Hyper-Rational Harry

As long as we on the subject of magic, let me heartily recommend my ex-co-blogger’s fanfic novel:

Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing a Harry Potter fanfic, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, starring a rationalist Harry Potter with ambitions to transform the world by bringing the rationalist/scientific method to magic. (more)

I am enjoying it more than all but the first Harry Potter novels. Modern science fiction has shied away from the hard-headed rational scientist as moral hero, and it feels quite refreshing to see that genre back in a full and updated force. The book does a good job of giving basic rationality “lessons” in the context of an engaging-enough story, though the story gets a bit less engaging over time.

My main discomfort with Eliezer’s new scientist-hero genre is his beyond-Enders-Game-level over-competent hero, exceptionally moral and vastly smarter than anyone else around. This young teen hero has already mostly assimilated the wisdom of his elders and ancestors and must now mostly single-handedly solve the great mysteries of his world and fight the great evil of his age, while politely ignoring the mostly useless opinions of others. I fear that giving readers more license to imagine they are such a person mostly undoes the rationality lessons they learned. After all, much of real rationality is learning how to learn from others. But it is still a fun read.