On a related note,
If you think your own life is valuable enough that you're not willing to take on an eighty percent probability of dying in order to protect all the prisoners in Azkaban, his Slytherin side observed, there's no way you can justify taking a twenty percent risk to your life to save Bellatrix and Professor Quirrell. The math doesn't add up, you can't be assigning consistent utilities over outcomes here.
The logical side of him noted that Slytherin had just won the argument.
It seems the author is flat-out telling us that Harry is deliberately acting irrational, and commends him for it. Curious.
It seems the author is flat-out telling us that Harry is deliberately acting irrational, and commends him for it. Curious.
The math does add up, though: Quirrell is at least four times more important than all of Azkaban put together. It's like how, in my mind, at least 10% of the loss caused by the 16-40k guillotine deaths in the French Revolution is from the early death of Lavoisier.
It's pretty clear from the times it's come up that Harry's utilitarianism is either mistaken or too unnatural to actually guide his behavior- and so this just seems like more evidence of that.
- This thread has run its course. You will find newer threads in the discussion section.
Another discussion thread - the fourth - has reached the (arbitrary?) 500 comments threshold, so it's time for a new thread for Eliezer Yudkowsky's widely-praised Harry Potter fanfic.
Most of the paratext and fan-made resources are listed on Mr. LessWrong's author page. There is also AdeleneDawner's collection of most of the previously-published Author's Notes.
Older threads: one, two, three, four. By tag.
Newer threads are in the Discussion section, starting from Part 6.
Spoiler policy as suggested by Unnamed and approved by Eliezer, me, and at least three other upmodders:
It would also be quite sensible and welcome to continue the practice of declaring at the top of your post which chapters you are about to discuss, especially for newly-published ones, so that people who haven't yet seen them can stop reading in time.