Well, you can of course argue that Hermione, being the second smartest first year student, is the obvious candidate for te role of the best friend who dies too early, do you think it'd be equally plausible if Eliezer had killed Neville? Neville should be able to stand just as close to Harry as Hermione did (since Harry has not hit puberty yet, and thinks girls are "icky"), but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that Neville's death could have brought forth the same emotions both in Harry and in the readers that Hermione's death did. Eliezer probably also knows this and thus chose Hermione to die.
I think this may be taking Harry at his word a bit too much when it comes to his views on Hermione. Just because Harry allways speaks in "rationalist" vocabulary, doesn't mean he is allways rational or free of bias. He is often unfair to people when he's emotional. And his blind spot for Quirrel is a mile wide. "It was the defense professor last year, and the year before that, and the year before that..." Someone actualy starting from priors and adjusting finds Quirrel very quickly, particularly when you factor in the sense of doom.
Harry thinks he doesn't like Hermione that way, Harry's dad is pretty sure he does. I think regarding Harry's statements as the more objective one here may be a mistake.
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 93. The previous thread has passed 300 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, 17,18,19,20.
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: