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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong
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In canon, the hardness and thickness of materials are described as stopping spells, especially stunning spells. Hagrid, e.g., is able to resist several Aurors' stunning spells for a few minutes because of his thick, hard, half-giant hide. No form of cloth or wool clothing is ever described as stopping a magical attack, but Harry can hide behind (presumably granite) gravestones for some time while Death Eaters blast away at them. Toilets, which presumably are not quite as thick or hard as gravestones, are shown as stopping one offensive spell but then exploding.
IMHO wearing metal armor is a brilliantly canonic tactic. The least plausible facet of it is that first years in January, average age 11.5, probably cannot build enough muscle mass to wear a full suit of medieval armor at all, let alone in two weeks. I do not think we have seen evidence that wizards are stronger than ordinary folk, as opposed to more resilient. The captains are described as wearing only metal shirts, but they practice by swinging metal objects on their hands and feet -- this is odd.
My first thought when I finally figured out that the metal was about mundane armor and not something crazy like transfiguring muscles was 'why don't Aurors wear impressive clanking armor, then?'
It says early in the chapter, when Harry and Neville are alone, that this didn't count as giving Voldemort a good idea b/c the armor would only stop minor jinxes.
But this is for the crappy armor that first years can both build in a short period and also wear. A full grown adult with governmental resources ought to be able to obtain and wear much better armor.
Given the problem Aurors seem to have with surprise attacks, that alone might make them worthwhile!
(In the real world, no one says bulletproof vests can stop only weaker bullets and don't do anything about explosions or knives, so there's no point in equipping soldiers or cops with such vests...)
On the other hand, its not a new idea. Harry mentions that some wizards used to wear armour in the dark ages, and they probably wouldn't have stopped using it if it was useful.
In Eliezer's HPverse, that may be a sensible argument. (Given the general irrationality of wizard-dom, not a very strong one, though.) I'm criticizing Eliezer for diverging from canon, which IIRC has no suggestion that armor would be useful or had been tried but abandoned in the past. (The only example I can think of is maybe canon had goblin armor, and I'm not sure how that would apply.)
Canon already suggests spells can be stopped by solid objects, but only if they're sufficiently solid. And powerful spells have been shown to blast objects, while weak spells haven't. It's not much of a leap. In HP canon, historical wizards may or may not have worn armor of some sort, but for an adult wizard, armor is probably more trouble than it's worth. Considering how versatile a properly trained wizard can be in combat, it shouldn't be able to do more than force the opponents to slightly revise their tactics, while increasing the wearer's fatigue.
Remember that these are first years. The difference between the quality of armor they and the government can procure is much smaller than the difference between their combat ability and those of aurors or Death Eaters. If they didn't have such a demanding teacher, they would probably be incapable of anything resembling proper dueling at this point.
It could be that in order to get it to the strength that it will stand up to adult hexes, the armor becomes too cumbersome to actually use.
This is true, but in the real world, cops face bullets somewhere around as often as knives (I believe; does anyone know differently?) and far more often than explosions--Dark Wizards, on the other hand, don't go around offensively using first-year spells...basically ever.
Isn't that a rather convenient outcome, though? Why should we think that?
Hence the point that we would expect adults with government resources to be able to wear both heavier armor and much better armor for a net protective effect far beyond what Harry et al managed.
Because if that weren't the case, we might expect aurors to wear armor, and they don't. A hypothesis that suggests that armor isn't useful for adult wizards predicts our observations better than one that suggests that it is.
One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens; we can use the observed lack in canon to argue for Eliezer conflicting with canon or we can use it to argue canon invisibly agrees with Eliezer.
General rule of fiction. If there are two possibilities, neither of which is confirmed or denied in text, assume the one that makes sense.
OK. So to use an earlier Yudkowsky example, what possibility about arbitrage should we assume holds true in canon? That there's some clever witchery which makes it impossible or that Rowling simply made a mistake and didn't think about the economics?
If we assume perfection on the part of the author, doesn't that lead to an odd and desperate kind of rabbinical midrash?
As Harry said, this was a tactic that would only work against weak first-year spells; he did have to dodge Hermione's Stupefy.
My thought is that wizards are not confined to projectile weapons. Armor would be next to useless if the offensive magic, for example, is fire based or involves water or gravity manipulation. Moreover, an armored helmet significantly constrains both visibility and mobility, which may make the wearer more vulnerable.