Based on your description it seems more sensible to put torture on a continuum with incapacitation rather than holding it separate, as if it decreases future positive utility it seems like another sort of incapacitation to me. At this point I think we're down to math/data on happiness of post torture experiences versus post incapacitating experiences, which because it is 1 am and I have already taken melatonin I am too sleepy to want to look into. My intuitive leaning is that the effects of torture fade with time more than the effects of incapicitation, eg because I might eventually begin to forget how bad being tortured was but can never forget how I have one fewer limb, but this is only an intuition.
Our ability to fruitfully debate this issue, while we remain in fiction, is probably very limited. It may be underdetermined whether losing one's magic feels more like losing a driver's license or like losing a limb. If I'm conceiving of magic loss more in the former terms (magic as a toolbox), you more in the latter terms (magic as an intimate part of the magician), then it's unsurprising that we'll arrive at different intuitions.
That said, I'm unclear on what your argument is for treating torture and incapacitation as a 'continuum.' I of course think the...
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This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.
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.)
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