Much worse, Harry sacrifices Hermione to achieve a higher level of utility (probably something involving 3^^^3). Horrible thought, but his dark side could do it, and he's just gone to the dark side for a solution.
That isn't a scary thought at all. In fact, in the absence of a clever solution it is the best option available.
Sometimes you just have to lose because there is no real option. If it wasn't in a story with Harry as the protagonist it would almost certainly be best to not start a war with the entire power structure to try to save her. Well, not yet.
Let Hermione go. Go research magic. Take over the world. Rescue Hermione. Use advanced magic and an FAI to heal the damage done to Hermione.
Rescue Hermione. Use advanced magic and an FAI to heal the damage done to Hermione.
The "scary" or "horrible" thought is if he can't do this part. (Which to me looks plausible: if a 12 year-old girl gets sent to Azkaban then she almost certainly can't recover.) The taboo tradeoff would then look like this:
Option A : Rescue Hermione, but with some big utility downside.
Option B: Don't rescue Hermione, ever, but with some big utility upside.
Incidentally, one thing that no-one - I think - has mentioned is whether Muggle law carries any we...
EDIT: New discussion thread here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With two chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 500 comments. The latest chapter as of 17th March 2012 is Ch. 79.
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.
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: