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Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 110 - Less Wrong
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Harry is the viewpoint character, and he thinks everyone is an idiot except him and Quirrell. He is in error. He has been consistently in error about this since ... forever. It's probably a character flaw that he shares with Voldemort, although Harry has a somewhat less murderous form of it.
For instance, Harry believes that the wizarding economy should be trivially exploitable via exchange with the Muggle precious-metals market. He believes this because even though he knows about half-bloods (i.e. witches and wizards who have a Muggle parent), he thinks that he is special and that nobody else ever would have thought of that.
Similarly, he believes that he is the first to come up with the idea of combining magic and Muggle science. He isn't that, either. He doesn't realize this even after he is given the (ostensible) diary of Roger Bacon.
And here's the thing ... he doesn't update about these errors. He's not particularly curious about them. "Hey, wait, there are Muggleborns; what's the chance any of them has ever had a relative in Muggle banking, finance, or economics?" "Oh, Roger Bacon was a wizard? I had better learn me some Latin so I can find out what the history of magic/science interaction has been."
Don't forget, his Occlumency teacher would mention after every session that he wished he would be allowed to remember the arbitrage trick.
Eliezer has talked about how one of his main reasons for writing the story as a work of fanfiction is that it gets the audience to accept a world that is massively exploitable by the main characters, which they would have thought was a case of the author making things too easy on them if the author had actually created it. Eliezer wrote a story set in the world of Harry Potter because Rowling didn't think very hard about the implications of her worldbuilding and created a massively exploitable setting.
I don't think "didn't think very hard" get's to the point. She simply wanted to paint a strange world and didn't care.
In some cases, she cared later, and had to work her way around what she'd done.
EDIT: The main example below is WRONG, but you can read on anyway if you want to know what I thought and why I thought it.
A simple but revealing example: If you just read Philosopher's Stone, there is no indication that the Wizarding world is meant to be secret. When Petunia recalls the arrival of Lily's letter, there is no sign that anybody is surprised. The Evans parents are proud, and Petunia is disgusted, but they all think that they know what it means to be a Witch; they have opinions about it, not disbelief. The Dursleys do try to tell Harry that there is no such thing, but they know that they're in denial, and even Dudley isn't sceptical, just horrified (like his mother before him).
It all fits in perfectly well with the style of Philosopher's Stone as a silly wish-fulfilling romp. The sequels are progressively more serious, and Rowling realized right away that it's much easier to build a coherent Wizarding world if it's secret. So she established the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy early on in Chamber of Secrets, dealing with the Weasleys' flying car.
Other things that Rowling didn't know in Philosopher's Stone: Harry's cloak is special, Ron's rat is special, Azkaban exists.
While the Statute of Secrecy was not mentioned explicitly in book 1, it was mentioned many times that the wizarding world is a secret. Just to name two instances:
(Families of muggleborn witches and wizards will learn about the wizarding world, of course; but other muggles won’t.)
With the rat, it’s less obvious: I would even argue that the relatively frequent mention of Ron’s rat in book 1 is weak evidence for it not being a normal rat. Plus, there’s a scene during the train ride to Hogwarts, where the rat is smashed into a window pane violently: Would a normal rat survive this without any apparent damage? Possible, but rather unlikely, so that’s additional evidence for the rat being somehow magical. (Wizards being more resistant to force than muggles is mentioned several times in the same book, as is the existence of animagi.)
Regarding Azkaban: No mention in book 1, yes, but it is mentioned in book 2, before it started to play a major role in book 3.
Regarding the last point (the cloak being special): Well, it belonged to Harry’s father but he gave it to Dumbledore for savekeeping. That alone is evidence that this is not just a normal cloak with a simple charm on it, which you could just buy again, if you lose it. Ron even says that such an invisibility cloak is extremely rare and valuable.
Smashing a creature against a wall at a specific speed is dependent on the square/cube law, since the kinetic energy is proportional to the creature's mass, but that kinetic energy is being spread out over a proportionately greater cross-sectional area than a larger creature. That's why a cat can survive a fall from pretty much any height.
Thanks for keeping me honest, but I don't have the book available to me now either. If you can quote from a different language edition (especially German), that would help.
Without the book to review, what I relied on in my comment[^1] was this: When I first read it, I came away with the impression that there was no secret. I remember reading about Petunia's letter and concluding that the Evanses knew all about Witches and Wizards. (The differing reactions to them are like the attitudes towards Mutants in Marvel comics.)
[^1]: That, and checking the Wikia for first mentions.
Perhaps, primed by this, I missed later references to secrecy. (But that doesn't help with any comments by McGonagall in the prologue.) I do remember being disappointed (but understanding) with the secrecy in book 2.
Yes, certainly. In fact, I always thought that Hagrid's trip to Azkaban in book 2 was set up so that we'd know what the title of book 3 meant. (I knew that title before I read book 2.)
Here's the passage from chapter 1:
My rough, not-a-native-German-speaker translation:
I take from that that McGonagall doesn't expect the Muggles to know what it means that there are suddenly a bunch of owls everywhere, but that wizards everywhere nevertheless have a duty to make sure that Muggles don't see those sorts of things.
Thanks! (The translation is fine, btw.)
A few lines later, McGonagall states it even more explicitly:
(rough back-translation):
Here’s the quote from chapter 5, too:
rough back-translation:
Thanks again, that is all very clear, in either language. I have edited my wrong comment.
I've always wondered about that. You're in the middle of a deadly war, and consider yourself to be in such danger that you use a rare and powerful charm to make your house not exist for the uninitiated. Why do you give away an invisibility cloak, normal or unique, and why do you give it to someone who explicitly states "I do not need a cloak to become invisible"?
Which is also consistent with "Harry expects it to work and the teacher doesn't know much about finance".