I am the only one quite upset about this and thinking it’s mean from Eliezer ? There are at least three kind of reasons that makes me upset :
It breaches an implicit contract between readers and authors. Especially when it’s such a long work, each reader has invested literally hundred of hours to get to this point. Asking us to do something to get the real ending, that’s already written, at this point is a kind of blackmail. And the only long-term answer to blackmail, as Dumbledore explained in HPMOR, is to not comply.
What purpose does it serve, apart doing harm ? The purposes of HPMOR, in my understanding, are : 1. Bring awareness (and therefore, among other things, money/donations) to MIRI/CFAR. 2. Show people that rationality is awesome so they’ll read more about it (ie, the Sequences, books, …) and therefore “raise the sanity waterline”. This undermines 1. by pissing off part of the reader base and making the story suboptimal, and this greatly undermines 2. if the super-rational Harry still fails.
It’s not a fair nor fun game at all, because there is so much we don’t know about the laws of the settings, so we are reduced to blind guesses. We don’t know how fast can Harry transfigure things. We don’t know what he can transfigure (antimatter, monofilament, …). We don’t know what’s in the moleskin pouch. We don’t if he can transfigure while holding a normal conversation in Parseltongue. We don’t know if Voldemort can detect him doing transfiguration. And so on. It’s like having to devise a plan in a RPG without the stats of your character, without the (numeric) effect of spells/abilites, and without the ability to ask the DM “could my character do X ?”. There are many times in HPMOR when things I didn’t think should work did work, and otherwise, and it’s fine, it’s Eliezer’s world, he sets the rules. But then, he can’t ask us to blind guess a solution to a very hard problem where we don’t know the rules of the world.
I don’t think it’s unfair at all, but your comment made me rethink something that may be relevant. Quirrel set a surprise exam, and it was surprisingly easy and everyone (except Hermione) passed. I think probably the worst thing that you can do in the face of a surprise exam is not attempt to answer, and maybe that’s part of the lesson EY is trying to convey here :-)
I also note that Quirrel failed Hermione in the knowledge that he would be resurrecting her, and this is either very mean, or a very good lesson for resurrected Hermione, or both.
I am the only one quite upset about this and thinking it’s mean from Eliezer ? There are at least three kind of reasons that makes me upset :
It breaches an implicit contract between readers and authors. Especially when it’s such a long work, each reader has invested literally hundred of hours to get to this point. Asking us to do something to get the real ending, that’s already written, at this point is a kind of blackmail. And the only long-term answer to blackmail, as Dumbledore explained in HPMOR, is to not comply.
What purpose does it serve, apart doing harm ? The purposes of HPMOR, in my understanding, are : 1. Bring awareness (and therefore, among other things, money/donations) to MIRI/CFAR. 2. Show people that rationality is awesome so they’ll read more about it (ie, the Sequences, books, …) and therefore “raise the sanity waterline”. This undermines 1. by pissing off part of the reader base and making the story suboptimal, and this greatly undermines 2. if the super-rational Harry still fails.
It’s not a fair nor fun game at all, because there is so much we don’t know about the laws of the settings, so we are reduced to blind guesses. We don’t know how fast can Harry transfigure things. We don’t know what he can transfigure (antimatter, monofilament, …). We don’t know what’s in the moleskin pouch. We don’t if he can transfigure while holding a normal conversation in Parseltongue. We don’t know if Voldemort can detect him doing transfiguration. And so on. It’s like having to devise a plan in a RPG without the stats of your character, without the (numeric) effect of spells/abilites, and without the ability to ask the DM “could my character do X ?”. There are many times in HPMOR when things I didn’t think should work did work, and otherwise, and it’s fine, it’s Eliezer’s world, he sets the rules. But then, he can’t ask us to blind guess a solution to a very hard problem where we don’t know the rules of the world.
I don’t think it’s unfair at all, but your comment made me rethink something that may be relevant. Quirrel set a surprise exam, and it was surprisingly easy and everyone (except Hermione) passed. I think probably the worst thing that you can do in the face of a surprise exam is not attempt to answer, and maybe that’s part of the lesson EY is trying to convey here :-)
I also note that Quirrel failed Hermione in the knowledge that he would be resurrecting her, and this is either very mean, or a very good lesson for resurrected Hermione, or both.
Clearly enough people disagree, given the amount of interest and lack of condemnation in /r/hpmor, here and in ##hpmor.
Two hashes?
Indeed.