Subbak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: b_sen 17 February 2015 01:17AM

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Comment author: Subbak 19 February 2015 11:54:38PM 1 point [-]

Inbreeding just makes it more likely you get two of the same allele (with bad consequences if said allele is deleterious), it does not make it inherently more likely that any single allele you have is deleterious.

Comment author: Romashka 20 February 2015 04:25:48PM 0 points [-]

True. And a progressively large portion of progeny would die before procreating, exactly because of that. Maybe there would even be bottlenecks along the way.

Yet it seems to me that a squib (?) whom Merope chose could have a different set of heterozygous=hidden deleterious alleles, which in Merope's genome would not have been eliminated yet, but getting close to it.

Also, how on Earth was Slytherin's curse even inherited? It would be something outside of genes, since he didn't know about their existence. So the ability would be develop undiminished with blood 'dilution', which means a Parselmouth cannot be seen as evidence of pure-bloodedness, which would be a blow to Draco's belief in his father's ethics... And in Harry's belief in genes-only inheritance...

Now, if Salazar was secretly a woman, and only daughters would get to be Parselmouths, that would be another story...