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hairyfigment comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong
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Okay, after thinking a few minutes about the Batman-Joker/where do you put Dark Wizards if you're determined not to use Dementors anymore problem...
Unbreakable Vow anyone? Just give Dark Wizards the option "either you take an Unbreakable Vow to never knowingly kill/torture/Imperio a human being ever again, nor to ever knowingly assist in such, or we just execute you right now".
I can think up of possible ways out of this meta-problem, in order to sustain the dilemma: Perhaps really powerful Dark Wizards require too vast a portion of magical power to sustain the vow. Perhaps there are dark rituals whereby using them, Dark Wizards can break out of even an (ill-named) Unbreakable Vow. Perhaps Dark Wizards tend to have made other rituals that already make them immune to Unbreakable Vows... Perhaps unbreakable vows need be really really specific in some weird manner like "I will not kill Bill Weasley", and "I will not kill Charlie Weasley" necessarily are two separate vows, so that "I will not kill any human" isn't enforceable...
But these are additional problems that are not yet mentioned/listed/foreshadowed in the story. Ugh, Unbreakable Vows seem something of a game breaker right now.
Sidenote: Whenever I think of something such, I worry that the author will think he'll have to rewrite/revise everything he had already planned, and that we'll never get an update again. Not my intention, I swear.
Well, they can die. I've seen nothing to suggest that Vows destroy Horcruxes.
I wonder if this fact is possibly relevant to some Cunning Plot in which - perhaps just as one among many positive results - Voldemort "died" and resurrected via horcrux in order to escape an Unbreakable Vow. I remember in response to chapter 84, people were wondering what, if Voldie's apparent death at Godric's Hollow was intentional, was in it for him.
But will they come back free of the Vow? It seems entirely plausible to me that it would follow them into their new incarnation.
They could still break it once per incarnation.
… thus killing one human per incarnation, thus creating one horcrux per incarnation.
Now, if there were some way to automate the whole getting-a-body-business …
Not in the specifications. They just say, 'anyone who breaks the Vow dies.' Ending with death is a feature.
Though if the people who first found the spell really thought that way, they must not have truly believed anyone could stay in their world after death.