Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

[Cain]

OK, I'm going to assume everyone here is familiar with the Harry Potter series, yes?

So, I want you to imagine a series where, instead of our protagonist being bought up by mildly abusive and bullying foster parents, a young Harry Potter was raised by his maternal aunt and her husband, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University.  Instead of labouring under the various emotional instabilities gifted to him by his canon parents, he instead grows up with a keen awareness and love of science, the experimental method and rationality.  And then he's told there he is a wizard and magic exists...

The writer of this series is the multi-talented Eliezer Yudkowsky, most well known for his articles on the early Overcoming Bias blog and for his research into artificial intelligence and cognitive biases.  Somehow, he manages to change the Harry Potter series into something both hilarious and informative (all the science in the series is accurate), and changes the main character from the whimpering, maladjusted teenager he was in the canon into a Chaotic Neutral Magnificent Bastard, who wants to take over "optimize" the Universe.

Here are some samples of the writing, if you want a flavour of his style:

"'Scuse me," Harry said, "but what is that stuff, exactly?"

"Comed-Tea," said the vendor. "If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen which makes you spill it on yourself or someone else. But it's charmed to vanish just a few seconds later -" Indeed the stain on his beard was already disappearing.

"How droll," said Draco. "How very, very droll. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another -"

"Hold on," Harry said.

"Oh come on! That's just, just juvenile!"

"No, I'm sorry Draco, I have to investigate this. What happens if I drink Comed-Tea while doing my best to keep the conversation completely serious?"

The vendor smiled and shrugged mysteriously. "Who knows? You suddenly see a friend walking by in a frog costume? Something humorous and unexpected will happen one way or another -"

"No. I'm sorry. I just don't believe it. That violates my much-abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I don't even have the language to describe it. There is, there is just no way a bloody drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups, or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas -"

Draco groaned. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to drink it but I have to investigate. Have to. How much?"

"Five Knuts the can," the vendor said.

"Five Knuts? You can sell reality-manipulating soft drinks for five Knuts the can?" Harry reached into his pouch, said "four Sickles, four Knuts", and slapped them down on the counter. "Two dozen cans please."

"I'll also take one," Draco sighed, and started to reach for his pockets.

Harry shook his head rapidly. "No, I've got this, doesn't count as a favor either, I want to see if it works for you too." He tossed a can to Draco and then started feeding his pouch, whose Widening Lip ate the cans accompanied by small burping noises, which wasn't exactly helping to restore Harry's faith that he would someday discover a reasonable explanation for all this.

Twenty-two burps later, Harry had the last purchased can in his hand. Draco was looking at him expectantly, and the two of them popped the top at the same time.

Harry rolled up his scarf to expose his mouth, and they tilted their heads back and drank the Comed-Tea. It somehow tasted bright green - extra-fizzy and limer than lime.

Nothing happened.

Harry looked at the vendor, who was watching them benevolently.

All right, if this guy just took advantage of a natural accident to sell me twenty-four cans of green soda pop, I'm going to applaud his creative entrepreneurial spirit and then kill him.

"It doesn't always happen immediately," the vendor said. "But it's guaranteed to happen once per can, or your money back."

Harry took another long drink.

Once again, nothing happened.

Maybe I should just chug the whole thing as fast as possible... and hope my stomach doesn't explode from all the carbon dioxide, or that I don't burp while drinking it...

No, he could afford to be a little patient. But honestly, Harry didn't see how this was going to work. You couldn't go up to someone and say "Now I'm going to surprise you" or "And now I'm going to tell you the punchline of the joke, and it'll be really funny." It ruined the shock value. In Harry's state of mental preparedness, Lucius Malfoy could have walked past in a ballerina outfit and it wouldn't have gotten him to do a proper spit-take. Just what sort of wacky shenanigan was the universe supposed to cough up now?

"Anyway, let's sit down," Harry said. He prepared to swig another drink and started toward the distant seating area, which put him at the right angle to glance back and see the portion of the vendor's newspaper stand that was devoted to a newspaper called The Quibbler, which was showing the following headline:

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

"Gah!" screamed Draco as bright green liquid sprayed all over him from Harry's direction. Draco turned toward Harry with fire in his eyes and grabbed his own can. "You son of a mudblood! Let's see how you like being spat upon!" Draco took a deliberate swig from the can just as his own eyes caught sight of the headline.

In sheer reflex action, Harry tried to block his face as the spray of liquid flew in his direction. Unfortunately he blocked using the hand containing the Comed-Tea, sending the rest of the green liquid to splash out over his shoulder.

Harry stared at the can in his hand even as he went on choking and spluttering and the green color started to vanish from Draco's robes.

Then he looked up and stared at the newspaper headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

Harry's lips opened and said, "buh-bluh-buh-buh..."

Too many competing objections, that was the problem. Every time Harry tried to say "But we're only eleven!" the objection "But men can't get pregnant!" demanded first priority and was then run over by "But there's nothing between us, really!"

Then Harry looked down at the can in his hand again.

He was feeling a deep-seated desire to run away screaming at the top of his lungs until he finally dropped over from lack of oxygen, and the only thing stopping him was that he had once read that outright panic was the sign of a truly important scientific problem.

And my personal favourite:

And Professor McGonagall held out in one hand a necklace, a thin golden chain bearing in its center a silver circle, within which was the device of an hourglass. In her other hand was a folded pamphlet. "This is for you," she said.

Wow! He was going to get some sort of neat magical item as a quest reward! Apparently that business with refusing offers of monetary rewards until you got a magic item actually worked in real life, not just computer games.

Harry accepted his new necklace, smiling. "What is it?"

Professor McGonagall took a breath. "Mr. Potter, this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible, in order to help them with difficult class schedules." McGonagall hesitated, as though about to add something else. "I must emphasize, Mr. Potter, that this item's true nature is secret and that you must not tell any of the other students about it, or let them see you using it. If that's not acceptable to you, then you can give it back now."

"I can keep secrets," Harry said. "So what does it do?"

"So far as the other students are concerned, this is a Spimster wicket and it is used to treat a rare, non-contagious magical ailment called Spontaneous Duplication. You wear it under your clothes, and while you have no reason to show it to anyone, you also have no reason to treat it as an awful secret. Spimster wickets are not interesting. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?"

Harry nodded, his smile widening. He sensed the work of a competent Slytherin. "And what does it really do?"

"It's a Time-Turner. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour back in time. So if you use it to go back two hours every day, you should always be able to get to sleep at the same time."

Harry's suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.

You're giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.

You're giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.

YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.

"Ehehehehhheheh..." Harry's mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb, that didn't begin to describe the severity of the situation. Harry held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine.

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realize that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

"Excuse me," Harry managed to say, "but this sounds really really really REALLY DANGEROUS!" Harry's voice didn't quite rise to a shriek, he couldn't possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there was no point in trying.

Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren't that dangerous. We wouldn't give them to children if they were."

"Really," Harry said. "Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn't give time machines to children if they were dangerous, what was I thinking? So just to be clear, sneezing on this device will not send me into the Middle Ages where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me."

McGonagall's lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make sure it wasn't about to turn. "Don't worry," McGonagall said after a momentary pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn't going to move, "that can't possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than six hours backward. It can't be used more than six times in any day."

"Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will not break and will not trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays."

"Well, they can be fragile..." said McGonagall. "And I do think I've heard about strange things happening if they're broken. But nothing like that!"

"Perhaps," Harry said when he could speak again, "you ought to provide your time machines with some sort of protective shell, rather than leaving the glass exposed, so as to prevent that from happening."

McGonagall looked quite struck. "That's an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall inform the Ministry of it."

That's it, it's official now, they've ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

The whole series, so far as it has been written, can be read at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

[President Television]

  Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k.

[Rumckle]

 

That's great!

[Cain]

Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k.

It may well have been inspired by it, since Elizier is very aware of TV Tropes, where that fic gets a lot of love.

[Cainad (dec.)]

This is AWESOME.

[Kai]

Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k.

My god. I just read the prologue, and it was AMAZING. Holy shit.

[NotPublished]

wow I really like where this is heading in! Yeah its definatly much more interesting when they have to go against their beliefs

[Reginald Ret]

Mwahahahahahah

[Telarus]

Awesome.

[Pæs]

 
This is fantastic.

[Requia ☣]

I just finished reading whats up so far.  This is amazing.

[Triple Zero]

Ah yes! I was planning to read that, thanks for reminding me

[LMNO]

Fucking brilliant.

[Cain]

Yudkowsky also references several other series in the fic.  Some, like LOTR, are rather obvious.  However, you have to be looking very carefully for the David Xanatos shout-out, and have seen Death Note to know when it is being mentioned.

[Jasper]

I just read the entire thing so far, and plan to keep reading more as it updates.

Damn, first fanfic I've read that's better than the book it's based off of.