This seems to be a reasonable heuristic for cases like this where the potential problem is as silly as someone would get undeserved LW karma. But I would be careful of generalizing it to cases where the potential problem is serious.
Also, in the HPMOR scene you are alluding to, Bones was saying that it was up to her to decide if the procedure was being abused, not up to the aurors whose job it was to implement it, and that the downsides of it being abused were insignificant compared to the downsides of not following it when it is needed.
Bones was saying that it was up to her to decide if the procedure was being abused, not up to the aurors whose job it was to implement it
The specific error the Auror was making (if we are to take a consequentialist look and ignore the settled rules) was to act on a hypothetical problem that turns out not to be real, so Bones’s superior expertise would be used, in particular, to determine whether the hypothetical problem is real.
Is this actually a problem? If we find that Aurors seem to be abusing the procedure, then we’ll modify the procedure to prevent its abuse.
This seems to be a reasonable heuristic for cases like this where the potential problem is as silly as someone would get undeserved LW karma. But I would be careful of generalizing it to cases where the potential problem is serious.
Also, in the HPMOR scene you are alluding to, Bones was saying that it was up to her to decide if the procedure was being abused, not up to the aurors whose job it was to implement it, and that the downsides of it being abused were insignificant compared to the downsides of not following it when it is needed.
The specific error the Auror was making (if we are to take a consequentialist look and ignore the settled rules) was to act on a hypothetical problem that turns out not to be real, so Bones’s superior expertise would be used, in particular, to determine whether the hypothetical problem is real.