“I’d also reiterate what we know about Lucius’ characterization. He has a deluded view of the world (blood-purism), and he reacts to evidence against that view (the experiment performed by Harry and Draco, which Lucius learned about when Draco got veritaserum’d) by shouting lies! -- But maybe our priors are just different, as you said.”
Consider Lucius’s, and Draco’s, priors. Namely, they do not actually have the priors to explain why the result of their experiment means what Harry says it means—not independent of Muggles, anyway, and possibly not independent of Harry. Without replicating all the experiments (or, at least a significant number) on different color peas or whatever, to arrive at a basic understanding of genetics (and an explanation for awkward questions like “why doesn’t skin color or height work that way? who says that, or something else entirely, isn’t a better model for magic?), the simpler explanation (to Lucius—and, honestly, to Draco, divorced of his complex motivations for wanting to stay in the Bayesian Conspiracy) is that Harry examined the data in advance and made up a theory to fit the numbers to what he wanted to convince Draco of.
P.S. Unless Veritaserum in HPMOR works similarly to how truth serum works in (of all things) The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, we can’t conclusively assume that Draco necessarily told Lucius any particular fact. What line of questioning leads to Lucius finding out about the experiment?
“I’d also reiterate what we know about Lucius’ characterization. He has a deluded view of the world (blood-purism), and he reacts to evidence against that view (the experiment performed by Harry and Draco, which Lucius learned about when Draco got veritaserum’d) by shouting lies! -- But maybe our priors are just different, as you said.”
Consider Lucius’s, and Draco’s, priors. Namely, they do not actually have the priors to explain why the result of their experiment means what Harry says it means—not independent of Muggles, anyway, and possibly not independent of Harry. Without replicating all the experiments (or, at least a significant number) on different color peas or whatever, to arrive at a basic understanding of genetics (and an explanation for awkward questions like “why doesn’t skin color or height work that way? who says that, or something else entirely, isn’t a better model for magic?), the simpler explanation (to Lucius—and, honestly, to Draco, divorced of his complex motivations for wanting to stay in the Bayesian Conspiracy) is that Harry examined the data in advance and made up a theory to fit the numbers to what he wanted to convince Draco of.
P.S. Unless Veritaserum in HPMOR works similarly to how truth serum works in (of all things) The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, we can’t conclusively assume that Draco necessarily told Lucius any particular fact. What line of questioning leads to Lucius finding out about the experiment?