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Larks comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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Someone should cast a chain-Imperius , commanding the victim to:
1) Not attack anyone else subject to these rules 2) Imperius anyone not subject to these rules, and subject them to these rules 3) Inform your enchanter of any plans you know of that might hinder the grand Imperius effort.
It's established in Rowling!Cannon that the spell can be chained, and Harry has probably read the GNU manifesto, so he should have these sorts of ideas.
A liberal arch-wizard might object that this would reduce the entire world to a dull statis of mindless servitude:
But there would be ways around it; maybe just 10% of the world could be Imperiused at any one moment as a police force. They could then use a shift system, so that everyone got 90% freedom. This might seem extreme, but I think the devastating, distributed destructive powers of magic render it (or something like it) the only sane response for a society not comprised of angels.
This only qualifies as a sane response if one has no ethical qualms about the Imperius curse. Which is a bit of a problem, because most sane people wouldn't like the idea.
Putting aside the sketchiness of the idea itself, it's flawed. If any zombie high on the chain dies or makes their will-save, every zombie subservient to them is freed, and has knowledge of the Grand Imperius Effort. If, before the experience, they hadn't had strong feelings either way about nonconsensual use of mind-effecting spells, they certainly will afterwards; everyone post-zombie is likely to oppose the plan.
I suppose you could ameliorate the first bit of the first part of the practical problem by sequestering high-level zombies so they don't die, and the rest with sufficient use of propaganda. This assumes that this program is endorsed by a quite powerful organization.
If we assume control of a powerful organization, though, it'd be more effective, and slightly less hideously unethical, just to sterilize all magicians and eliminate the "devastating, distributed destructive powers of magic" in a generation or two. Or write an Interdict of MerLarks to encompass all non-healing spells.
After devising a plan for a GNU world order, it's only logical to take the next step up into resilient W2W (Wizard-to-Wizard) networks: add a clause ordering Imperiused wizards to re-infect every 100th wizard they meet. This random crosslinking will convert the efficient yet fragile pyramidal hierarchy into a robust distributed graph.
Does Imperius provide remote control, or simply obedience to mundane orders? What does self-inflicted Imperius do?
The cure to procrastination?
It seems to me like having somebody imperius yourself to do what you wanted to do in the first place might be a way to make yourself formiddable in general. Of course, it also might break your free will or cause quietism or solipsism?
It would also be an education in finding out to what extent what you want to do in far mode is actually a way of getting what you want.
Bit of both, really. It's described as "like moving your arm", yet the subject retains their own skillset, mannerisms etc.
Cool. Firstly, where is that established in canon?
Secondly, not everyone can cast the Imperius.
Thirdly, some people can resist the Imperius, and these people are, I should think, especially likely to do something about it.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Imperiused Pius Thicknesse is charged by the Death Eaters with imperiusing other members of the MoM. (Or was he the one being imperiued by an imperiused ?)
From the wiki page I linked:
Some can resist, but they could be defeated by a combination of 1) the archwizard at the head of the network and 2) his army of slaves.
Actually, if the Imperius Curse grants the victim the abilities necessary to carry out tasks (which I had also forgotten about,) then it seems more likely to me that it would actually require some degree of micromanagement from the end user for every step in the chain. It makes it seem more like they're actually investing some of their own mental power rather than just applying some suggestion, and there should only be so much of that to go around, which could make creating an army of imperiused slaves an impossibility.
Ah, good point, I'd forgotten you could push people into things they can't normally do (i.e. backflips.) Yeah, this does sound workable, although I doubt it would work on that sort of scale, unless you found some handy combo.
As for the rebels overthrowing you, well, "this only works on the weak of will" is usually applied to mean "this doesn't work on PCs/important characters." Can't you just picture the great story based around Our Heroes encountering the nascent Collective and defeating their nefarious agents (they could be anyone! Anyone!)
After all, you don't start with the world under control, do you?