So I get home from a weekend trip and go directly to the HPMOR page. No new chapter yet. But there is a link to what seems to be a rationalist Death Note.
The way he saw it, the world was a pretty awful place. Corrupt politicians, cruel criminals, evil CEOs and even day-to-day evil acts made it that way, but everyday stupidity ensured it would stay like that. Nobody could make even a simple utility calculation. The only saving grace was that this was as true for the villains as for the heroes.
I am going to read it. Here are my next thoughts:
So, it seems like Eliezer succeeded to create a whole new genre of literature: rationalist fiction. Nice job!
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature? There is something horribly wrong with this world if this is true.
Discussing with my girlfriend about which stories should be x-rationalizated next, she suggests HPMOR. Someone should make a HPMOR fanfic where the protagonist is even more rational than the rational Harry. Would that lead to a spiral of even more and more rational heroes?
What exactly could the MoreRational!Harry do? It would be pretty awesome if he could somehow deduce the existence of magic before he was contacted from Hogwarts. For example, he could start doing some research about his biological parents; after realizing they were killed he could try to find out the villain, and gradually discover the existence of magic.
Only one problem: MoreRational!Voldemort would have killed MoreRational!Harry as a baby. Using a knife.
Discussing with my girlfriend about which stories should be x-rationalizated next, she suggests HPMOR. Someone should make a HPMOR fanfic where the protagonist is even more rational than the rational Harry.
An idea came to my mind. Would it be possible to make a story in which Harry is less intelligent, in a way that he would score less in an IQ test for example, but at the same time more rational? HJPEV seems to be a highly intelligent prodigy even without the rationality addition. I would like to see how a more normal boy would do.
Rationalist!Harry is calibrated to match the knowledge and recall of a 34-year-old autodidact. Even presuming a very friendly environment and that said 34-year-old autodidact’s training was not optimal, I just don’t think there’s enough time.
I can buy a 10 year old reading Ender’s Game and The Lord of the Rings and maybe even Lensmen. It’s a bit harder to imagine one that would consider wanting to want the math behind proving N=NP, nevermind going further than that.
I believe it’s been stated somewhere that EY draws primarily on the skills he had around 18 and intentionally keeps things from beyond that out of Harry’s reach. So Harry is more like a brilliant high school student than an adult (and, extra seven years worth of rationalist training aside, the way he approaches problems is a lot like a middle schooler with superpowers: “I can win, you can’t, deal with it, ’cause I’m awesome and you know it.” Which manages to annoy everyone in-universe and out.). Time isn’t really a problem, either, if Harry has nothing else to occupy his time; exercise and social interaction are apparently not his thing, and he wound up out of the public school system after a few years, so he really does have way more time than most kids his age to read all the books. And he has that mysterious dark side and that sleeping disorder, whatever those contribute.
The other strangely adult-like children, however, are not so easily justified. (Draco gets most of those complaints, from what I’ve read.)
Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature?
I think what you are referring to here is “a story where the protagonist describes their actions and motivations using rationality terminology” or maybe “a story where the rational thinking of the protagonist motivates the plot or moves it along”. At least some of the genre of detective fiction — early examples being Poe’s Auguste Dupin stories — would be along these lines.
Stories where protagonists behave rationally (without using rationality terrminology) wouldn’t look like stories about rationality. They look like stories where protagonists do things that make sense.
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature? There is something horribly wrong with this world if this is true.
Yup. At least sort-of. If you haven’t read Eliezer’s old post Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Fiction I recommend it. However, conspicuous failures of rationality in fiction may be mostly an issue with science fiction and fantasy. If you want to keep the characters in your cop story from looking like idiots, you can do research on real police methods, etc. and if you do it right, you have a decent shot at writing a story that real police officers will read without thinking your characters are idiots.
On the other hand, when an author is trying to invent an entire fictional universe, with futuristic technology and/or magic, it can be really hard to figure out what would constitute “smart behavior” in that universe. This may be partly because most authors aren’t themselves geniuses, but even more importantly, the fictional universe, if it were real, would have millions of people trying to figure out how to make optimal use of the resources that exist in that universe. It’s hard for one person, however smart, to compete with that.
For that matter, it’s hard for one author to compete with an army of fans dissecting their work, looking for ways the characters could have been smarter.
This leads to another comment on rationalist fiction: Most of it seems to be restricted to fan-fiction. The mold appears to be: “Let’s take a story in which the characters underutilized their opportunities and bestow them with intelligence, curiosity, common sense, creativity and genre-awareness”. The contrast between the fanfic and the canon is a major element of the story, and the canon an existing scaffold which saves the writer from having to create a context.
This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, just an observation.
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature?
So, the question becomes, how do you recognize “rationalist” stories in non-fan-fic form? Is it simply the presence of show-your-work-smart characters? Is simply behaving rationally sufficient?
Every genre has a theme...romance, adventure, etc.
So where are the stories which are, fundamentally, about stuff like epistemology and moral philosophy?
So, the question becomes, how do you recognize “rationalist” stories in non-fan-fic form? Is it simply the presence of show-your-work-smart characters? Is simply behaving rationally sufficient?
Every genre has a theme...romance, adventure, etc.
I’d say the difference between “rationalists” stories and “non-rationalist” stories lies in the moral of the story, of the lessons the story teaches you.
I don’t think it’s a genre in the same way romance or adventure are. It’s more of a qualifier. You can have rationalist romance novels or rationalist adventure movies.
Although you could argue that it is a genre. While discussions about “genre” are often hard, since people don’t tend to agree on what makes something a genre.
But rationalist fiction already has a couple of genre conventions, such as no-one being allowed to hold the idiot ball or teaching the audience new and useful techniques for overcoming challenges.
So, the question becomes, how do you recognize “rationalist” stories in non-fan-fic form? Is it simply the presence of show-your-work-smart characters? Is simply behaving rationally sufficient?
That’s a great question. (And related to how to recognize rational people in real life.)
I’d say that there must be some characters which are obviously smarter than most people around them. Because that’s what happens in real life: there is the bell curve, so if all your characters are on a similar level, then the story is (a) not realistic, (b) the characters are selected by some intelligence filter which should be explicitly mentioned, or (c) the characters are all from the middle of the bell curve. Also, in real life the relative power of intelligent people is often reduced by compartmentalization, but this reduction would be much smaller for a rationalist hero.
So I’d say it’s behaving rationally while most of other people aren’t. The character should somehow reflect on the stupidity of others; whether by frustration from their inability to cooperate, or by enjoyment of how easily they are manipulated.
The character should somehow reflect on the stupidity of others; whether by frustration from their inability to cooperate, or by enjoyment of how easily they are manipulated.
I’m not sure I like that criteria. By that criteria alone, the original death note anime was rationalist fiction (judging by the first half), as is Artemis Fowl, Ender’s Game, and to some extent even Game of Thrones. There are a lot of stories where some characters are much smarter than others and know it, but consuming these works won’t teach anyone how to be smarter. (Other than the extent to which reading good fiction in general improves various things)
None of these stories actually teach the reader anything about epistemology. Even the linked Death Note fan fic...it uses rationality-associated words like “utility” and “prior” but if I didn’t already know what those words meant I would have just come away confused. (Granted, it’s still early in the story—but even so)
Also, it hasn’t yet broken the conceit of the story (For example, even a normal person of average intelligence would be surprised and curious about the existence of the supernatural, and would investigate that). I’d say that breaking the story conceit is another feature of rationalist fanfiction stories that has nothing to do with the character’s intelligence.
Well, I was disappointed with the Death Note fan fic, because it doesn’t seem to have added value beyond the original story. And I agree that exploring the supernatural should be a high priority for a rational person, once the supernatural is experimentally proven. Would it be so difficult to ask Ryuk whether there are additional magical items that could also be abused? I guess Ryuk would use an excuse of having “rules” against that, but at least it’s worth trying.
Having a rational superhero is a necessary condition for a rationalist story, not a sufficient condition. Ender’s Game could be a rationalist literature if it explained Ender’s reasoning better, and if Ender strategically tried to improve his understanding of the world. Okay, another necessary condition is not just that the superhero is super smart, but also that the super smartness is at least partially a result of a good strategy, which is shown to the reader.
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature?
I think there’s a difference between what I’ve been describing as rationalist!fic (or rationalist!fiction) and fiction in which the -agonists (PCs is the right terminology, I guess) are rational/clever. Rationalist!fic doesn’t just feature rationalist characters, they’re expressively written to teach the audience about rationality.
Examples:
Doctor Who features a sufficiently advanced alien who is, within the rules of the universe, pretty rational (in that he is good at reaching his goals). The message of the show however, is not: “be clever and rational,” it’s: “humanity is awesome and you should feel some wonder about the universe.” Not rationalist!fic.
The Conqueror’s Shadow, by Ari Marmell features rationalist agonists and the message the audience goes away with is: “be clever and creative when it comes to reaching worthwhile goals.” Rationalist!fic.
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature? There is something horribly wrong with this world if this is true.
I get your sentiment, but I don’t think this is true. Anyways, wouldn’t this just mean that rational minds usually pursue other goals than writing fiction? Not saying that there shouldn’t be rationalist fiction, but this doesn’t sound like such a bad state of affairs to me.
I haven’t read HPMOR. Do I have to know anything about the HP universe to enjoy this thing? Will I learn anything new if I’ve read the sequences?
I guess you don’t need to know anything from the HP canon. It could perhaps be even more interesting that way. I don’t think you would learn new information. It might have a better emotional impact, but that is difficult to predict.
wouldn’t this just mean that rational minds usually pursue other goals than writing fiction? Not saying that there shouldn’t be rationalist fiction, but this doesn’t sound like such a bad state of affairs to me.
I would consider the world better if there were more rational people sharing the same values as me. We could cooperate on mutual goals, and learn from each other.
Problem is, rational people don’t just appear randomly in the world. Okay, sometimes they do, but the process if far from optimal. If there is a chance to make rationality spread more reliable, we should try.
But we don’t exactly know how. We tried many things, with partial success. For example the school system—it is great in taking an illiterate peasant population and producing an educated population within a century. But it has some limits: students learn to guess their teachers’ passwords, there are not enough sufficiently skilled teachers, the pressure from the outside world can bring religion to schools and prevent teaching evolution, etc. And the system seems difficult to improve from inside (been there, tried that).
Spreading rationality using fiction is another thing worth trying. There is a chance to attract a lot of people, make some of them more rational, and create a lot of utility. Or maybe despite there being dozens of rationalist fiction stories, they would all be read by the same people; unable to attract anyone outside of the chosen set. I don’t know.
The point is, if you are rational and you think the world would be better with more rational people… it’s one problem you can try to solve. So before Eliezer we had something like the Drake equation: how many people are rational × how many of them think making more people rational is the best action × how many of them think fiction is the best tool for that = almost zero. I am curious about the specific numbers; especially whether one of them is very close to zero, or whether it’s merely a few small numbers that give almost zero result when multiplied together.
I’d probably want more people who share my values than more rational people. Rational people who share my values is better. Rational people who don’t share my values would be the worst outcome.
I don’t think the school system was built by rationalists, so I’m not sure where you were going with that example.
How effective has fiction been in spreading other ideas compared to other methods?
In addition to the other’s already listed, DataPacRat’s Myou’ve Got To Be Kidding Me follows a perspective of a character thrown into a setting and trying to analyze the basic rules in order to optimize them. There are some interesting concepts, but I don’t know that I can recommend it : It has not been updated in over a year, and was part of some big conglomeration of fanfic writers which had some pretty widely varying quality (although thankfully nothing necessary to Myou’ve plotline).
So I get home from a weekend trip and go directly to the HPMOR page. No new chapter yet. But there is a link to what seems to be a rationalist Death Note.
I am going to read it. Here are my next thoughts:
So, it seems like Eliezer succeeded to create a whole new genre of literature: rationalist fiction. Nice job!
Wait, what?! Is “a story where the protagonist behaves rationally” really a new genre of literature? There is something horribly wrong with this world if this is true.
Discussing with my girlfriend about which stories should be x-rationalizated next, she suggests HPMOR. Someone should make a HPMOR fanfic where the protagonist is even more rational than the rational Harry. Would that lead to a spiral of even more and more rational heroes?
What exactly could the MoreRational!Harry do? It would be pretty awesome if he could somehow deduce the existence of magic before he was contacted from Hogwarts. For example, he could start doing some research about his biological parents; after realizing they were killed he could try to find out the villain, and gradually discover the existence of magic.
Only one problem: MoreRational!Voldemort would have killed MoreRational!Harry as a baby. Using a knife.
An idea came to my mind. Would it be possible to make a story in which Harry is less intelligent, in a way that he would score less in an IQ test for example, but at the same time more rational? HJPEV seems to be a highly intelligent prodigy even without the rationality addition. I would like to see how a more normal boy would do.
One could argue that he appears intelligent only because he’s spent his life so far learning effectively.
Rationalist!Harry is calibrated to match the knowledge and recall of a 34-year-old autodidact. Even presuming a very friendly environment and that said 34-year-old autodidact’s training was not optimal, I just don’t think there’s enough time.
I can buy a 10 year old reading Ender’s Game and The Lord of the Rings and maybe even Lensmen. It’s a bit harder to imagine one that would consider wanting to want the math behind proving N=NP, nevermind going further than that.
I believe it’s been stated somewhere that EY draws primarily on the skills he had around 18 and intentionally keeps things from beyond that out of Harry’s reach. So Harry is more like a brilliant high school student than an adult (and, extra seven years worth of rationalist training aside, the way he approaches problems is a lot like a middle schooler with superpowers: “I can win, you can’t, deal with it, ’cause I’m awesome and you know it.” Which manages to annoy everyone in-universe and out.). Time isn’t really a problem, either, if Harry has nothing else to occupy his time; exercise and social interaction are apparently not his thing, and he wound up out of the public school system after a few years, so he really does have way more time than most kids his age to read all the books. And he has that mysterious dark side and that sleeping disorder, whatever those contribute.
The other strangely adult-like children, however, are not so easily justified. (Draco gets most of those complaints, from what I’ve read.)
I wanted the maths behind relativity and QM at age 10. And I wasted a lot of time in school.
I think what you are referring to here is “a story where the protagonist describes their actions and motivations using rationality terminology” or maybe “a story where the rational thinking of the protagonist motivates the plot or moves it along”. At least some of the genre of detective fiction — early examples being Poe’s Auguste Dupin stories — would be along these lines.
Stories where protagonists behave rationally (without using rationality terrminology) wouldn’t look like stories about rationality. They look like stories where protagonists do things that make sense.
Yup. At least sort-of. If you haven’t read Eliezer’s old post Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Fiction I recommend it. However, conspicuous failures of rationality in fiction may be mostly an issue with science fiction and fantasy. If you want to keep the characters in your cop story from looking like idiots, you can do research on real police methods, etc. and if you do it right, you have a decent shot at writing a story that real police officers will read without thinking your characters are idiots.
On the other hand, when an author is trying to invent an entire fictional universe, with futuristic technology and/or magic, it can be really hard to figure out what would constitute “smart behavior” in that universe. This may be partly because most authors aren’t themselves geniuses, but even more importantly, the fictional universe, if it were real, would have millions of people trying to figure out how to make optimal use of the resources that exist in that universe. It’s hard for one person, however smart, to compete with that.
For that matter, it’s hard for one author to compete with an army of fans dissecting their work, looking for ways the characters could have been smarter.
This leads to another comment on rationalist fiction: Most of it seems to be restricted to fan-fiction. The mold appears to be: “Let’s take a story in which the characters underutilized their opportunities and bestow them with intelligence, curiosity, common sense, creativity and genre-awareness”. The contrast between the fanfic and the canon is a major element of the story, and the canon an existing scaffold which saves the writer from having to create a context.
This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, just an observation.
So, the question becomes, how do you recognize “rationalist” stories in non-fan-fic form? Is it simply the presence of show-your-work-smart characters? Is simply behaving rationally sufficient?
Every genre has a theme...romance, adventure, etc.
So where are the stories which are, fundamentally, about stuff like epistemology and moral philosophy?
I’d say the difference between “rationalists” stories and “non-rationalist” stories lies in the moral of the story, of the lessons the story teaches you.
I don’t think it’s a genre in the same way romance or adventure are. It’s more of a qualifier. You can have rationalist romance novels or rationalist adventure movies.
Although you could argue that it is a genre. While discussions about “genre” are often hard, since people don’t tend to agree on what makes something a genre.
But rationalist fiction already has a couple of genre conventions, such as no-one being allowed to hold the idiot ball or teaching the audience new and useful techniques for overcoming challenges.
That’s a great question. (And related to how to recognize rational people in real life.)
I’d say that there must be some characters which are obviously smarter than most people around them. Because that’s what happens in real life: there is the bell curve, so if all your characters are on a similar level, then the story is (a) not realistic, (b) the characters are selected by some intelligence filter which should be explicitly mentioned, or (c) the characters are all from the middle of the bell curve. Also, in real life the relative power of intelligent people is often reduced by compartmentalization, but this reduction would be much smaller for a rationalist hero.
So I’d say it’s behaving rationally while most of other people aren’t. The character should somehow reflect on the stupidity of others; whether by frustration from their inability to cooperate, or by enjoyment of how easily they are manipulated.
I’m not sure I like that criteria. By that criteria alone, the original death note anime was rationalist fiction (judging by the first half), as is Artemis Fowl, Ender’s Game, and to some extent even Game of Thrones. There are a lot of stories where some characters are much smarter than others and know it, but consuming these works won’t teach anyone how to be smarter. (Other than the extent to which reading good fiction in general improves various things)
None of these stories actually teach the reader anything about epistemology. Even the linked Death Note fan fic...it uses rationality-associated words like “utility” and “prior” but if I didn’t already know what those words meant I would have just come away confused. (Granted, it’s still early in the story—but even so)
Also, it hasn’t yet broken the conceit of the story (For example, even a normal person of average intelligence would be surprised and curious about the existence of the supernatural, and would investigate that). I’d say that breaking the story conceit is another feature of rationalist fanfiction stories that has nothing to do with the character’s intelligence.
Well, I was disappointed with the Death Note fan fic, because it doesn’t seem to have added value beyond the original story. And I agree that exploring the supernatural should be a high priority for a rational person, once the supernatural is experimentally proven. Would it be so difficult to ask Ryuk whether there are additional magical items that could also be abused? I guess Ryuk would use an excuse of having “rules” against that, but at least it’s worth trying.
Having a rational superhero is a necessary condition for a rationalist story, not a sufficient condition. Ender’s Game could be a rationalist literature if it explained Ender’s reasoning better, and if Ender strategically tried to improve his understanding of the world. Okay, another necessary condition is not just that the superhero is super smart, but also that the super smartness is at least partially a result of a good strategy, which is shown to the reader.
I think there’s a difference between what I’ve been describing as rationalist!fic (or rationalist!fiction) and fiction in which the -agonists (PCs is the right terminology, I guess) are rational/clever. Rationalist!fic doesn’t just feature rationalist characters, they’re expressively written to teach the audience about rationality.
Examples:
Doctor Who features a sufficiently advanced alien who is, within the rules of the universe, pretty rational (in that he is good at reaching his goals). The message of the show however, is not: “be clever and rational,” it’s: “humanity is awesome and you should feel some wonder about the universe.” Not rationalist!fic.
The Conqueror’s Shadow, by Ari Marmell features rationalist agonists and the message the audience goes away with is: “be clever and creative when it comes to reaching worthwhile goals.” Rationalist!fic.
Erfworld is a piece of rationalist fiction not related to HP:MoR. It was discussed on here a while back. There must be others.
Also, I suggest calling it Rational!Rational!Harry.
I get your sentiment, but I don’t think this is true. Anyways, wouldn’t this just mean that rational minds usually pursue other goals than writing fiction? Not saying that there shouldn’t be rationalist fiction, but this doesn’t sound like such a bad state of affairs to me.
I haven’t read HPMOR. Do I have to know anything about the HP universe to enjoy this thing? Will I learn anything new if I’ve read the sequences?
I guess you don’t need to know anything from the HP canon. It could perhaps be even more interesting that way. I don’t think you would learn new information. It might have a better emotional impact, but that is difficult to predict.
I would consider the world better if there were more rational people sharing the same values as me. We could cooperate on mutual goals, and learn from each other.
Problem is, rational people don’t just appear randomly in the world. Okay, sometimes they do, but the process if far from optimal. If there is a chance to make rationality spread more reliable, we should try.
But we don’t exactly know how. We tried many things, with partial success. For example the school system—it is great in taking an illiterate peasant population and producing an educated population within a century. But it has some limits: students learn to guess their teachers’ passwords, there are not enough sufficiently skilled teachers, the pressure from the outside world can bring religion to schools and prevent teaching evolution, etc. And the system seems difficult to improve from inside (been there, tried that).
Spreading rationality using fiction is another thing worth trying. There is a chance to attract a lot of people, make some of them more rational, and create a lot of utility. Or maybe despite there being dozens of rationalist fiction stories, they would all be read by the same people; unable to attract anyone outside of the chosen set. I don’t know.
The point is, if you are rational and you think the world would be better with more rational people… it’s one problem you can try to solve. So before Eliezer we had something like the Drake equation: how many people are rational × how many of them think making more people rational is the best action × how many of them think fiction is the best tool for that = almost zero. I am curious about the specific numbers; especially whether one of them is very close to zero, or whether it’s merely a few small numbers that give almost zero result when multiplied together.
I’d probably want more people who share my values than more rational people. Rational people who share my values is better. Rational people who don’t share my values would be the worst outcome.
I don’t think the school system was built by rationalists, so I’m not sure where you were going with that example.
How effective has fiction been in spreading other ideas compared to other methods?
Given that the spell never failed in the past, I’m not sure that it would have been rational to use a knife.
In addition to the other’s already listed, DataPacRat’s Myou’ve Got To Be Kidding Me follows a perspective of a character thrown into a setting and trying to analyze the basic rules in order to optimize them. There are some interesting concepts, but I don’t know that I can recommend it : It has not been updated in over a year, and was part of some big conglomeration of fanfic writers which had some pretty widely varying quality (although thankfully nothing necessary to Myou’ve plotline).
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