sci-fi I read as a kid. The stories I remembered was much better than the ones in the books.
I mean I like the idea behind it is amusing enough -- Harry Potter but magical science evil mastermind (he's uh supposed to be a bad guy in the story right?).
Everyone wants to read about that sort of stuff it's why Death Note was so popular.
But HPMOR just never really went anywhere with any of it and was too superficial and it's only really interesting for as long as the reader fails to notice that.
he sold on the big promise, got bored, started up again writing Ender's Game But Shit, got bored again and finally finished it technically.
Ender's Game 5: No Sleep 'Til Brookington -- The Fansub
it always feels like someone’s walking on my grave when my friends or coworkers bring up Rationalist shit, and it’s been happening increasingly often
about 2y back, one of my (ML, datascience) friends asked me "so what do you think about the EA thing" while we were on a hike (!)
I'd been peripherally aware of some of it but not the full picture, but my stance of the time bears out learning more about them
worried about when I hear the mention in a bar though. and it is near guaranteed to happen around these parts sometime, even if just because there's some things that ZA has a timelag on
at least we now have Sam Bankman-Fried to point to
Sam Barsman-Unfreed