According to Rowling’s description, the Imperius curse is a lot like Heinlein’s slugs: the controlled person keeps all their capabilities, but feels no worry or feeling of responsibility, and they want whatever the controller wants them to want. To make them more rational, the controller would essentially have to do their thinking for them. It’s most useful for making someone else into your secret agent.
The thing I find most intriguing about the Imperius curse is that it’s possible for someone under it to cast the curse on someone else. And several people can be controlled by a single Imperius-caster. This means that, if enough people could perform the curse, you could theoretically turn the entire world into your brainwashed slaves by setting up an Imperius tree.
Of course, your commands would be passed on through the imperfect interpretation of O(log n) intermediaries, where n is the size of the controlled population.
By “non-transitive” do you mean cyclic? Transitive would mean that if A imperiused B, and B imperiused C, than A must have imperiused C, which is clearly not true, though A will of course have some degree of control over C.
I was wondering if you could add cross-branches to an imperius tree to improve signal strength, but this might lead to cycles which may not be allowed.
Offhand I would expect cycles to be possible; why not? In the extreme case, if I cast Imperius on you, then your desries will follow mine, and if (through some perversity) I desire you to cast Imperius on me, then you’ll do it.
Among trusted friends, this could be a nice way to get high (well, mellow) for a while. Then eventually I will you to lift the curse on me, then lift my curse on you (or the other way around). It could also work for willpower, even if you can’t cast it on yourself. (Aside unrelated to acylcicity: the Ministry could license some well trained, closely supervised Wizarding therapists to use Imperius to treat addiction and the like.)
If you know that you’re in a cycle and want out, then it’s easy to get out. Just will someone to will someone to … will someone to lift the curse on you. But you might not know.
According to Rowling’s description, the Imperius curse is a lot like Heinlein’s slugs: the controlled person keeps all their capabilities, but feels no worry or feeling of responsibility, and they want whatever the controller wants them to want. To make them more rational, the controller would essentially have to do their thinking for them. It’s most useful for making someone else into your secret agent.
The thing I find most intriguing about the Imperius curse is that it’s possible for someone under it to cast the curse on someone else. And several people can be controlled by a single Imperius-caster. This means that, if enough people could perform the curse, you could theoretically turn the entire world into your brainwashed slaves by setting up an Imperius tree.
Of course, your commands would be passed on through the imperfect interpretation of O(log n) intermediaries, where n is the size of the controlled population.
Which Imperius graphs are allowed? Can they be non-transitive? Can someone be under two Imperiuses?
By “non-transitive” do you mean cyclic? Transitive would mean that if A imperiused B, and B imperiused C, than A must have imperiused C, which is clearly not true, though A will of course have some degree of control over C.
Yes.
I was wondering if you could add cross-branches to an imperius tree to improve signal strength, but this might lead to cycles which may not be allowed.
Offhand I would expect cycles to be possible; why not? In the extreme case, if I cast Imperius on you, then your desries will follow mine, and if (through some perversity) I desire you to cast Imperius on me, then you’ll do it.
Among trusted friends, this could be a nice way to get high (well, mellow) for a while. Then eventually I will you to lift the curse on me, then lift my curse on you (or the other way around). It could also work for willpower, even if you can’t cast it on yourself. (Aside unrelated to acylcicity: the Ministry could license some well trained, closely supervised Wizarding therapists to use Imperius to treat addiction and the like.)
If you know that you’re in a cycle and want out, then it’s easy to get out. Just will someone to will someone to … will someone to lift the curse on you. But you might not know.