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Cakoluchiam comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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I'm a little surprised that HJPEV didn't immediately update his probabilities regarding Quirrell's motives in Azkaban with the new knowledge from Moody that "You've got to mean it. You've got to want someone dead, and not for the greater good, either.", which would seem to discredit the Defense Professor's excuse that "a curse which cannot be blocked and must be dodged is an indispensable tactic."
Not necessarily; someone who's as deeply misanthropic as Quirrell might wish most people dead (having killed before, he can, as per Moody's explanation, wish people dead rather more casually than non-murderers.) If you're already capable of bringing intent-to-kill to bear on pretty much anyone who crosses you, you can probably use it strategically the way Quirrell suggests.
On the other hand, even if Quirrell's explanation holds true, it does suggest Harry should revise upwards his estimates of just how cavalier Quirrell is with other people's lives.
Surely Harry already understands that Quirrel places no intrinsic value on other people's lives. Perhaps this understanding is not visceral enough yet, though.
It should already be pretty high though - Harry even points it out at the time (Rule 1 of Unforgivable Curse Safety) and Quirrell equivocates it away by mixing up etiquette rules with safety rules. That might just as easily have ended with "I just shot Bahry in the face" considering how fast the spell must be going - probably <100 ms to recognize he can't dodge in time, and push him away.
The Auror starts dodging as soon as he recognizes the Killing Curse. This probably gives Quirrell a reasonable window of time to judge whether or not his opponent will dodge in time.
How large this window is, that's another question. Voldemort can say the incantation in "less than half a second" but the description of that doesn't match the description of the Azkaban scene, so it seems that Quirrell says the curse more slowly. This suggests that either he is telling the truth when he says that he wanted Bahry to dodge, or else Voldemort's skill at tongue-twisters is rare even among capable battle wizards, and he doesn't want Harry to make the connection.
I took this passage as saying that you don't have to be especially pathological to cast the killing curse a second time - Moody explicitly says it "doesn't tell us much". So if we trust him, it doesn't tell us much.
"It takes a cracked soul to cast." and "Murder tears the soul." just says that if you've gotten to the point where you could cast it once, that particular pre-requisite is already accomplished, so the work to crack your soul is already put in. It doesn't say anything about removing the requirement of wanting someone dead.
Though, so long as we're looking at evidence, if we take Quirrell at his word, then his ability to cast the spell despite not wanting his opponent dead is pretty strong evidence that the requirement is in fact removed. In fact, we already know that some "requirements" to cast spells are not set in stone: from that same scene, Harry cast the true patronus without the carefully practiced stance and wand twitches, instead merely "one desperate wish that an innocent man should not die -"—but the constant requirement in this case seems to be the thought that accompanies the casting of the spell, which is why I'm hesitant to believe the wish of death is removed from AK's casting requirement.
Harry didn't cast the patronus then, it was already active, he just moved it.
Fair point, though that also removes the point of evidence that casting requirements are removed with practice.
Just because he didn't intend to kill him doesn't mean he didn't want him dead. As Moody said, you have to want it, not just for the greater good, but as an end unto itself. Quirrell might have wanted to kill Bahry as an end unto itself, whereas for matters of convenience it was better to leave him alive.
Yeah, that kind of leaped out.
It also made me wonder how Quirrell and Dumbledore thought they were going to teach students the spell.
Killing Curses don't kill wizards, wizards kill wizards!
You don't think you can teach children how to want someone dead for the sake of wanting them dead? Children can be very hateful. (At least, this could be what Quirrell is thinking, and Dumbledore could be thinking or hoping that the children just aren't going to be able to cast it.)
I'm very glad I didn't know that spell when I was little.
In canon, Moody used the unforgivables on a spider, and given the prevalence of ostensibly non-sentient things-to-fear in the magical world (e.g. boggarts), it's conceivable that they could have found a particular magical creature that even the most PETA-supporting student would have no trouble excising from the world. Also, as far as I can tell, there's nothing in canon to contradict that curses' targets are limited to Kingdom Animalia (see also: Harry's existential crisis about sentient plants), and I seriously doubt there are any 7th level vegans at Hogwarts.
How do you level up in being vegan? And what powers does it grant?
It's a reference to an episode of The Simpsons, wherein Lisa's boyfriend states: "I'm a level 5 vegan. I won't eat anything that casts a shadow."
Edit2: Primary source found.
Remember that Harry had also learned that Quirrell had successfully used Avada Kedavra on two Death Eaters. Moody says that it isn't hard to cast AK for a second time, and Harry already knows that this time would have been at least Quirrell's third.
I interpreted the ease of casting the spell as a specific application of scope insensitivity rather than a change in the requirement to cast it. That is, while casting it the second time might be just as difficult (i.e. take as much mental/magical/spiritual energy) as the first, the third and fourth time would together be only as strenuous as the first, as would the collective fifth through eighth time, etc. It is already established in-universe that some form of personal mana depletion exists, and my idea of this difficulty reduction is an extension of that form of energy to the spiritual energy (established in canon w.r.t. horcruxes, dementors, etc.).