I'm posting back in this topic to let whomever is interest know what I have just read what I now consider to be the best novel-length Harry Potter fanfic in existence; over 70,000 words long, not even close to complete, and written by famous AI researcher
Eliezer Yudkowsky (pen name
Less Wrong).
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Let me warn immediately that this fanfic is not for everyone. Unless you enjoy a large dose of heavy thinking with your fiction, you are unlikely to appreciate it. Think
1984, except that cognitive science replaces politics as the center focus of the piece.
The basic premise is that this is an alternate universe where Petunia marries an Oxford professor rather than Vernon. This results in a rather different upbringing for Harry, who becomes a wildly different, more intelligent person as a result. Rather than the hero with more guts than brains from the original novel, we get a Harry whose reaction to the seeming impossibility of magic is to try to understand it using logic and empiricism. A Harry who easily outclasses Hermoine in thinking ability, if not in memorization or actual magical ability. A Harry who can tell you with a straight face to "look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see."
And it is
glorious. Here, let me copy an excerpt from the part where Harry is introduced to the idea of Quidditch from Ron. If this doesn't convince you to read the fic, nothing will.
Spoiler:
"What's Quidditch?"
Asking this was also a mistake.
"So let me get this straight," Harry said as it seemed that Ron's explanation (with associated hand gestures) was winding down. "Catching the Snitch is worth one hundred and fifty points?"
"Yeah -"
"How many ten-point goals does one side usually score not counting the Snitch?"
"Um, maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games -"
"That's just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game design. Look, the rest of this game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport I mean, but you're basically saying that catching the Snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point spread. The two Seekers are up there flying around looking for the Snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else, spotting the Snitch first is going to be mostly luck -"
"It's not luck!" protested Ron. "You've got to keep your eyes moving in the right pattern -"
"That's not interactive, there's no back-and-forth with the other player and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever Seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the Snitch and makes everyone else's work moot. It's like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position just so that you could be the Most Important Player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first Seeker, the King's idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn't understand the rules?" Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing...
Ron's face pulled into a scowl. "If you don't like Quidditch, you don't have to make fun of it!"
"If you can't criticize, you can't optimize. I'm suggesting how to improve the game. And it's very simple. Get rid of the Snitch."
"They won't change the game just 'cause you say so!"
"I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know. People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread."
A look of absolute horror was spreading over Ron's face. "But, but, but if you get rid of the Snitch, how will anyone know when the game ends?"
"Buy... a... clock. It would be a lot fairer than having the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the spectators, too." Harry sighed. "Oh, stop giving me that look of absolute horror, I probably won't actually take the time to destroy this pathetic excuse for a national sport and remake it stronger and smarter in my own image. I've got way, way, way more important stuff to worry about." Harry looked thoughtful. "Then again, it wouldn't take much time to write up the Ninety-Five Theses of the Snitchless Reformation and nail it to a church door -"