I think this chapter just proved that someone, most likely Quirrell, has modified Harry's memory. Remember how Harry easily figured out how to quickly make large sums of money by trading gold and silver between the wizard and muggle markets? And now, he doesn't seem to recall that brilliant insight when Hermione mentions that they need a way to make lots of money fast. Moreover, the occlumency teacher with whom Quirrell set up a lesson (possibly Quirrell himself in disguise) mentioned that he would like to be able to remember that same trick after he read it in Harry's thoughts. Clearly, whatever the villian is planning, it requires Harry not having large sums of money.
The creation of a philosopher's stone would, therefore, pose a direct threat to this plan. Hermione is in even more danger than before.
Didn't he already talk about it? He has several plans, but they're all risky. For example, if he tries to make money on gold arbitrage, he runs the risk of the goblins noticing and realizing what he's doing before he can get far.
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 87. The previous thread has 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, 17.
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: