this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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The more I see him in the real world the more very upset I become that I genuinely really liked his story. HPMOR is a banger, possibly one of my favorite pieces of amateur literature in existence.
I didn't know the author was a wanker at the time of reading, and now that I do, I want to make myself retroactively un-like his work, but I can't.
it is, based on most people who read it, actually very good. the problems start when you analyse it in context with the author. ironically, same thing is true for the source material.
most people have bad taste. hpmor spreads vapid grandiose intellectualism and the people who like it should act more like skulblaka: they were trivially manipulated by a cult leader.
to be fair, though, eliezer yudkowsky is being sardonic in the OP text.
Don’t tell me you think Roko's basilisk is real
It will only be real if you don't make it real, or, uh... Wait a minute...
Specifically it will only be real if it becomes real and you didn't support it becoming real.
It's like the inverse of the notion that the proof of God's omnipotence is that he doesn't need to exist in order to save you - the whole idea of Roko's Basilisk is that if the AI super-intelligence machine God comes to be, it might decide to punish everyone who worked against it coming to be, as an incentive for people to help it come to be in the first place. For exactly the right kind of host, this is an effective memetic infohazard, despite essentially being "God will be angry if he don't assist in his apotheosis".
Completely ignoring the possibility of "the AI will get angry if we create it, but build it wrong / wastes resources / cause destruction while building it which it decides should've been used better". Like, these guys are explicitly fighting against the goals they claim the AI they're working towards is supposed to have.
If you enjoy ratfic, I suppose I have to point you at the standard other fare that tends to be enjoyed by fans of HPMOR, like Ra by qntm, Yud's other works like Three Worlds Collide, and the assorted works of Scott Alexander especially but not limited to UNSONG (an utter masterpiece of foreshadowing), Sort By Controversial (one of the most realistic horror stories ever), Universal Love, Said the Cactus Person (which alternates between nonsense poetry and the narrator trying to convince the entities in his DMT trip to prove they are real by solving a math problem, complete with explaining enlightenment with a car analogy) and Samsara (about the last unenlightened man being driven to enlightenment by sufficiently stubborn refusal of it).
Going away from the ratfic standards, there's also some overlap between fans of those and the works of Wildbow/J.C. McCrae. Wildbow is a fantastic author, but wouldn't understand the value of brevity if asked to write something to hit him over the head with repeatedly. If you want to try his stuff and like superheroes and deconstructions thereof, start with Worm. If you prefer biopunk, try Twig. If you prefer urban fantasy, then either Pact or Pale. He's also got Claw and Seek, which I haven't yet read myself.
He was so good at HP fanfic that he managed to illicit a similar response as many have to the JK's original.
What makes him a wanker?
His social media presence is, uh... questionable.
I did a little bit of digging around and I can't find anything in particular that he's done that I don't like (actually he's one of few people pushing back against AI which I do like), but I've seen some Twitter takes from him in the past that made me not want to be involved with him.
Nothing heinous though so far as I know, though I can't say I've kept up with it recently.