Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is free to read online at http://www.hpmor.com/

J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series generated a huge amount of fan-fiction – literally hundreds of thousands of stories were written by fans of the series, set in the wizarding world and featuring the characters Rowling created. Many of these stories were inspired by the phenomenon of ‘shipping’ – imagined relationships between different characters.  Of all the attempts to explore the Potterverse that I have come across Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is by far and away the most innovative and thoughtful.

The Harry Potter novels can be looked upon as an extended thought experiment – ‘what if magic was real?’ Rowling creates a world that is largely separate from the non-magical world – to avoid persecution wizards have gone underground, and avoid interaction with ‘muggles’ wherever possible. Everyday objects – radios, cars and telephones – are treated as bewilderingly complex and amusing. So the two worlds occupy the same space, but are very distinct. But within a version of our world that is very recognisable, down to using quite routine settings such as Kings Cross station, the magical world has a complex set of rules that govern how magic works. We aren’t encouraged to consider the underlying principles of magic in any detail – how does non-verbal or wandless magic work for example? – but within limits it kind of makes sense. Some magic is used for fairly ordinary purposes, for many of which there are straightforward non-magical alternatives.  A post-it note would usually be more effective than a Remembrall, and how many times would characters in the novels have benefitted from a decent mobile phone! Even some advanced dark magic is no more effective than real-world equivalents, such as a handgun instead of Avada Kedavra. But generally the magical world is one of vast possibilities, which the Hogwarts students really only begin to explore before the series ends.

Methods of Rationality takes this one step further and asks – if magic does exist, how would a rational person, steeped in scientific method and knowledge, explore and interact with that world? How would they come to terms with the fact that everything they thought they knew about the laws of time, space and matter was wrong, that matter can be created from nothing, and that eternal life and time travel are possible? And what would they do with magic given its almost limitless potential?

Yudkowsky imagines that instead of being brought up in the abusive Dursley household, Harry is adopted by his aunt Petunia and her scientist husband Michael Verres-Evans and raised in a loving and positive household where independent thought and learning are encouraged. This version of Harry is a precocious genius. Once faced with the undeniable facts of the wizarding world, Harry reacts in the only way he knows how – he tries to apply the scientific method to magic. Where does it come from? Is it formed by the words of the spell, the gesture of the wand, the wizard’s mental energy or some combination of all three? Is magic in the world really fading as pure-blood fanatics claim? And perhaps most importantly of all how can magic be used to benefit the non-magical world?

In other words, what would have happened in Harry Potter’s first year in Hogwarts, had he (and almost everyone around him) not been so unquestioning? Rowling’s Harry takes everything he is told on trust (recall the scene in his first potions lesson where he simply writes down what Snape tells him) and the reader follows suit – suspension of disbelief means we are not encouraged to ask the difficult questions that Yudkowsky investigates. It is only in later books that we consider issues such as the wizarding government and whether there are magical folk in other countries. Rowling’s Harry is obviously a lot more believable and likeable than this version– most 11 year-olds if told they were wizards would react with a mixture of excitement and disbelief, rather than attempting to pick apart the structures of magical theory. MoR’s Harry is far more adult that Rowling’s, and it is fair to say far less appealing. But his uncompromising personality acts as an explanation for his determination to interrogate the world of magic, asking the difficult questions that may have occurred to older readers of the original series but would not be a problem for the original target audience. If time-travel is possible, why is it only used to help with schoolwork rather than defeating Voldemort? If the Philosopher’s Stone really does granted eternal life, why doesn’t everyone work towards having one, (or at the very least why doesn’t Flamel make more than one?). And what on earth is going on with the rules of Quidditch?!

Not all of the changes in this version of the wizarding world are not purely driven by the ‘methods of rationality’. Professor Quirrell is a dramatic improvement on his original. His Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons are exciting role-playing adventures, in which teams of students battle against one another in the Castle, grounds and forest. Other characters are given additional depth – Draco Malfoy isn’t just the stereotypical bully of the early novels, but more the Draco of Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, trapped by the expectations of his family upbringing, trained to be a death-eater from an early age but capable of change despite the pressures of his caste.

MoR Harry is not always as smart as he thinks he is. At one point he is manipulated into helping break Bellatrix L’Estrange out of Azkaban. There’s no question that having Dementors, dark, irrational monsters that they are, running a prison that leaves most of its prisoners mad “within weeks” and many others dead before the end of their sentence, was an appalling scar on the face of the wizarding world, made even worse by the casual way in which wizards and witches are despatched there without trial or for trivial offences. So attempting to break someone out of it is more than just an intellectual challenge, it is a moral obligation. But choosing Bellatrix as the sole target for escape is hard to justify, particularly as once she is released she is quietly dropped from the story-line.

MoR can’t avoid pointing out some of the more extreme absurdities of the original series – for example the decision to turn the Tri-Wizard tournament trophy into a portkey, meaning that Moody/Crouch has to try to manipulate the outcome of the tournament over the course of a school year, when the alternative, to turn a random object into a portkey and just pass it to Potter, would have achieved the same end far more easily. But this critique is done with a light touch rather than as part of a full-scale demolition of the original series – which would have been pretty impolite in the circumstances.

Yodkowsky makes some interesting choices in developing their version of the wizarding world. Harry and Hermione are sorted into Ravenclaw, where intellect is prized over courage. Harry is entirely uninterested in Quidditch which he dismisses as a waste of time. Ron is portrayed as an unintelligent oaf (canon-Ron may not be as sharp as Harry and Hermione, but he is far from stupid – look at his chess playing abilities for example) and largely disappears from the narrative. Draco Malfoy on the other hand is someone Harry spends a lot of time trying to get to know, even though he is clearly very dangerous . Is Slytherin’s support for the imminent wizarding war really that important?

At time MoR felt a little like a psychology lecture, in which another yet another research paper or experiment in human behaviour or game theory is explained by Harry and applied to the problem in hand. But when these got wearing I felt comfortable with skipping to the next chapter. Overall this was a refreshing version of the wizarding world, a lively consideration of the internal logic of magic which addresses many of the questions older readers of the original series would have considered. It avoids many of the pitfalls fan-fic often falls into and remains largely true to the spirit of the original series. And it’s free to read online!