(My previous hypothesis was that Dumbledore was simply so desperate to gain a DADA teacher that he made concessions and accepted as possibly dark candidate. However, this doesn't fit with the ruthless Dumbledore we've seen in recent chapters.)
The position is cursed (I think in MoR as well as canon). Many of the ways someone can vacate the position forcibly by the end of a school year are fatal or debilitating. It might be that he's willing to trade a year of Defense education for all of his students in exchange for putting a suspected enemy in harm's way, if the enemy is foolish enough to hold still for it. (Or believes himself immune to the curse because he's the one who placed it.)
Actually, come to think of it, I now expect that smart!Dumbledore would weaponize the curse in this way as the only explanation for why there is a Defense teacher at all who is not explicitly under a one-year contract. Otherwise it would probably make more sense to cobble together the educational requirements with dueling clubs, student tutoring, and extra sessions in Charms, plus throwing textbooks and the fear of OWLs at all the students, rather than put them under the influence of high-variance low-average bottom-of-the-barrel educators who will be found staggeringly unfit or disabled or dead by summertime.
I doubt the curse can be effectively weaponized. If it only ensures that the Defense professors won't outlast the year, they could be incapacitated or found incompetent, but then, they might end up being fired after they're found abusing students, or some other reason that harms the school rather than the professor.
The new discussion thread (part 15) is 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 82. The previous thread passed 1000 comments as of the time of this writing, and so has long passed 500. Comment in the 13th thread until you read chapter 82.
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.
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: