Well, I recently read through Erfworld because I’d heard it compared to MoR, and to be precise, Erfworld is not rationalist fiction. Erfworld is Munchkin fiction.
… Anime? High downtime requirement? References of it sneaking into MoR… Oh, does that mean it’s fair game trying to get you to watch MLP:FiM without it taking away time from saving the world?!
I’m curious what about this story makes it ‘stealth rationalist’, lots of rationalists read it without associating it with rationality until it’ pointed out.
Maybe because it’s based on a domain in which narrow rationality skills are expected?
Like, I would expect for Hamster to think tactically, think about what resources are available to him, and test out the limits of his rule set. That’s how good tabletop wargamers play. So it just seems normal.
Seeing a young wizard decide to do the same in a setting in which it wasn’t explicitly encouraged or expected seems rationalist because he wasn’t by default going to act particularly rational.
I’ve now read Book 1, and I can understand why this story did not jump out to people as a ‘rationalist story’. I’m not sure it really shows a special amount of rationality.
It’s not a story that showcases rationality in a way that will introduce concepts to you and turn you into a rationalist (very few stories are or should be designed to do that). It’s a story about a character who happens to be pretty rational and responds rationally to a new, strange situation. (This is surprisingly rare in fiction. And only slightly less rare in real life).
Were the rationalists rationalists when they started? I started reading it prior to Less Wrong. I didn’t think of it as “Rationalist” until I started reading HP:MoR, and then at some point thought about them both within an hour of each other.
I’ve been reading Erfworld since it started, but for some reason it never occurred to me to think of it as rationalist fiction. Good catch.
Well, I recently read through Erfworld because I’d heard it compared to MoR, and to be precise, Erfworld is not rationalist fiction. Erfworld is Munchkin fiction.
Wait, you have fiction reading time?
Consults hero-stalking memory bank parts of mind
… Anime? High downtime requirement? References of it sneaking into MoR… Oh, does that mean it’s fair game trying to get you to watch MLP:FiM without it taking away time from saving the world?!
I’m curious what about this story makes it ‘stealth rationalist’, lots of rationalists read it without associating it with rationality until it’ pointed out.
Maybe because it’s based on a domain in which narrow rationality skills are expected?
Like, I would expect for Hamster to think tactically, think about what resources are available to him, and test out the limits of his rule set. That’s how good tabletop wargamers play. So it just seems normal.
Seeing a young wizard decide to do the same in a setting in which it wasn’t explicitly encouraged or expected seems rationalist because he wasn’t by default going to act particularly rational.
I’ve now read Book 1, and I can understand why this story did not jump out to people as a ‘rationalist story’. I’m not sure it really shows a special amount of rationality.
It’s not a story that showcases rationality in a way that will introduce concepts to you and turn you into a rationalist (very few stories are or should be designed to do that). It’s a story about a character who happens to be pretty rational and responds rationally to a new, strange situation. (This is surprisingly rare in fiction. And only slightly less rare in real life).
Were the rationalists rationalists when they started? I started reading it prior to Less Wrong. I didn’t think of it as “Rationalist” until I started reading HP:MoR, and then at some point thought about them both within an hour of each other.
Ditto.
Ditto to me too.
Ditto here.
Same here.