There was a tweet with a link to a Harry Potter fan-fiction that sounded interesting. It’s Harry Potter but he grew up in a loving family with a scientist father, so he goes to Hogwarts and applies rationality to everything! According to the tweet, a Mormon read this and started to think more carefully about his beliefs. Now, I’m all about neuroscience and psychology, so this sounded right up my alley. I haven’t read the Harry Potter books before but have seen all the movies, so I decided to give it a go.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

This book is amazing. I was already familiar with most of the cognitive science that was used in this story, but I think that if I wasn’t then this book would have definitely expanded and changed how I thought about cognition and cognitive biases.

Even without the sci-fi aspects, the story was wonderful. I was invested in the characters and their growth at all times. My Kindle ran out of charge three times while reading this book, which is 2184 pages long according to Goodreads! I read this in 8 days which makes it something like 273 pages per day.

There were a couple of minor problems though. Harry Potter seemed to me more like an adult throughout the book, but there are some instances where a stereotypical “eww, no kissing” child-like point of view was shown and the two different voices clashed for me. In short, Harry Potter is supposed to be 11-years-old in this book, reads like a 20+ year old, but has instances where he seems to be much younger, perhaps 6-years-old. There is an explanation for the adult thinking, but it seems as if the author forgot what 11-year-old boys are actually like.

There is also the problem with the omake (Japanese for extras) being thrown in right smack in the middle of the story. It was basically like alternate scenes being shown right after the original scene in a movie. It took me out of the story completely. There were also some out of story sections that were placed in the beginning of most chapters (usually some reference to JK Rowling that I didn’t get), sometimes at the end, but these are easy to skip as they are italicised.

I also had some trouble with some of the leaps of logic that Harry makes. One example is the true nature of Dementors. I just didn’t get how Harry could have made that leap. I wonder if it’s just me or did I miss something?

As I said though, these are all minor problems. What’s important is that I cared about the characters. I laughed with them, cried with them, and the book ended wonderfully. And all the better if there is some mind-expanding sci-fi in the mix.

I would rate this book higher on Goodreads if I could. But since it is my own personal site, I’m giving this book:

★★★★★+★