Eneasz Brodsky

Is there anything from that that you wanted to hit before we jumped into the main one?

I think, honestly, I've had a hard time with methods of rationality in terms of theme and in terms of what is going on.

I think in large part because I've read a number of essays like Alexander Wales's essay, like trying to make sense of methods of rationality.

And all I really know is that I really love it.

and it speaks to a core deep part of me and uh williams i think finally nails it which is why i love it and it only took you know 11 years after hpmr was done for somebody to finally figure out what it's about which is fantastic i'm so glad he finally did this and that's why i'm so excited about this essay but like i could never quite figure it out and i i read a number of essays much like alexander sandra wills is here where he's like yeah harry never actually

loses like he has one or two minor losses but like every time he manages to scrape his way out by you know committing harder and escalating and off screen maybe he sort of loses and but you don't get that in narration the experience that the reader has is one of like increasing escalation and increasingly managing to win just by being clever enough and stubborn enough and rational enough and

And, you know, once at the very end, everything culminates in the end and there's this gigantic loss.

But then again, he manages to scrape out a win.

And like, that's a fair point.

I think there's the case that like, it starts out being about trying to do science to magic, but then never really becomes that, which is a fair point.

and the last thing was that as alexander wheels points out there's no character growth really uh at the very end harry's like oh i almost destroyed the world whoops i gotta change things but that's not that's not really character growth like you see character growth across the arc of a story and it's one of the main core things in a story and

And I agree that there isn't really character growth that we're seeing, that we are shown.

We don't feel it as an audience.

But also, this essay was written, Alexander Wales' essay was written in 2015.

And it was around that time period between the year 2000 to, I think, 2015-ish, 2020, where in the literary world,

all stories are very much about character arc was kind of the accepted wisdom.

And like, I was on this too.

Like whenever I read a book, I was like, so how did the characters change across this book?

What is the important thing that they learned?

What was, you know, and a lot of, a lot of novels and stories were written with that in mind because it is really interesting and it makes for really good stories.