As a concrete larger scale example, see for instance the financial crash that happened in 2008. Now I don't claim to know all the myriad reasons that caused it, but from what I hear of how people have been describing how it happened, it was exactly the sort of problem that could have been solved with Unbreakable Vows. (And it obviously was not solvable even by the most modern form of government, as it did happen, despite modern governments existing.)
It could, in theory, have been prevented with unbreakable vows. It could also have been prevented with laws. The trouble was not that if we designed laws to prevent it, they wouldn't have been followed, or that nobody had any idea what sort of laws would have been necessary, but that the people who saw the problem in advance and called for those sorts of laws were in the minority, and even after the fact a lot of people still aren't on board with the sorts of laws that would have prevented it, because they believe it would stifle business interests, because of an ideological Regulation Bad mindset, or a combination of those.
Just because Unbreakable Vows could solve a problem, doesn't mean they would. We can solve all sorts of problems with government, but don't, because we're not that good at using government. You seem to assume that we would default to using Unbreakable Vows perfectly, and I see that as a highly burdensome component of your assertions that requires a lot of evidence.
But here I will ask you this question: Lets assume that we are in canon Harry Potter where the Unbreakable Vow is not nerfed. There is no cost to making a Vow, and no need for slaves. In this scenario, do you think that civilization would form in a system using the Unbreakable Vow in the ways I described? If not, why did EY nerf the Unbreakable Vow in HPMOR so much? If yes, look at the advantages such a system brings, and ask if those advantages are really outweighed by the disadvantages of having a slave system. (Remembering that most civilization through history have had some sort of slave system or another, and they did quite well in spite of that, so it cannot be that much of a disadvantage.)
I think civilization would make extensive use of Unbreakable Vows, and it would have a significant effect. It could, as you point out, prevent events such as Pettigrew betraying the Potters (unless he'd already made a Vow to Voldemort before then, in which case he'd probably have been caught as soon as they tried to put a conflicting Vow on him,) and that sort of thing could completely mangle the story.
But I don't think it would result in perfect coordination. I think the laws would in many cases continue to be poorly thought out and impractical, and the system would continue to be bad at quickly changing laws that proved to be ineffective for the purposes for which they were supposedly designed. Politics would continue to be influenced by people more driven by tribal ideology than by evidence of what makes their countries better off.
I think the core of these problems is not a lack of a sufficiently powerful enforcement mechanism on agreements, but that the sanity waterline simply isn't very high.
I think the core of these problems is not a lack of a sufficiently powerful enforcement mechanism on agreements, but that the sanity waterline simply isn't very high.
Perhaps. I see the way which you are looking at it, and while I don't agree, I want to say that I think I understand why you look at it this way.
...It could, in theory, have been prevented with unbreakable vows. It could also have been prevented with laws. The trouble was not that if we designed laws to prevent it, they wouldn't have been followed, or that nobody had any idea what sort of la
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 87. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: