This, in my mind, puts the entire premise of the DSvT post in a very dark light. Given what we know about the real world and the real limitations of practice (vs theory) then the only effect of the DSvT post is to make people more likely to torture (or to excuse torture) in the real world - which is exactly where the hypothetical is completely inapplicable. It makes the world a slightly worse place for no benefit.
Or at least none that I can see. Is there a benefit I'm missing?
And if not, does this make it a mini-basilisk? Something that's true but that everyone's better off having never read?
The costs and benefits seem fairly analogous to those of "trolley problems," which is well-travelled ground at this point, so I won't try to cover it again.
If you can see a benefit to trolley problems in general, it seems you ought to be able to see the same benefit here. Conversely, if you don't, then it seems you should have the same objection to trolley problems involving death, torture, murder, and other bad practices.
Personally, I invoke Weber's Law in these sorts of cases: when a posited delta is smaller than the just-noticeable-difference,...
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.
Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.
As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: