MugaSofer comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: FAWS 18 April 2012 02:30AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 April 2012 01:05:10PM 44 points [-]

Unbreakable Vows are ridiculously broken, as Harry briefly observes in Ch. 74. They're even more ridiculous in fanfictions where people can just grab a wand and swear something on their life and magic and thereby create a magically binding vow. I had to nerf the hell out of their activation costs just to make the MoR-verse keep running. I can't depict a society with zero agency problems, a perfect public commitment process and an infinite trust engine unless the whole story is about that.

Comment author: MugaSofer 18 August 2012 03:04:11AM *  0 points [-]

Since there seems to be some confusion on this point: in canon, at least, an "Unbreakable" Vow didn't actually stop you breaking it, it just killed you if you did. If a person is willing to sacrifice their life - and if you resurrect using a horcrux, that could easily be worth it - you can still commit crimes.

And if you swore to obey the law - is being found guilty is now an automatic death sentence, even if you honestly thought it was legal? I doubt a working legal system based on Unbreakable Vows is trivial to come up with.

That said, they are unquestionably broken in canon. Very, very broken. Few are willing to stake their life over, say, business deals, but there are loads of situations in which they would be a massive game-breaker.