Is this the same guy who wrote the Harry Potter Rationalism fan-fic and started the ai worshipping cult?
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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yeah all while ~~being a high school dropout~~ he never went to high school
wasn't he entirely homeschooled
you're right, he couldn't be high school dropout because he never attended high school. he went to normal schools before that allegedly, but 8th grade broke him
He thinks he is too High IQ for school.
from my understanding, the ai cult initially sprang up on the forum he hosted (hosts? idk), but he didn't exactly start it, any more than Queen Elizabeth II invented punk rock.
but he did write the fanfic, and it's honestly pretty good. low bar i know, but dude's a better author than jowling ever was, and i definitely recommend it to anyone into HP fanfics.
People are always praising that fanfic for some reason so I tried reading it a while back. If it's the one I'm thinking of then hard disagree, the protagonist is a self-insert Mary Sue clearly written by a kid who thinks they're the smartest person alive. One part that still sticks in my mind years later is their fundamental misunderstanding of how fiat currency works, it was some ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme like melting down wizard currency into pure gold to sell to non-wizard community then using that money to buy silver which they'd trade up to magic society gold coins. It was some years ago so I may be misremembering the details, but there should be a ton of issues that immediately jump out to you there.
I trudged through and got as far as the first meeting with Malfoy where the author realized they were being too friendly with each other, but since Malfoy is supposed to be a bad guy they decided he should randomly blurt out something about how he wants to rape some girl.
Maybe it's just because I don't have the context of other bad fanfics, but that's a solid 0/10 from me.
The get rich quick scheme I thought was well thought out, for the 'in universe' principles that had been laid out. One galleon converted to a lot of copper, so the mary sue could take gold from the muggle world, get it made into galleons in the wizard world, trade those for a metric shit ton of copper knuts, and then take those to the muggle world to be sold for a much larger sum of money than had been used to buy the gold.
As long as you don't expect it to work forever, it would be fine. The writing was terrible, but the character established all the nuts and bolts of the operation by 'just asking' questions to the diagetic narrator: pure gold was able to be made into galleons for a fee, banks would give you your money in knuts if you asked, and the prices would work for it.
The writing was jank and the protagonist narrator insufferable, but the conclusions he drew did make sense for the world he had been placed in, as appropriate for a 'rationalist' critique of harry potter.
Edit: the part where I just threw up was where the narrator had an immediate, perfectly-thought-out-but-the-writer-couldn't-come-up-with-an-actual-thing when mcgonagoll threatened to alter his memory, but he had thought of a perfect solution to that years ago. It reminded me of terrible ttrpg players who just ad hoc added parts to their backstory so they could be mary sues in a collaborative game.
If the coins are 100% gold or copper then you're in one of two scenarios: the value of the coin is the scrap metal value, in which case swapping between gold and copper makes little difference; or, the mint buys your scrap gold and converts it in-house, pocketing the difference. A mint has no reason to convert your gold to significantly higher value coins for you, that only loses them their economic and political power in the form of currency control.
The only way it would work is if you specifically build a world where everyone else is incredibly stupid just to make yourself seem smart.
The whole basis of that scheme was the different relative exchange rates in the muggle and wizard world. There are I think 17 silver sickles to 1 gold galleon, but in the muggle world gold is more like 50 times the value of silver. The plan was to take a galleon to the muggle world, melt it down and sell the gold, use the proceeds to buy silver, bring that silver back to the wizard world and have it minted into 50 sickles, and trade those sickles for about 3 galleons.
Like many scenes in HPMOR the author is mostly just roasting Rowling for lazy world building. He didn't have to build a world where everyone else was stupid, the point is that Rowling's wizarding world already fulfilled that requirement.
Exploiting the difference in value of a commodity between communities is a valid way to make a living, traders have existed for a very long time, though if there's little effort required the values will quickly align with each other. Turning it into an infinite money glitch by having a mint convert your raw material into coins is nonsense.
That's all still assuming the coins are made of pure gold/silver for some reason. And assuming the mint is willing to just make money for you in spite what I've already said.
Edit: And that's all if you ignore the fact alchemy, conjuration, and transfiguration exist in that universe so the entire thing is moot anyway. The angle they should have taken is that physical currency makes no sense in a world where you can just summon more, but I suppose that's harder to turn into "I'm so much smarter than the entire world".
I mean if you actually read it, basically every point you made except transfiguration is addressed in the conversation Harry has with a goblin at Gringott's. And transfiguration is addressed later in the book, it's actually a really crucial plot point. Long story short, no, you can't just summon more without the philosopher's stone, which is exceedingly rare.
The angle taken, that from currency to time turners the setting is poorly constructed, is valid. Incidentally, HPMOR Harry suffers due to his "I'm so much smarter than everyone" hubris multiple times throughout the story. Once the story really gets going, Yudkowsky doesn't really shy away from pointing out when Harry's absolutist rationalism comes across as childish, impractical, or straight up unethical.
Harry Potter, especially in the first few books, is really not hard fiction at all. Rowling's worldbuilding is only there to make for a nice, somewhat magical backdrop for a children's story. Close to none of the in-universe rules she sets up really work if you look at them hard enough.
It starts with Wingardium Leviosa (and many other spells) blatantly breaking the laws of thermodynamics, thus allowing for infinite energy generation and thus infinite matter generation, but this continues not only throughout the magic system but also throughout every other system she sets up. Because most of it is nothing but a whimsical caricature of real things.
The money system is a caricature of the old British pre-decimal £sd money system.
Quidditch is a caricature of football (thousands of ways to perform a foul), rugby (brutal tackling and violence on the pitch) and cricket (a game can last for months) rolled into one.
The house system and house cup are only slightly embellished versions of what exists in real-life British boarding schools.
Just a few examples. The books are specifically not written in a rational-logical way. Attacking that is so easy that it's just boring. It's like proving that raindeer noses don't glow bright or that gingerbread lacks the static properties to be used to build life-sized houses for witches.
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This kinda shit happens in the real world between real currencies
That's just arbitrage
It works until others realize there's an arbitrary opportunity and prices equalize
regarding your edit, it was hardly a perfect solution. he just bit his lip real hard. that was his message to himself. i think it's mentioned a few paragraphs before he tells mcgonnagall about it. it is in there, but it is easy to miss on the first read through, to be sure.
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Counterpoint: https://danluu.com/su3su2u1/hpmor/
It's interesting. I only read a bit so far and it is definitely right sometimes, but I think it often misses the point. For example complaining that the magic system doesn't make sense is silly, since the magic is obviously trying to appear the same as in the original books (where it makes much less sense) while creating an impression that there might be some rules behind it and it being unintuitive and opaque is the whole point, since the rules are hard to find, else they would be found long ago.
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that ai cult also doubles as a get smart quick scheme
Sugar manufacturers lobbied for fats to take the blame for all of the serious health issues people have had in the last 60 years
I know in my case, cutting sugar and simple carbs has done more than cutting fats.
This reads more like an anti-science meme. Things are complex, if you don't understand them fine, but keeping yourself deliberately ignorant isn't going to stop reality from being reality.
this is borderline.
there's a point where we can argue that the US has shit standards for food safety. and there's arguing that chemicals names are scary.
plus, he's a bit of a weirdo with the Rocco's Basilisk and his weird harry potter fanfiction
i assure you, there is much weirder harry potter fanfiction out there. i once read a Hogwarts Castle/Giant Squid smut fic.
Also, pretty sure a fellow named Roko came up with the basilisk, not Yudkowsky.
the Roko's basilisk was from his forum, true, not directly his idea, but hes sort of related.
he is just a guy that sometimes, I hear wierd stuff and then I am not surprised hes involved in that.
That harry potter fan fic is weird, because instead of smut or shipping, it's like what if Harry Potter was a humanist philosoper instead if a normal child with magic powers.
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Downvoted for Yud. Ice this clown out.
This guy should learn to view science more like a constructivist. Pretty much everything in science is just something we made up that mostly aligns with the natural world, and just because one model is less accurate than another does not mean it's no longer useful.
We didn't abandon Newtonion physics when Einstein's model was accepted for instance, since Newtonian physics is still very useful, and much easier to use compared to others.
Edit: changed language from 'proven' to 'accepted'.
We didn’t abandon Newtonion physics when we accepted Einstein’s model ~~was proven~~
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I wasn't familiar with the term, but I always (until this moment) assumed that everybody viewed science that way.
The amount of people who think that scientists don't understand how bees fly is evidence that most people don't have this world view. As if someone would see a bee flying, not only having been around for eons, but a very common creature most people are familiar with, would just throw their hands up and say "WHOA! THIS VIOLATES ALL THE LAWS OF PHYSICS! THIS SHOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE!"
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I mean, it's a shit post about how nutrition science is hard and full of misinformation.
this sounds like the kinda thing that I (uneducated in this topic) would go "heh.. yeah.." and upvote not understanding the joke
then I open comments and it's actually about tossing toddlers into a volcano and I am immediately sentenced with the guilt of upvoting a meme about child volcano sacrifice and I have to come to terms about how I am a horrible person who will blindly follow someones agenda because they were using big words and I am actually incredibly foolish and don't deserve an opinion about anything ever..
or it's just an extremely nerdy joke that nobody really understands but upvotes anyways
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If you eat more plants and animals and less breads and sugars you do lose weight and feel better. I’m no science guy but that does work. People over complicate this shit.
I no longer trust anyone who talks about “plants” or “animals”. It turns out, every single plant or animal is doing something different!
If it copies like a pasta, it’s copypasta!
This is some ignorant shit, you.
You're over complicating this shit.
Weight loss is primarily just calories burned minus calories eaten...
(times some factor, plus/minus some constant, ignoring higher order terms, excluding exogenous variables, etc.)
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How is bread and sugar not plants?? Oversimplifying stuff doesn't make it better...
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go back to your harry potter fan fiction
My standard response to that kind of statement is 'Good for you. Have a cookie.'
My standard response is I would like to know more
The truth is, anything but saccharin.
Japanese Buddhist curated amino acid diet for the win
i've been chugging DNA juice for 10 years and i'm just about to evolve
The research is pretty consistent that Transfats are worse for your health, if only due to correlation with high processed factory made meats, though.
Trust the overseer to do what's best for you. /s
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