Interesting. Does that include the secondary effects of their deaths acting as an example and a deterrent for future undesirable behavior? Because if so, you share my view precisely (that deontology is a useful approximation of consequentialism and allows for more credible precommitment to punishment).
It does include the secondary effects of their deaths acting as a deterrent.
But I don't share your view that deontology allows for more credible precommitment to punishment, except in the somewhat trivial sense that such a precommitment is more credible to observers who consider deontological precommitments more credible than consequentialist ones.
That is, a commitment to punishment based on an adequate understanding of the consequences of punishment is no less likely to lead to punishment than a commitment to punishment based on deontological rules, and ...
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: