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knb comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Sorry, but I'm not a fan of this part - its not like Britain has immigration policies that ban certain races or religions, so I can only assume EY is arguing in favour of totally unrestricted immigration. But the UK has only a certain amount of room, and there are non-xenophobic economic arguments against unrestricted immigration, e.g. putting too much strain on the NHS. But regardless of the arguments for and against, arguing against immigration is not the same as being indifferent to the lives of everyone who lives in a different country.
I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel's statements about horcruxes were initially surprising - if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn't he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?
The most plausible possibility is that he wants Harry's help to get the philosopher's stone, and his initial prohibition is reverse psychology. This does help turn Harry against Dumbledoor, but no more than experimenting with horcruxes. Given this, it seems likely that he needs Harry's invisibility cloak / planning ability / human patronus / possibly partial transfiguration to capture the stone.
Still, Quirrel seems to be leaving this too late. Surely it would have been better to move against the stone very soon after the unicorn incident - by which time, Harry's anti-death ideology was very obvious, and emotionally driving. Moving against the stone when comparitivly healthy must increase the chances of success, and if it all goes wrong Quirrel could still have tried to fight his way out...
Unless Quirrel isn't actually as ill as he looks. He seems to have got a lot worse between May 13th and June 3rd.
Edit: I am not arguing that all immigration is bad and everyone should live in neoreactionary ethno-nationalist states. I'm saying that its possible to want to prevent certain people who e.g. have a record of violent criminal behaviour from immigrating to where you live, while still recognising that these people are still human.
I was surprised by that passage. If anything, it seems magical Britain is more exclusivist. Magical Britain only invited Hermione in because she's a British witch. The 99.9% of people who are born muggle are excluded completely. I also don't get the impression that foreign born wizards/witches are automatically invited to Hogwarts. So they are magic-nationalists as well.
They even forbid beneficial muggle-wizard trade, which probably results in the deaths of millions of muggles.
I found it surprising because magical Britain seems much less utilitarian, in terms of excluding people from their moral concern - being indifferent. That's surely more of the fundamental issue than border control.
Insofar as everyone dies eventually, and thus the purpose of medicine in general may be thought of as life extension rather than death prevention, and magical healing vastly increases wizard lifespans, it may be said that forbidding beneficial muggle-wizard trade results in the deaths of billions of muggles. Every single muggle who dies of old age, magically-treatable illness or non-instantly-fatal injury is a muggle who would have lived significantly longer if not for the ban.
The wizard population is very small compared to the muggle population, and I don't think there's much in the way of reducing the amount of time wizards need to put into healing magic. (Compare this to the efficiencies gained from vaccination and antibiotics.)
The lack of wizard healing makes some difference, but probably more like tens or hundreds of thousands of muggles who don't get healed.
On the other hand, if wizards were public about their abilities, a higher proportion of wizards (even low-powered wizards) in the muggle population would be identified and trained, and there would presumably be knowledge of methods for integrating wizard and muggle medicine. The results still wouldn't be all muggles having access to the best of wizard healing magic.
Don't forget potions. You could easily make use of muggle civilisation's amazing mass production ability by having them automate every step but the ones that need magical power. The magic drain from potion creation is minimal, so one or a few wizards could effortlessly power a production line.
Muggles also happen to be very good at large-scale farming, which could easily be applied to the production of magical ingredients, even rare ones.
Add in wizards' ability to cast permanent enchantments at no cost, and their vast array of utility spells (Vanishing Charms alone would be a godsend for any factory), and you have undreamt-of mass production potential.
Small population sizes aren't an issue when you have two worlds' worth of force multipliers.
There's no such thing as a "low-powered wizard", and all wizards in Britain are automatically detected magically (at birth?)
It is implied that in HPMOR there are - presumably third-world? - countries where they "receive no letters of any kind". So potentially a complete breakdown of the masquerade might allow the least sane Muggle governments to track down and kidnap wizarding children for their own use. (I'm a little confused by this, though, since spontaneous untrained magic should be a serious issue if muggleborns aren't being dealt with.)