Actually, Eliezer has stated that he deliberately inserts impossible details in all his stories because he's disturbed by the notion that they might be simulated somewhere. I wouldn't expect it to affect the plot, though.
Didn't he say that he mentioned the time-turner because it disproves the simulation hypothesis? It would also guarantee that nobody would simulate it.
He seems to have figured out how to simulate it later, but that requires simulating everything, and there's no guarantee that there will even be a reality with a stable time loop, unless you have the infinite number of realities necessary to allow connectedness, in which case you can't possibly simulate all the possibilities.
Edit: New thread posted here.
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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
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: