MugaSofer comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Vaniver 30 June 2013 01:22AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (957)
Tags: fanfiction harry_potter hpmor fiction

Comments (957)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Larks 30 June 2013 11:57:02PM 5 points [-]

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:

every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away

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.

Comment author: MugaSofer 29 July 2013 06:53:18PM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Osuniev 28 August 2013 10:48:54PM 1 point [-]

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 ?)

Comment author: Larks 30 July 2013 03:00:58PM 0 points [-]

From the wiki page I linked:

It is possible for someone who has been Imperiused to place others under the curse as well.

whilst under the caster's control, the curse may also endow the victim with whatever skills that are required in order to complete the task at hand, such as increased strength or allowing them to cast spells far above their level.

Resisting the Imperius Curse is possible, but requires great strength of will and character.

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.

Comment author: Desrtopa 31 July 2013 02:12:13PM *  1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: MugaSofer 31 July 2013 02:00:11PM -1 points [-]

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?

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit