Hacker News: aiedrionio

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 02:08:22 +0000

Ah, yes, the ending where the invincible Superman uses his gigabrain to singlehandedly save humanity, end death itself, get the girl (and turn her into an immortal magical unicorn princess (yes, really, this story is dumb)), vanquish a dozen Wizard Hitlers at once, and tear apart entire stars for their raw resources shows that he paid the price for his earlier arrogance.

I have read the story in its entirety. Don't ask me why. The fact that our Lord and Savior holds the idiot ball on occasion does not make him realistically flawed. The fact that Voldemort would have realistically been exposed within thirty seconds makes the story dumber, not smarter.

Also, you ignored the question I actually asked: where does Harry realize that it is wrong to steamroll everyone he thinks is stupid?

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 21:33:30 +0000

Does Yudkowsky spill more ink on condemning Draco's hatred and violence or on making fun of Hermione Granger's feminism? Voldemort is treated as an ultimately worthy adversary, while Ron is a joke and Hermione is a pet handed power by our Awakened Hero. Yudkowsky treats sexual violence, genocide, and mass murder as forgivable missteps on the road to greatness, but treats liking sports as a fatal character flaw and being concerned with human rights as risible. Arrogance is consistently rewarded while goodness is consistently ridiculed.

I don't claim Yudkowsky believes these things consciously, but they are omnipresent in his story and they reflect his bizarre attitudes to morality. The fact that he acknowledges at the very end that the characters he created are fools doesn't change the fact that he spent six hundred thousand words holding them up as paragons of virtue and rewards them with apotheosis.

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:45:25 +0000

What is there in the story that indicates this judgment is wrong? Ron does not appear in the story again, while by the end Harry is an immortal superbeing. His arrogance is never once punished.

You can be a sexually predatory sociopath and still be of value in Yudkowsky's world, but like sports and you're dismissed in your entirely within a single paragraph.

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:40:13 +0000

They are introduced as insane, not snotty. Nearly the first thing Draco says is that he plans to rape Hermione and our Hero uses his Agency to do exactly nothing about it. (It is hard to exaggerate how bizarre this story is to people who haven't read it.)

Hundreds of pages later, Harry uses the first iota of power he is given to prohibit students from playing Quidditch according to rules he believes are irrational. There is an immediate outcry which he dismisses because it's just the mewling of inferior intellects. It's hard for me to see any signs of growth here.

(Harry's contempt for sports is amusing, given that about a third of the story is dedicated to his love of cheating at a particularly moronic sport invented by the Lord Voldemort ripping off Ender's Game.)

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:04:48 +0000

I don't think Harry Potter fans would look kindly on their favorite story being treated with such contempt. Remember that within about three sentences of introducing Ron Weasley our hero finds him guilty of the heinous crime of enjoying sports and concludes he should not exist.

Excuse me. It was Draco Malfoy, our rapist deuteragonist, who said that. Our hero merely agreed.

Maybe Harry Potter fans would read a bad fantasy book, but HPMOR is not just a bad fantasy book. It is repugnant to healthy people from the first few pages.

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:34:01 +0000

You don't think it's relevant that people who wield such immense power are literally in bed with each other?

New comment by aiedrionio in "AI safety is mostly a sex cult"

aiedrionio — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 18:28:04 +0000

It's terrible as a work of literature. It has many, many, many flaws, but the most serious is that it's boooooring. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages go by with nothing happening except creepy children preaching at each other.

It's terrible as a fan fiction. Not a single character acts anything like the original, the world is unrecognizable, and the plot is derailed entirely by the end of the second or third chapter. The original story needs to be distorted beyond recognition because the author's bizarre worldview works even more poorly in a fantasy world than it does in reality.

It's demonstrably effective as a manifesto, but that is despite the fact that it is riddled with scientific and conceptual errors.

It's one of the worst things I've ever read. The fact that people like it is evidence of the bizarre incestuous nature of the community that produced it.