Unless he didn't. He is not, after all, a good and powerful wizard :D

What misdeeds are we shrugging off because they're normal?

Eating mammals. More generally; non-vegetarianism.

There is nothing about status quo that makes it a preferable option in times of uncertainty, except that the expectation of the intervention may at some point be below or above status quo, which gives the decision.

Good answer. I guess it depends on what is meant by "good intentions". If subconscious intentions are included, then it would be possible to hold false beliefs about one's own intentions, and being able to touch the Sword would be evidence that these beliefs are mostly correct.

It wouldn't be extremely strong evidence, though. All Vhazhar could know by studying historical records is that previous owners of the Sword acted in accordance with the values Vhazhar believes he has. However, these owners could have been deluded about their true terminal values their entire lives, and the Sword could therefore have been selecting for individuals with terminal values that don't accord with their actions, which means it would be a waste of time for Vhazhar to touch it, at best, or a fatal mistake at worst.

And obviously, if "good intentions" means conscious intentions, then Vhazhar already knows he has the terminal values he believes he has.

It seems that most the discussion here is caught up on Omega being able to "predict" your decision would require reverse-time causality which some models of reality cannot allow to exist.

Assuming that Omega is a "sufficiently advanced" powerful being, then the boxes could act in exactly the way that the "reverse time" model stipulates without requiring any such bending of causality through technology that can destroy the contents of a box faster than human perception time or use the classical many-worlds interpretation method of ending the universe where things don't work out the way you want (the universe doesn't even need to end, something like a quantum vacuum collapse would have the same effect of stopping any information leakage in non-conforming universes).

This makes the not-quite-a-rationalist argument of "the boxes are already what they are so my decision doesn't matter, I'll take both" no longer hold true.

Presumably there still is a limit to how much information his brain can process. Even if he could scan 1000m^2 per second on average (open land faster, forests, cities etc slower) he would need about 5000 years to search all of earth's land surface.

That seems to suggest that Harry has entirely given up on the idea of judging people by what they do... at least, when it comes to Quirrell.

Quirrel is a schemer and what he does or rather wants you to think he does is not what he really did. Let's take the dementor for an example. What Quirrel did was bring a powerful creature within reach of Harry with the effect of almost killing him. But also with the effect of teaching Harry the true Patronus. How would you judge Quirrel according to this deed? With a more straight forward character you could assume he really wanted to teach the children to defend themselves which probably is good. And Harry realized that this straight forward reasoning doesn't apply to Quirrel.

Is he really? I've read Schneier for years and I don't get any vibes off Moody. For example, Moody espouses all sorts of complicated theories which are the sort of 'movie plots' that Schneier derides.

If anyone, I think Mad Eye is James Jesus Angleton, or possibly Moody is an 'anti-Schneier'. (Personally, I think Eliezer is simply exaggerating Moody in the spirit of I'll-show-you-true-constant-vigilance!)

I think I can go ahead and say, now that Ch. 63 is up, that there are exactly two characters in this fic who will reliably think of that sort of thing, and they are Professor Quirrell and Mad-Eye Moody.

It's only the Idiot Ball if it has been previously established that the character is too intelligent to make a mistake. Not all characters in this fic are supposed to be that intelligent!

In Order of the Phoenix, Sirius Black seems to know that codes exist, at least. Although he dismisses them as "breakable" and decides to communicate over a floo network connection instead (which makes me wonder if wizards know about one-time pads, and if there are any spells which can break them).