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ewbrownv comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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There seems to be a consensus that if there were war between wizards and muggles, the wizards would lose.
This isn't obvious to me, but I might be assuming more intelligence (both information and skill at using it) on the wizard side than they've got.
However, if we assume that wizards are reasonably competent (insert bitter laughter from anyone who's read the original books), what could they do?
My impression is that wizards don't need human civilization. It seems to me that their ability to pass unseen and destroy memories would be enough to destroy a lot of infrastructure. Would it be that hard for wizards to rule what was left?
What's the use of human weapons if you need magic just to enter wizard population centers?
Anyone who remembers the books better than I do, go ahead and tell me if there's some way for humans to resist.
A muggle society that doesn't know about wizards is vulnerable to sneaky tactics involving mind control and memory alteration. But in an open battle cannon!wizards don't stand a chance against a competent military force - they have superior mobility and medical care, but in every other respect magic is hopelessly inferior to technology.
Of course, a war isn't a battle. To predict how the war would go we have to explain why the muggles don't already know about wizards, which requires a drastic re-write of large sections of cannon. Any adequate justification is going to require giving the wizards god-like abilities of information control, which could easily give them the ability to win a wizard-muggle war as well.
I can't see any reason for wizards to engage in open battle against muggles.
A muggle society that does know about wizards would still be vulnerable to mind control and memory alteration-- the wizards themselves are vulnerable to such tactics. Covert defection is so easy for wizards it's almost surprising they've got as much large-scale organization as they do.
I believe that muggles do know about wizards (though perhaps no very accurately), they just don't talk about it any public sort of way. However, this is deduction, not canon.
One thing to check in canon would be the scene where the Wizarding minister pops in to the British PM and gives him a status report. I can't remember whether it is implied that PMs are routinely obliviated after their terms are up.
From the flashback scene near the beginning of Book 6 Chapter 1, where the Muggle PM first meets Cornelius Fudge:
So it's implied that no Obliviation is needed. On the other hand, I wouldn't it past Eliezer to decide that this is not credible in a story for adults. And after all, Fudge never really answered the question.
Thanks for the lookup. Yes, that implies that a limited number of muggles thought to be 'safe' are permitted to know about the wizarding world.