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Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong
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Re: Flamel and his open-secret-recipe for the Philosopher's Stone.
Here's a quote from chapter 61:
And yet, the recipe is openly available for everyone to see. If anyone could reproduce the stone from the recipe, it would be the very intelligent, rational(and very interested in immortality) Voldemort.
So, how do we reconcile these two facts?
One option is, of course, the published, known recipe is a fake. The stone is real but Flamel lied to everyone about the recipe. That's certainly a plausible - if boring - explanation of the facts. The other plausible explanation is as Harry says - maybe the stone is a fake. Maybe Flamel is immortal because of Horcruxes and he invented the stone as a way to keep people off the trail of his phylacteries. Maybe Flamel isn't immortal at all, maybe he pulls of a Batman Begins Ra's Al Ghul style of immortality. Any of a dozen options is possible.
However, if we take things at face value, I think we can end up with a more interesting conclusion - I think this might be our first piece of evidence(it's not very good evidence, but evidence nonetheless) that the Interdict of Merlin is an actual, real magical effect, rather than just a cultural thing or a legend. The reason people can't reproduce the stone is because the Interdict obscures some part of the recipe.
I guess this is testable - do we know if Flamel had any apprentices to whom he tried to personally explain how to make the Stone?
It's possible that Quirrell's ongoing issues with fine motor control have been with him for long enough to become known. He's not going to be able to make the Philosopher's Stone that way.
If that were all, he could just Imperius someone though.
If it is possible to Imperius someone into making magic items/performing rituals... Well, it makes the Imperius Curse just that much more brokenly overpowered. (Not that it isn't brokenly overpowered already.) Imagine Imperioing a random person into being the binder for the Unbreakable Vow you want to make with someone. It completely removes the nerf EY gave the Unbreakable Vow. (At least for people willing to throw around the Imperius curse like that.)
So you're replacing 'lose a portion of magic' with 'risk being sent to Azkaban'? It changes the cost of binding but it certainly doesn't remove it.
Well, as Quirrell pointed out, the restrictions of the Unbreakable Vow are easy to get around if you're creative. They're simply the reason that it's so little used as a function of regular society.
Exactly! But if you could Imperius someone into being your binder, that would remove that cost, and so the Unbreakable Vow would be used a lot more. Therefore, it must not be possible to do that. (Or maybe everyone is just too stupid to think of the possibility, which actually is consistent with the wizarding world we've seen...)
The Imperius curse is one of the Unforgivables. Using it to coerce a binder for the Unbreakable Vow is Not Allowed. The fact that being convicted of using it carries an Azkaban sentence probably prevents people from using it casually.
At best, the Imperius curse could make the Unbreakable Vow common in irregular society, the segment that casually breaks laws that could get them put away for life if they're caught.
I was more thinking of the Lucius Malfoy type. It is well enough established that the way the Wizarding legal system works, with a little bit of effort he can get away with almost anything. In addition, he seems to be the type of person to most benefit from Unbreakable Vows: That is to say he deals with many contacts, and most of them are not the most trustworthy people in the world (and that is putting it mildly).
Lucius's social capital is limited. Some of the Wizengamot are his fast allies, some are simply biased in favor of the nobility, but if he was regularly being accused of imperiusing people, and showed signs of more and more people holding to agreements with him that were clearly not in their interests, he'd probably get the aurors on his trail. Except for the people who're Death Eaters themselves, or most of the way there, he'd go from "One of Us, even if he's involved in some sketchy stuff" to "A pressing threat."
Your points are good, and I understand what you are saying, and that probably is enough reason to accept why Lucius is not imperioing people in the story, without positing that you cannot bind an Unbreakable Vow while under an Imperius.
However, with that said, I don't think you understand just how powerful the Unbreakable Vow is. There is a reason why EY nefed it so much in HPMOR, and if you can simply get around that with a simple Imperius curse... Maybe in this alternate world the Imperius curse would still be illegal, but I doubt it. Because the people who use the Imperius curse have the full power of the Unbreakable Vow at their backs, and they would quickly have the laws changed to their whims.
("But how is the Unbreakable Vow that powerful?" some may ask. Well, it is a complete and utter solution to any game theoretic problem, at all. For example in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma, the Nash equilibrium is Defect-Defect. But if you use the Unbreakable Vow, you can get both sides to Cooperate. (And both sides will agree to the Unbreakable Vow because Cooperate-Cooperate gives them a better result than Defect-Defect.) And so much of your normal human interaction is that kind of game, which is trivially solvable if you have such a powerful commitment mechanism.)