There are three possibilities here:
1) It takes longer to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts, so by the time you have cloned their feet, their head has detransfigured. (This assumes that humans are so complex that you have to concentrate on one part of them at a time, like Harry's pencil.) In this case, cloning is useless.
2) It takes longer to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts, but the time-limit starts once the transfigureation is complete. In this case, cloning minions is still useful for increasing numbers before a battle, or for suicide missions, but the dark lord would also have to work out that the body needs to be kept cold (otherwise parts of it would die while you are transfiguring other parts) and then warmed and brought to life with a defibrillator. Its quite possible no-one would ever have thought of this, and had the skill and moral flexibility to implement it.
3) It takes less time to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts. In this case, the earth would quickly be overrun by self-replicating minions.
So (3) can be ruled out on empirical grounds.
Two new short chapters! Since the next one is coming tomorrow and we know it'll be short, let's use one thread for both.
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 105 (and chapter 106, once it comes out tomorrow). EDIT: based on Alsadius' comment about thread creation for MOR chapters, let's also use this thread for chapter 107 (and future chapters until this nears 500 comments) unless someone objects to doing so. Given that this is the final arc we're talking about, thread titles should be updated to indicate chapters covered.
There is 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.)
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: