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Xachariah comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Eliezer, in an edit, just reminded me that Tom Riddle is 65 years old. And from there I got to looking that other ages. Dumbledore is 110. Bahry One-Hand and Mad Eye Moody are each at least ~120. From chapter 39, I got the impression that 150 years old is uncomfortably old (maybe 90 in muggle years) and 200 is unthinkably old (110+ for muggles). So now I'm confused again.
Where are all the old people? What would family trees look like if people really lived to be 120+ regularly? If you're a child you've got two parents, and 4 grandparents, but what about the 8 great grandparents...and the 16 great^2 grandparents...32 great^3 grandparents...64 great^4 grandparents... 128 great^5 grandparents...256 ...512 etc? Plus, imagine the number of children each couple would have if people jumped from 40 fertile years to 80. I could buy that with older ages, people would wait longer to have kids (In canon they mention that it was slightly unusual for people to be having children at 20 years old). That would explain why there aren't 7-10 generations of family at the reunions, but on the other hand, I wouldn't expect Wizards to be big fans of birth control or abortion. Plus, that doesn't explain where all the grandparents are.
So many things don't match up. In retrospect, it seems odd for Lucius Malfoy to be alone in front of the Wizengamot when he ought to have four grandparents roughly Dumbledore's age and two parents at around Voldemort's age (though canonically his father dies of an old age disease prior to 1996...what?). That hearing doesn't seem like the kind of event his family would skip out on. The bureaucracy and government structures don't make sense either. When I first read the story, I thought the Ministry and other power structures were dominated by old fogies, but now I realize that they're damn near children! Plus, education for 7 years makes no sense if you expect to live another hundred; muggles spend 1/5-1/6th of their life in education, but wizards only 1/15th. And heck, how does Harry go to his muggle relatives when he ought to have dozens of still surviving wizard relatives up higher in the family tree?
I suppose the real answers to these questions is that JK Rowling didn't think through the societal implications of living 150+ years old and HPMoR adopted it rather than having to overhaul the entire canon. But that's not quite a satisfying answer. So, can anyone think of any thoughts or theories on how the magical world looks the way it does with regard to age? I'd rather save my suspension of disbelief for birds of fire and talking hats, not have to spend it on census statistics.
In recent history they've had two devastating wars. Plotting and infighting seems perpetual. Most adults spend a reasonable amount of their time using dangerous magic (there was some mention of wizard specific diseases like 'dragon pox' in canon). And everyone in the world can kill you instantly with their wand. So even if their notional life expectancy is high the number of dangers that reduce the population is enormous.
Actually given how easy deadly curses are I'm surprised there are any wizards left... Possibly explains why age correlates with magical power/skill.
Probably for the same reason the existence of guns hasn't resulted in human extinction.
On the other hand, I don't carry a gun on my keychain, but a wizard's wand is used to do everything from insta-death to turning on and off the lights in a room.
In canon, not only is casting the killing curse extremely illegal, it's probably beyond the abilities of most wizards anyway. It's said to take powerful magic, and most adult wizards aside from professors and aurors are implied to be inept at even the basics of defensive magic.
I thought it added verisimilitude to the setting, that rather than being on a level far above teenage students after decades of honing their skills, most witches and wizards are fairly incompetent and don't remember most of what they were made to learn in school, much like how most of our population can't win Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader
This, at least, does not confuse me. It's not like this is a historical constant, for most of human history most people have spent less.
Anyway, it's implied that vocational training exists after one is finished with one's mandatory education.
Are you assuming vaguely medieval tech = Catholic = opposed to birth control and abortion?
The Catholic Church didn't declare that all abortion was murder until the Renaissance, and I don't think there's any reason to think that wizards are generally Catholics. ETA Nor is there any reason to think that Catholics are reliably obedient to Popes.
The simplest explanation might be that wizards (like Tolkien's elves, but less so) just aren't very fertile.
Church of England, surely.
As an American I can tell you confidently that the wizards and witches of magical Britain have one quality above all others: they are British.
This would explain why religion never comes up in canon.
It does, a little bit. I think there's one church service, seen from the outside, and some important grave -- Harry's parents? -- has a quotation from the New Testament on it. ("The last enemy to be defeated is death", which of course plenty of not-at-all-religious people would have much sympathy with.) But yes, religion in the UK tends to be rather less conspicuous than in the US.
Why not?
There are only thirty hours in a day and every child means greater demands on your time. It's not like they can hire muggles to raise their kids, like affluent muggle families might hire less-affluent folk to look after theirs. And we don't hear about anyone being raised by house elves.
Why wouldn't they want sex without conception?
Particularly since there's almost certainly an easy spell for that.
Which seems to be unknown to 7th year students of Hogwarts.
Sigh. Magical education is seriously lacking.
Or maybe they simply wanted a child? That can happen at that age, even if it's not all that common in our societies.
True. It's not like having a child at that age will prevent them from going to college or have any particularly negative effects in the HPMORverse.
Edit: I accidentally a word there. Edit 2: And then I the put word in the wrong place.
Yes, but you generally don't do the deed somewhere you can get caught if you're actually a serious couple of that sort.
Wanting a child does not necessitate responsibility.
Or you cast the spell after doing the deed, and that one time they were too busy fleeing/claiming this wasn't what it looked like/getting castigated/getting dressed.
...just how many pregnancies has McGonagall caused, anyway?
Perhaps it still has a drawback.
This being a Potterverse it wouldn't be something straightforward like the way a condom insulates against body heat or decreases sensation. It'd be that the semen is magically transported into a nearby container. If you don't have a proper container prepared it ends up somewhere inconvenient like someone's pocket, or outer ear, or mouth. Or that both parties must spend a moment beforehand concentrating on a blue sphere, or the smell of vomit, or the sound of breaking celery. Or maybe it just makes a lady's feet numb.
So some people in some situations skip the contraceptive because they aren't prepared or don't want to deal with the complication.
More likely, parents got offended by the thought of that spell getting taught officially, and the (edit)Davises just missed out on the unofficial version?
Have we heard of magical Britain being remarkably prudish in either MOR or canon?
"Remarkably", no. But at a school where kids as young as 11 go, it'll perhaps seem incongruous. And again, we have an example of a couple kids still in highschool conceiving a kid somewhere they got caught at it - if birth control was both easy and well-taught then that's unlikely to have happened.
I had sex ed at that age. I think it was a remarkably unproductive use of time for most of the people in there. But there was a least one girl who was pregnant the next year, so it's possible that it prevented further pregnancy.
Sex education does not prevent all pregnancy any more than driver's education prevents all accidents. Kids both fuck and fuck up.
(Davises.)
Edited.
Which is much less of an issue if your own parents and grandparents (and maybe even another generation) are around to dote on your children.
Except they'd also be around to dote on your nieces and nephews (who are also their grandchildren) and the children of your first cousins (since those children would be their great-grandchildren just as much as your own children would be). In fact, because they're subject to multipliers as they go further up the family tree, they have even less time for each child.
This does not make any stronger argument against desiring sex without conception, not does it weaken my "only thirty hours in a day" argument for sex without conception.
1) The war 2) Some wizards are more equal than others.
1a) Also that other war before that one
3) Dumbledore uses his Time Tuner all the time. If he received it in his teens there could be almost twenty five extra years on that airframe.
Nitpick:
Why would you think that would happen? Women already regularly outlive their fertile periods in real life. Unless you're also proposing some magical mechanism of fertility increase (and if so, why?), you wouldn't expect fertile periods to increase.
Of course, wizards would have longer fertile periods, but you still bump into the hard limit of how many children witches are willing and able to have.
Maybe he is thinking of fertility the way a gamer thinks of health.
Wizards are just healthier. There isn't a solid, hard science fiction explanation for why they heal faster and shrug off harder hits. They just do.
Likewise no attention needs to be paid to the nature of the end of fertility or the resources that run out or the way the odds of viable offspring and safe childbirth start ramping down around in the mid to late twenties in normal females. They just don't in a witch's life.
Could be, although there is still menopause, which is more what I was thinking about... That seems less attached to a general concept of "health" to me for some reason.
Unlike in Dresdenverse where I just finished reading Butters giving an analysis (when he should have been working out how to escape from zombies!)
That scene is exactly what I was thinking of.
Might be a Baby Boom effect, combined with high death rates from the wars. Basically, WWII still has visible effects.
I think it's easy to forget that world events that might have had lasting visible effects in present day might have much bigger lasting effects in a world of extended lifespans and older parenting that is also taking place twenty one years ago.
So I guess what I'm saying is I agree?
Considering how poor the Weasleys are, most wizards might well use birth control and abortion. Both seem like they should be magically feasible, and wizards might actually know whether fetuses are conscious.
The Weasleys do seem to be more cosmetically poor than anything else. I mean, we're told they're poor, and that they wear shabby clothing and have hand-me-down wands, but they own a big house and land and broomsticks and a car(!) and everyone of age in the family is gainfully employed, often in reasonably respectable and lucrative jobs. Makes you wonder where the money's going.
I'm not sure, but it could be that while they're hardly desperate, they can't quite run with people who are upper middle class or better. They're getting by, but they don't have much to spare.
Speaking as the middle of 5 kids - having a bunch of kids close to the same age like that can get expensive, and Molly didn't work.
For most of the series, they have several school-age children, and many of the employed ones are at least somewhat estranged from the parents. It's not hard to believe that they could be fairly shabby.
Beyond what has already been said by other posters, they take vacations all the time. I get that it was probably a narrative technique, to get them out of the way and either keep Ron around or move him away, but it was unbelievably frustrating that they would choose to all go out and have fun before getting Ron a wand that was actually attuned to him, considering how central to their lives wands are.
I'm probably biased both in my love of (the idea of) magic and in my enjoyment in being a homebody, though I'm not sure what that might be called at the moment.
(nods) And the Fetusmouths were driven into isolated seclusion in the early 1200s due to ethical concerns, and also they were really annoying at baby showers.
And thus did the nine Ancient and Most Noble Houses of Britain become eight.
Fetusmouth sounds to me remarkably like a synonym for "babyeater".
I think I’ve actually seen something on the lines of “interesting potions for girls if you know what I mean”—but though I don’t remember if in canon or MoR.
Yeah, but even with birth control our families are bigger than that. Perhaps it's just Voldemortality?
Well, the Weasleys have a somewhat larger family, despite participating in the war, and they’re somewhat low-status among the magic users. It might be a semi-unconscious cultural thing. Most Slytherins concentrate on building status, or on grooming a heir worthy of it if they have status (and have little love to split), the Ravenclaws are busy reading books, Griffindors are busy heroing like Dumbledore, and Hufflepufs have to pick up all the slack.
But yeah, war is probably the main reason, the older parts of family trees have more branches. (Well, out-of-universe it’s probably just how writing works: you initially concentrate on a few characters, and they have to be diverse so you make them from different backgrounds and families, so you have mostly only-children, but later you need to build up the relationships so you get more complex family trees in the past.)
Kids really aren't that expensive in the grand scheme of things, as long as you don't spoil them too badly. If my great-grandparents could afford to raise a family of 13 during the Depression, then I think any random wizard could afford to have more than a couple.
I'd always assumed canon Dumbledore had limited access to the Philosopher's Stone.
Isn't it stated in Book 1 that both he and Flamel were using the elixir?
No, Flamel and his wife were mentioned as the users of the elixir.
As with others, I don't see why they'd oppose birth control. I'd assume magic allowed very good, easy, birth control. After all, Arthur Weasley is known for two things: big family, and tendency to use Muggle techology rather than the superior magic alternative. I'm assuming serious condom malfunction.
Why do you find repeated condom malfunction more plausible than wanting a big family?
Alternately, they just wanted a girl and kept trying until they got one.
Because it's the only large family mentioned and the only family that relies on Muggle technology over superior magic (e.g. stitches).
Wasn't deadly serious: I don't know if it's mentioned directly, but it can't be a mistake that it's a family of six boys, then a girl, and then no further children. I've seen that pattern before.
Oddly, that implies that (some) wizards can't/won't sex-select their kids.
Well … Arthur's the one who's fond of Muggle technology. Molly didn't really approve of the flying car in the second book and she definitely didn't approve of the stitches, so it's rather unlikely that she'd approve of some Muggle invention made from rubber which Arthur suggests for contraception.
True, that. I refer you to my 'not deadly serious' point. It's not that it stands up to scrutiny so much as it's a neat parallel
Minor note- condoms date as a technology from the 1600s. The wizarding world has taken many muggle technologies from well after that (such as door knobs). Wizards would likely have had time to not only make and adopt reliable condoms but use magic to improve them.
You don't think the stitches were Arthur's idea, do you? Cause they weren't.
The book says him and the healer agree on them: not sure if he came up with the idea but they got his support.
Interesting, the next generation got a more rational form: Fred+George's lockpicking is a great idea, not just for underage magic reasons but because you suspect wizards would cast complex locking charms on things to protect from Aloharama but not actually make the lock itself very secure from a mundane angle. Which has parallels to the sadly rare RPGs that allow you to get round complicated locks that frustrate you rogue by smashing the chest to pieces with a two-handed hammer.