Well strictly they are voting on whether there is a blood debt, not on the sentence. But you're right, at this point Harry will have to offer something else dramatic and taboo (like withdrawing a vow of enmity and swearing instead to be a minion to Draco or some such), just to get Lucius to budge at all, while still giving him the level of vengeance he claimed he originally wanted. So Lucius himself doesn't have to betray a "sacred" value (which he won't).
Another thing I noticed: Harry basically awards Lucius the idiot-ball for playing his appointed role in an obvious set-up. But isn't he doing exactly the same? (Internally declaring war on the wizarding world, not minding any more if anyone thinks he is a Dark Lord, vowing enmity against Lucius, then going to the dark side...). Not very rational.
But you're right, at this point Harry will have to offer something else dramatic and taboo
Almost certainly. And as vengeance is sacred to Lucius, Harry will have to offer something sacred of his own (Eliezer has seen this before, and I think it was covered in Influence, which Harry read). Any ideas?
The new thread, discussion 13, is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With three chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 1000 comments. The latest chapter as of 25th March 2012 is Ch 80.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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: