Well, so far I’m not impressed by the criticism of chapter 1. I’ve been meaning at some point to write something about where I think Eliezer’s gone wrong, but now I think it might be more interesting to wait and see if this individual produces anything interesting. Given that the individual is a fan of the xkcdsucks blog, I’m a bit skeptical that I’m going to see much of interest. Judging from the chapter 1 review it looks like the writer is having some of the same problems as those people (One major one is assuming that setups or characters are necessarily ideals just because they are sympathetic or protagonists)
That site does seem like a bad case of motivated cognition, but I’m going to read a little more of it to see whether the author comes up with something interesting.
One thing that’s mildly interesting is a criticism of MoR as being humanities-deficient. It would be interesting to see someone (possibly not Harry Potter—he’s too young) coming into the wizarding world with a strong humanities background.
I read a fanfic a while ago involving a journey to afterlife (set after 5 and written before book 6 had come out) involving a journey to the underworld to try to get Sirius back. Hermione had apparently read enough mythology and other works to become genre savvy about what to expect. The end involved dealing with a creature that had been promised a pound of flesh from Harry and she then used the standard trick from The Merchant of Venice to deal with it. When the others are impressed she explicitly stated where it was from and gave a brief rant about how wizards should read more Muggle writing.
Yes, in the story it went slightly differently than it occurs in Merchant of Venice. Hermione waited until after the flesh had been torn from Harry to tell the underworld spirit that it had violated the deal and then negotiated back the restoration of everything as an appropriate penalty for it violating the deal.
Well, so far I’m not impressed by the criticism of chapter 1. I’ve been meaning at some point to write something about where I think Eliezer’s gone wrong, but now I think it might be more interesting to wait and see if this individual produces anything interesting. Given that the individual is a fan of the xkcdsucks blog, I’m a bit skeptical that I’m going to see much of interest. Judging from the chapter 1 review it looks like the writer is having some of the same problems as those people (One major one is assuming that setups or characters are necessarily ideals just because they are sympathetic or protagonists)
The Chris Christie joke was excellent, however.
That site does seem like a bad case of motivated cognition, but I’m going to read a little more of it to see whether the author comes up with something interesting.
One thing that’s mildly interesting is a criticism of MoR as being humanities-deficient. It would be interesting to see someone (possibly not Harry Potter—he’s too young) coming into the wizarding world with a strong humanities background.
I read a fanfic a while ago involving a journey to afterlife (set after 5 and written before book 6 had come out) involving a journey to the underworld to try to get Sirius back. Hermione had apparently read enough mythology and other works to become genre savvy about what to expect. The end involved dealing with a creature that had been promised a pound of flesh from Harry and she then used the standard trick from The Merchant of Venice to deal with it. When the others are impressed she explicitly stated where it was from and gave a brief rant about how wizards should read more Muggle writing.
I would think using magic you actually could extract a pound of just flesh...
Yes, in the story it went slightly differently than it occurs in Merchant of Venice. Hermione waited until after the flesh had been torn from Harry to tell the underworld spirit that it had violated the deal and then negotiated back the restoration of everything as an appropriate penalty for it violating the deal.