Chapter 25: Couldn’t magical genes evolve if magic (call it matter being susceptible to intent) exists? Vision is a complex thing, but from one angle vision evolves because light exists.
If magic is artificial and magic genes can’t evolve, this implies that all the magical species were invented.
Going purely by canon evidence, disregarding Harry and Draco’s results, I would have inferred that magic was dominant, not recessive.
I assume that the magical population of Britain is much smaller than its nonmagical population, that the vast majority of magical children in Britain attend Hogwarts, and that the vast majority of Hogwarts students are British.
There are roughly a million 11-year-old Muggles in Britain. The number of Muggle-born witches and wizards in any given year at Hogwarts is counted in the dozens, at most. This puts the probability of any given child of nonmagical parents being magical at somewhere around 10^-8, which is plausible for a simple random mutation.
Wizard-born Muggles, on the other hand, are common enough that the word “Squib” was created to describe them. The level of understanding of genetics that Harry displays—the level that Draco could have if he was paying attention, even—is sufficient to realize that the frequency of Wizard-born Muggles falsifies the model they settled on.
What simple model describes both the canon evidence and the MOR!canon evidence (Harry and Draco’s results)? The best I’ve come up with so far is “Eliezer falsified data to suit his preconceptions”, which is distinctly unsatisfying. (This model will be verified if Chapter 23 is edited to make the percentage of Squib-born Wizards 75% rather than 25%, and it will be falsified if Harry and Draco eventually realize that their theory doesn’t work.)
According to Eliezer, the “muggle-born” are in fact the children of people who have one copy of the magical gene (and thus are descendants of Squibs who were cast into muggle society.). That only one in ten thousand people in Britain (who are not wizards themselves) have a copy of the gene for magic is not that improbable.
Does MOR explicitly mention there being wizard-born squibs? Because it seems to me that it’s impossible for there to be muggle/squib-born wizards, there to be wizard-born squibs, and for magic being a single gene trait all at the same time.
That is, unless that gene behaves in a way that ordinary genes do not. For example, there could be a spell which de-magicks gametes—either as a curse, or as an unnoticed side effect. That would explain both the existence of wizard-born squibs and the shrinking population of magic users, without affecting the fraction of squib-born wizards.
I don’t think MOR explicitly mentions wizard-born squibs, but the original HP canon defines “squib” as a nonmagical child of magical parents. The existence of the word implies a certain minimum frequency of the phenomenon. I assume anything true in canon is true in MOR unless explicitly contradicted.
I, too, originally thought that it couldn’t be a single gene trait, for exactly the reason you mention, until I realized just how rare muggle-born wizards were.
Other models have been proposed in the fanfiction.net comment thread. For example, there could be two gene traits, one controlling witch/wizard/squib vs. muggle with muggle dominant, and one controlling squib/muggle vs. witch/wizard with squib/muggle recessive. The parents of Muggle-borns would be carriers of the recessive not-a-muggle gene, and the parents of Squibs would be carriers of the recessive squib gene. (Note, though, that this still doesn’t explain Harry and Draco’s results.)
Because magic can have arbitrary effects, I prefer to assume nonmagical explanations wherever possible. Admitting magic essentially removes the possibility of being surprised by any observations.
Er, I guess that answers the question I actually asked, but I still feel confused about the original situation.
At the time that the modern magical laws were set down about keeping the magical community isolated from the Muggle community, magic more or less as we know it was already in place. Why would the wizards have been sufficiently isolated from Muggles, while magic was still evolving, that not all humans now have magic? And what form of isolation would allow this kind of complex adaptation to evolve while also keeping wizards and Muggles from diverging into distinct species?
I agree with Harry’s conclusions that magic must be controlled by something relatively simple on the genetic level.
Actually, I’m not sure I had a sound argument there—I was looking for something plausible to defend my point of view.
On the other hand, I’m not sure you have a sound argument there, either.
If nothing else, how long does it take for a beneficial mutation to spread? How old is the ability to do magic? We know it was there in the during witch hunts (which had a more complex history than I thought, just like everything else), but that’s probably middle ages. I don’t think we know whether the ability to do magic has been around since the paleolithic.
I don’t believe the canonical relationship between the wizarding world and muggles makes a lot of sense, though it works very well for stories. I believe muggles actually know a fair amount about the existence of wizards, but don’t talk about it for tolerably obvious reasons.
It’s plausible that wizards have less ability to cooperate (much more variation in individual powers, including the power to deceive), but it may simply be that their institutions are less complex because they have a lower population.
Meanwhile, you are talking about a world in which Quidditch is played. Have you contrasted the rules of that game with the descriptions of play? No amount of accepting a world of a the presented magic system would make that work.
I think the standard answer is that modern Quidditch is a vestigial remnant of an older version where the games typically went on so long that scoring system made sense. Do you have a different problem with the game?
I’m rather pleased with myself for figuring out why there’s a Slytherin house—if you were setting up a school, would you have a quarter of it devoted to evil?
As it turns out, Slytherin wasn’t so bad at the founding of the school.
I think the standard answer is that modern Quidditch is a vestigial remnant of an older version where the games typically went on so long that scoring system made sense. Do you have a different problem with the game?
The scoring system is silly but at least would function. My objection is to the practical physics involved in the all the play except that involving the quaffle and the seeker. Well, perhaps the beaters are ok too, suspension of disbelief unrealistic resistance to physical trauma. But the stuff where the chasers somehow steal the ball off each other as though it is a real sport. If she spent 5 minutes thinking about her game she should have been able to do better.
In basketball you have to bounce the ball or be standing still.
In netball you can’t walk at all.
In soccer you cannot touch the ball.
In ruby, etc, you are expected to physically knock the opponent over and even then you don’t expect to actually get the ball off them, that is a special case. An embarrassing mistake on their part!
In AFL you have to bounce the ball regularly while running and not only do the opponents physically tackle you to the ground, if you are tackled you have to get rid of the ball.
In quidditch you get the quaffle and you can fly freely in three dimensions and have to put the ball through an enormous hoop. Oh, and there are THREE of them to aim at. There is no reason to ever pass the ball (at least as described in the books or shown in the films). The only way someone should ever not score a goal is if they are physically knocked off their broom with a bludger or via a full on aerial melee. Both of these cases would quickly result on all tactics converging to a literal “flying V”. It would be the chasers that would be selected for brawn, far more so than the beaters.
quickly result on all tactics converging to a literal “flying V”.
Both the limited number of players, and the fact that the game takes place in 3 dimensions, make it much harder to construct a properly protected “flying V.”
Both the limited number of players, and the fact that the game takes place in 3 dimensions, make it much harder to construct a properly protected “flying V.”
If there was a much higher player limit it may suggest a ‘flying prolate spheroid with the quaffle somewhat closer to the back’ (the latter part depends on relative broom speed. Even then I have a hunch that it will be weighted in optimal defender density somewhat towards the altitude of the quaffle bearer. This is because of the way the ball is held and the fact that the brooms will interfere with steals from below and above.
With the specified limits I suspect I would end up with defaulting to what is approximately a V but with rehearsed tactics for when one guardian must be diverted to run interference on an interceptor or gets taken out of play by good defense. It is the beaters that I would count on to cover the top and bottom, with the bottom one in particular remaining mobile for bludger defense while the top one can use the height (and gravity) advantage to quickly act as a reserve and make brutal targeted headshots.
I’m following the observation of what the player restriction means and using the extreme case to allude to what trends changed restrictions would make. (Actually having no limit would of course make play depend on enlistment and training in ‘within rules’ combat. Which is a kind of amusing thought.)
I’m rather pleased with myself for figuring out why there’s a Slytherin house—if you were setting up a school, would you have a quarter of it devoted to evil?
Even ‘now’ the Slytherins aren’t all evil. It is just that most evil came from Slytherin. I would describe Slytherin as somewhat exaggerated but otherwise realistic. People with that kind of ambitious do tend to congregate together in exclusive groups. In most cases they will not be labeled ‘evil’ by society. They will end up in socially powerful positions within the system. But when you have a situation where a single ‘Voldemort’ (or equivalent muggle) grabs for power the ‘Slytherins’ will quickly form up behind him. It is the sort of opportunity they are built for.
I figured it out at some point fairly early in the series, before the history of Hogwarts had been explained.
The clearest evidence that Slytherin isn’t just about evil is Slughorn. I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about opposition to the Pure Blood movement from the more pragmatic Slytherins. After all, magic will last their time, and why risk making powerful enemies?
The clearest evidence that Slytherin isn’t just about evil is Slughorn.
Even Snape. He’s a Di@#$, not evil. And that seems to apply to many of the Slytherins. Including that principal from the picture.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about opposition to the Pure Blood movement from the more pragmatic Slytherins. After all, magic will last their time, and why risk making powerful enemies?
I would not expect that to happen. Not because that pragmatic drive woudn’t occur to them but because tribal considerations would override it. What I would expect is for the majority of the Slytherins to quickly renounce their former position as soon as the tides of power changed (eg. if Voldemort gets his ass kicked by care-bear powers). In contrast I would expect Gryfindors to be more likely to be naive, to try to fight an already lost battle for an ideal and end up quite miserable or dead. I would expect the Hufflepuffs to be more or less irrelevant and live mediocre lives while the Ravenclaws would be too self absorbed to have all that much practical influence.
That’s a good point about mutation spreading over time. MOR!Harry suggests that the magic gene might have been installed, rather than evolving naturally. In canon, we know that that Circe (presumably no later than c.700 BCE) was a witch, which is still a pretty low lower bound (2700 years) on how long magic has been around.
We also know that Wizarding exists worldwide, and that there are some cultural differences between Wizarding societies around the world. For example, carpets are more popular than brooms in Asia as a means of flying transport; the correlation with Muggle myth and folklore suggests that Magical cultures diverged over a thousand years ago. This makes it unlikely that magic was spread by European explorers; presumably there is an older (Atlantean?) magical diaspora, which may or may not have been part of the original human diaspora.
It still seems surprising that in no society, anywhere in the world, did wizards manage to persuade the Muggles to accept them, perhaps as wise-women and medicine men, and thus become at least more common than an incredibly rare minority. The fear of practicioners of magic is by no means universal to Muggle cultures.
Chapter 25: Couldn’t magical genes evolve if magic (call it matter being susceptible to intent) exists? Vision is a complex thing, but from one angle vision evolves because light exists.
If magic is artificial and magic genes can’t evolve, this implies that all the magical species were invented.
There was some discussion of genetics in the FF.net comments for Chapter 23; I’d like to continue that here.
Going purely by canon evidence, disregarding Harry and Draco’s results, I would have inferred that magic was dominant, not recessive.
I assume that the magical population of Britain is much smaller than its nonmagical population, that the vast majority of magical children in Britain attend Hogwarts, and that the vast majority of Hogwarts students are British.
There are roughly a million 11-year-old Muggles in Britain. The number of Muggle-born witches and wizards in any given year at Hogwarts is counted in the dozens, at most. This puts the probability of any given child of nonmagical parents being magical at somewhere around 10^-8, which is plausible for a simple random mutation.
Wizard-born Muggles, on the other hand, are common enough that the word “Squib” was created to describe them. The level of understanding of genetics that Harry displays—the level that Draco could have if he was paying attention, even—is sufficient to realize that the frequency of Wizard-born Muggles falsifies the model they settled on.
What simple model describes both the canon evidence and the MOR!canon evidence (Harry and Draco’s results)? The best I’ve come up with so far is “Eliezer falsified data to suit his preconceptions”, which is distinctly unsatisfying. (This model will be verified if Chapter 23 is edited to make the percentage of Squib-born Wizards 75% rather than 25%, and it will be falsified if Harry and Draco eventually realize that their theory doesn’t work.)
According to Eliezer, the “muggle-born” are in fact the children of people who have one copy of the magical gene (and thus are descendants of Squibs who were cast into muggle society.). That only one in ten thousand people in Britain (who are not wizards themselves) have a copy of the gene for magic is not that improbable.
Are you sure that’s actually from Eliezer directly? I thought that was just the theory that Eliezer had Harry and Draco settle on.
ETA: Also, it’s more like one in one hundred thousand.
Does MOR explicitly mention there being wizard-born squibs? Because it seems to me that it’s impossible for there to be muggle/squib-born wizards, there to be wizard-born squibs, and for magic being a single gene trait all at the same time.
That is, unless that gene behaves in a way that ordinary genes do not. For example, there could be a spell which de-magicks gametes—either as a curse, or as an unnoticed side effect. That would explain both the existence of wizard-born squibs and the shrinking population of magic users, without affecting the fraction of squib-born wizards.
I don’t think MOR explicitly mentions wizard-born squibs, but the original HP canon defines “squib” as a nonmagical child of magical parents. The existence of the word implies a certain minimum frequency of the phenomenon. I assume anything true in canon is true in MOR unless explicitly contradicted.
I, too, originally thought that it couldn’t be a single gene trait, for exactly the reason you mention, until I realized just how rare muggle-born wizards were.
Other models have been proposed in the fanfiction.net comment thread. For example, there could be two gene traits, one controlling witch/wizard/squib vs. muggle with muggle dominant, and one controlling squib/muggle vs. witch/wizard with squib/muggle recessive. The parents of Muggle-borns would be carriers of the recessive not-a-muggle gene, and the parents of Squibs would be carriers of the recessive squib gene. (Note, though, that this still doesn’t explain Harry and Draco’s results.)
Because magic can have arbitrary effects, I prefer to assume nonmagical explanations wherever possible. Admitting magic essentially removes the possibility of being surprised by any observations.
The question is, how could a complex adaptation have evolved without rising to fixation in the species?
Wizards may be considerably worse at cooperating than muggles.
Er, I guess that answers the question I actually asked, but I still feel confused about the original situation.
At the time that the modern magical laws were set down about keeping the magical community isolated from the Muggle community, magic more or less as we know it was already in place. Why would the wizards have been sufficiently isolated from Muggles, while magic was still evolving, that not all humans now have magic? And what form of isolation would allow this kind of complex adaptation to evolve while also keeping wizards and Muggles from diverging into distinct species?
I agree with Harry’s conclusions that magic must be controlled by something relatively simple on the genetic level.
Actually, I’m not sure I had a sound argument there—I was looking for something plausible to defend my point of view.
On the other hand, I’m not sure you have a sound argument there, either.
If nothing else, how long does it take for a beneficial mutation to spread? How old is the ability to do magic? We know it was there in the during witch hunts (which had a more complex history than I thought, just like everything else), but that’s probably middle ages. I don’t think we know whether the ability to do magic has been around since the paleolithic.
I don’t believe the canonical relationship between the wizarding world and muggles makes a lot of sense, though it works very well for stories. I believe muggles actually know a fair amount about the existence of wizards, but don’t talk about it for tolerably obvious reasons.
It’s plausible that wizards have less ability to cooperate (much more variation in individual powers, including the power to deceive), but it may simply be that their institutions are less complex because they have a lower population.
Meanwhile, you are talking about a world in which Quidditch is played. Have you contrasted the rules of that game with the descriptions of play? No amount of accepting a world of a the presented magic system would make that work.
I think the standard answer is that modern Quidditch is a vestigial remnant of an older version where the games typically went on so long that scoring system made sense. Do you have a different problem with the game?
I’m rather pleased with myself for figuring out why there’s a Slytherin house—if you were setting up a school, would you have a quarter of it devoted to evil?
As it turns out, Slytherin wasn’t so bad at the founding of the school.
The scoring system is silly but at least would function. My objection is to the practical physics involved in the all the play except that involving the quaffle and the seeker. Well, perhaps the beaters are ok too, suspension of disbelief unrealistic resistance to physical trauma. But the stuff where the chasers somehow steal the ball off each other as though it is a real sport. If she spent 5 minutes thinking about her game she should have been able to do better.
In basketball you have to bounce the ball or be standing still.
In netball you can’t walk at all.
In soccer you cannot touch the ball.
In ruby, etc, you are expected to physically knock the opponent over and even then you don’t expect to actually get the ball off them, that is a special case. An embarrassing mistake on their part!
In AFL you have to bounce the ball regularly while running and not only do the opponents physically tackle you to the ground, if you are tackled you have to get rid of the ball.
In quidditch you get the quaffle and you can fly freely in three dimensions and have to put the ball through an enormous hoop. Oh, and there are THREE of them to aim at. There is no reason to ever pass the ball (at least as described in the books or shown in the films). The only way someone should ever not score a goal is if they are physically knocked off their broom with a bludger or via a full on aerial melee. Both of these cases would quickly result on all tactics converging to a literal “flying V”. It would be the chasers that would be selected for brawn, far more so than the beaters.
Both the limited number of players, and the fact that the game takes place in 3 dimensions, make it much harder to construct a properly protected “flying V.”
If there was a much higher player limit it may suggest a ‘flying prolate spheroid with the quaffle somewhat closer to the back’ (the latter part depends on relative broom speed. Even then I have a hunch that it will be weighted in optimal defender density somewhat towards the altitude of the quaffle bearer. This is because of the way the ball is held and the fact that the brooms will interfere with steals from below and above.
With the specified limits I suspect I would end up with defaulting to what is approximately a V but with rehearsed tactics for when one guardian must be diverted to run interference on an interceptor or gets taken out of play by good defense. It is the beaters that I would count on to cover the top and bottom, with the bottom one in particular remaining mobile for bludger defense while the top one can use the height (and gravity) advantage to quickly act as a reserve and make brutal targeted headshots.
If you increased the number of players that much, defense would become trivial, as blocking all the hoops simply with bodies would be easy.
I’m following the observation of what the player restriction means and using the extreme case to allude to what trends changed restrictions would make. (Actually having no limit would of course make play depend on enlistment and training in ‘within rules’ combat. Which is a kind of amusing thought.)
Even ‘now’ the Slytherins aren’t all evil. It is just that most evil came from Slytherin. I would describe Slytherin as somewhat exaggerated but otherwise realistic. People with that kind of ambitious do tend to congregate together in exclusive groups. In most cases they will not be labeled ‘evil’ by society. They will end up in socially powerful positions within the system. But when you have a situation where a single ‘Voldemort’ (or equivalent muggle) grabs for power the ‘Slytherins’ will quickly form up behind him. It is the sort of opportunity they are built for.
I figured it out at some point fairly early in the series, before the history of Hogwarts had been explained.
The clearest evidence that Slytherin isn’t just about evil is Slughorn. I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about opposition to the Pure Blood movement from the more pragmatic Slytherins. After all, magic will last their time, and why risk making powerful enemies?
Even Snape. He’s a Di@#$, not evil. And that seems to apply to many of the Slytherins. Including that principal from the picture.
I would not expect that to happen. Not because that pragmatic drive woudn’t occur to them but because tribal considerations would override it. What I would expect is for the majority of the Slytherins to quickly renounce their former position as soon as the tides of power changed (eg. if Voldemort gets his ass kicked by care-bear powers). In contrast I would expect Gryfindors to be more likely to be naive, to try to fight an already lost battle for an ideal and end up quite miserable or dead. I would expect the Hufflepuffs to be more or less irrelevant and live mediocre lives while the Ravenclaws would be too self absorbed to have all that much practical influence.
That’s a good point about mutation spreading over time. MOR!Harry suggests that the magic gene might have been installed, rather than evolving naturally. In canon, we know that that Circe (presumably no later than c.700 BCE) was a witch, which is still a pretty low lower bound (2700 years) on how long magic has been around.
We also know that Wizarding exists worldwide, and that there are some cultural differences between Wizarding societies around the world. For example, carpets are more popular than brooms in Asia as a means of flying transport; the correlation with Muggle myth and folklore suggests that Magical cultures diverged over a thousand years ago. This makes it unlikely that magic was spread by European explorers; presumably there is an older (Atlantean?) magical diaspora, which may or may not have been part of the original human diaspora.
It still seems surprising that in no society, anywhere in the world, did wizards manage to persuade the Muggles to accept them, perhaps as wise-women and medicine men, and thus become at least more common than an incredibly rare minority. The fear of practicioners of magic is by no means universal to Muggle cultures.