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linkhyrule5 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I was thinking about it earlier and Harry has massively underranked the utility of Horcruxes. If one person must die so that a different person can live 100K+ more years then that is an incredibly desirable tradeoff from an impartial utilitarian standpoint and everyone should be doing this. You could even choose to murder only old and dying people so that there would be almost no loss of net time that people spend alive. He dismissed it way too quickly during his conversation with Dumbledore.
If your utility function assigns utility exclusively to "time spent alive," sure. But Harry's utility function also assigns utility to "keeping people alive", regardless of time.
You could create Horcruxes as a side-product of capital punishment, something Harry doesn't seem to mind.
Maybe you could kill people who were about to die anyway, and consented? Could you use abortion in this manner?
That seems rather naive of him if so. Advocating a justice system run by humans with that kind of moral hazard is a recipe for disaster.
With time travel you could pull off last minute injunctions on people who were going to die anyways. Think of it as Prisoner of Azkaban escapes, except instead of preventing deaths you just make use of them.
I think it'd work best as a mirror to the organ donor / organ recipient list. You sign up, and when you would normally have a catastrophic broomstick accident (or whatever), you instead have a couple medical professionals and the horcrux maker visit you 5 minutes before your appointed time.
Why do you say that ? He seems very opposed to capital punishment to me, that's why he takes the resolution to try to not kill Voldemort. That's also why he wants to destroy Azkaban.
Harry's a little inconsistent about this, depending on his mood. He's definitely talked at least somewhat seriously of just rounding up and killing all former death eaters etc.