Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

[nancylebov]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/

This is the funniest thing I've seen in quite a while. It also has some non-funny emotionally effective moments. On yeah, and it's an excellent introduction to clear thinking.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Why is every line centered?
This is cool for titles and such,
and works well for some poems, but
it looks awfully weird and dis-
concerting for what's supposed to
be regular text.

Apart from that, I look forward to
reading it when I get the chance,
probably hopefully sometime
this evening.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The centered lines are probably something happening at your end-- I'm getting normal straight left margin/ragged right margin.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Problem solved.

The page source is not HTML, which I know, but a big mess of Javascript, which I don't (which is at least part of why it looks like a mess to me). I have Firefox with the NoScript add-in, blocking scripts by default. When I allowed them, the alignment went left.

But it still says
#include "stddisclaimer.h"
at the top, which may be a joke or may be code that's misplaced.

And I do think that any page that requires Javascript to even be read right ought to tell you so.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

The standard disclaimer in fanfic goes along the lines of 'I don't own these characters, they were written by the author' etc etc. There's a different disclaimer at the top of each chapter.

[inquisitiveravn.livejournal.com]

It looks like a programmer's joke to me. I have the impression that Javascript has a C-like syntax, but if not, then it's probably a C joke. "stddisclaimer.h" would be a file containing the standard disclaimer identifying various characters as being the creations of JKR, etc. The "#include" part is an instruction to insert the contents of the named file into a program.

There, now I've killed the joke by explaining it.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

That is amazing--please tell me she's not done with it?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It's by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

I'm assuming there will be more, but I haven't heard anything definite.

[avram]

If I'm reading the publication info correctly, the first installment was published on 28 Feb 2010, and the tenth installment was just published today. That's about two updates a week, on average.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Dear God, that's astonishingly funny. Thanks for linking to it. I don't read much fanfic, but this is irresistible.

[siderea]

Utterly brilliant! Thank you for the pointer.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Wow. Mindblowingly intelligent and funny. Holy cow.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I love this - thank you for linking.