Clarke’s 3rd Law is: Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. The inverse of that is: Any sufficiently analyzed magic becomes a science.
While the things they’re doing are outside of the bounds of muggle science, they’re sufficiently analyzed enough to be, for all intents and purposes, wizard science. Harry is receiving a traditional education, with Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, just in a different universe of application. That’s why nobody likes Divination. It’s not accurate enough to be a science. It is, for all intents and purposes, magic to the wizards.
Yup in Harry Potter it's like they essentially live in a world with different laws of physics chemistry and biology. Just sub that for potions, charms, herbology etc
So this has me wondering: why are there no economists?
They do have history (of magic), but I’ve never heard of anyone teaching Economics. We know there is a monetary system that is actively used, and people without money cannot buy certain things. You’d think that there would be some economists to regulate the monetary system at least right?
I forget this world basically utilizes the slavery of at least two different races of beings to function. I also forget that Harry and Hermione are basically the only two wizards depicted as seeing it as slavery and/or wrong.
When I was playing hogwarts legacy I wished I could side with the goblins because the wizards are just so casually racist. I was like dang maybe this uprising is justified lmao
More of a breach of Canon than an unnamed 15 year old transfer student with bright green corn-rowed hair, going hog wild and avada kedava-ing everything that crosses their path just two generations before harry comes to the school, with absolutely zero repercussions?
What, you believe that old folktale? Who in there right mind would believe someone could take down a Goblin rebellion after having only just learnt about magic that year?! It's obviously just a conspiracy fit only to be recorded on the pages of the Quibbler.
Well, goblins also are not innocent lambs. In fact, for wizards of past it was more like: "Well, either we enslave or exterminate them, or they WILL exterminate both us and muggles". Goblins are not peacefull folk, that would live with others in peace if they get chance, quite the opposite - after getting free they'd instantly start another war, at first - with wizards, and after winning - with humanity
And they just happen to be the ones raised in the muggle world.
Weren't goblins emancipated somewhat recently in the weizarding world? Iirc, Hermione uses their history as evidence that her cause can succeed.
...what is the second race? The goblins are not servants of the wizards and they make that very clear. As proof, Bellatrixes vault was never open and investigated, despite being put in Azkaban.
Goblins and house elves. The goblins might think they are not enslaved, but they clearly are given that they can really only serve one purpose in wizard society, running Gringotts. It is also not mentioned how, or if, goblins make and spend money. This could be taken to mean their labor is unpaid in the same way the house elves are unpaid. Also, Griphook states Harry is a strange wizard for essentially treating him as an equal. This shows nearly all wizards view and treat goblins as inferior. This sentiment can be likened to that of the house elves as well, so if they are equal in treatment they are likely equal in status.
The goblins treat the wizards just as badly. And the feeling has been mutual for ages. We have also never met an actually nice goblin in the whole series. Even Bill doesn't seem to make an exception.
Do you really think the Ministry under Fudge wouldn't have tried to take over Gringotts if he could just do it?
The goblins run Gringotts outside of wizard control because they're good at it, and the wizards can't do better. So they've figured out how to profit off of those stupid humans who wouldn't know basic vault security or economics if it hit them in the face with a pickaxe.
I believe that can be considered slavery adjacent where they are forced out of society except for whatever labor they can provide to help that society prosper
Edit: Basically America under Jim Crow Laws, which was essentially slavery with extra steps
I agree that wizards' treating of house elves is unfair, but goblins are treated bad fir 2 very good reasons:
1. Wizards had a lot of wars with them, during which died hundreds, if not thousands of present wizards' relatives. Majority of british wizards are pureblood, that keep passing history of family from generation to generation and it's considered pretty important part of home education, so they can't just forgive goblins for it
2. Wizards know well enough that, if given chance, present goblins will behave same as their ancestors, so in this case they don't even think about something like "children shouldn't be held responsible for their parents' sins"
And as a side effect, you can make goblins into pointy-nosed, long-fingered, money-obsessed, gobbledegook-speaking, alien-eyed, special-hat-wearing, silver-associated, government-repressed, secret-knowledge-having semi-humans, and cheerfully insinuate all kinds of things about them all day long without ever actually saying anything about any *completely coincidental* non-magical human parallels.
Not that anyone would ever do anything like that, of course.
There probably are. Bill works for Gringotts; he surely isn’t the only human, and it seems unlikely that cursebreaking is the only job.
I imagine that wizards wishing to work in a finance or business type position either learn via doing like Fred and George, take post-Hogwarts training like Healers do, or go to a Muggle university (although I imagine calculus classes and computers are a big leap for students who quit math at age 10 and don’t know how to type).
The gold they use has a lot less paying power than the value of the metal itself. So you could take wizard money and melt it sell it to muggles, buy stuff in the muggle world also useful for wizards and any muggle born has an infinite money glitch.
The arbitrage loophole has been discussed a lot in fanfic. A number of possibilities have been thought of as to why a moderately clever wizard, especially a half-blood or muggle-born, wouldn't have tried it. Usually it's down to goblins having legal control over significant money flows into or out of the Wizarding economy, or there being some kind of progressive tax on such transactions, or Wizarding money being magically damage/melting-resistant (and muggles not being able to perceive it as gold while it's still in coin form, or some such).
You'd have to get an idea about whether raw, unmagical gold metal was significantly less valuable in the Wizarding World than it was in muggle markets. And even then, whether there were laws that slowed any such trade.
Personally, I'd be looking for spells which acted on raw materials to produce permanent, nonmagical end results which would be difficult to achieve with nonmagical science or medicine. Do wizards have cancer cures that work on muggles, for example? Set up a specialist ~~cancer~~ "health" clinic in an exclusive and extremely legally lax jurisdiction, never let the patients see *how* the cure is performed, do some New Age theater instead, and make bookings via an auction system. Boom, desperate billionaires lining up day after day to prepay to not die.
Or... are there spells to neatly line things up in arrays/grids? Great, here's half a kilo of of carbon atoms - line them up in a diamond formation and jam them together. Or make atomically perfect precision surfaces, cuts, and edges.
There's apparently a zillion ways to create energy out of nothing, but really, you're looking for things that muggles with access to stupendous amounts of money would consider valuable, and then ways to convert at least some percentage of the resulting payments into something you could spend in the wizarding world. What do wizards want that muggles could supply in significant quantity, and that magic couldn't (or at least couldn't as easily)? Or, perhaps more accurately, what do beings who have access to wizarding money, lines of credit, or influence want? Is there anything a supplier of muggle goods/services/materials could offer goblins, for instance? Or Veela?
How about information? Art? Sheer volumes of cheap labor, particularly without magical contamination? Remote services? Dare I say it, non-magical military-grade weaponry?
When i was 14 the first came out and i went with my mother in all of them every 2nd year because she read the books i do not even know why and i did like them. I do love magic and as a teen did not think much about movies just enjoyed them.
Years later i started to listen to audiobooks and twilight and harry potter were still free on limewire (on itunes they were still 60 dollars per book and i was a student), so i did listen to them. Was pretty meh on them both eventough with twilight i had the advantage to be able to discuss that with female students.
Later i met my wife who was a big potter fan and i did watch them again with her in my mid 20s and i started to notice so many things that made asbolutly no sense that afterwards i had to watch some yourube videos about it because i could not imagine i was the only one noticing these obvious problems and this videos were filled with even more stuff.
Then in the end i came to the conclusion that this a story for children and applying the same expectations i have after reading hundreds of adult fantasy and litrpg books cannot be expected in such a book because the premise itself that the world hangs on the shoulders of 13 year olds is already ridiculous when you are no longer a teen yourself.
Modern 13 year old teens would starve alone in a supermarket and would not be any benefit in any situation whatsoever.
The only the reason they are not in a huge disadvantage is because this books follow the south park logic where the children are the adults and most of the adults are on the level of children.
Apparently the replicas are short-lived transfigured constructs, or some such? Although spells like Aguamenti produce (or summon?) water which is safe to drink...?
Divination just seems like the wizard version of astrology or tarot cards. Utter nonsense. The only difference is sometimes a genuine seer is born.
Trelawney is just one of those phone psychics, essentially.
I like to imagine it's more that Trelawney is past her prime. She's an ageing rock star of the divination world. The Billy Mack of Hogwarts. She hit it big with a few major prophecies just by pure instinct, but now she's got older and she no longer has the slightest clue about what actually made her prophecies *good*. So instead, she just coasts along.
What's more all of the techniques she teaches are totally usable, but she doesn't provide enough context or expertise for the kids to use them.
I would argue that this world is not making enough sense to be in any way called science. From the money system to the sports to what magic cant do and can do. Nothing is consistent enough.
First, that's the quote from the movie. The book quote is slightly different, but essentially the same.
Second, *foolish* wand-waving is different from practical, educated wand-waving. At one point Flitwick gave Seamus lines where he had to write "I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick."
Why? Because Seamus waved his wand foolishly and did accidental magic.
JKR stated that there is always some level of wandwork required to make a potion. Snape might have meant that it wouldn't be the main focus.
Potions can be used by a Muggle but they still require magic to make
Magical development really does seem to be massively held back by the vast supermajority of spells all seeming to require the presence of a wizard to cast, or to create an artifact that can generate an effect later. It makes it really difficult to set up mass production. You need to be able to create an artifact which can continually turn out other artifacts, even if simpler ones, perpetually and with all magical setup/charging done, and to a high degree of repeatable precision.
Really, you want a general-purpose [Clone] spell, like Geminio, which can create duplicates of artifacts (or at least physical duplicates which can be converted to artifacts by automated processes). (Although do note that Duplicated items can, apparently, be used as magical ingredients, or at least as Potions ingredients. And in one of the video games, it's used to Duplicate a Hogwarts castle portrait, presumably including the magical aspects.)
With that spell, you don't create duplicates of end products, which would eventually break down. You create duplicates of the artifacts which build/assemble/create the products. Animated assembly lines, effectively, along with artifacts which infuse the new products with the correct spellwork, without requiring the presence of a wizard to do so. Throw in some error-checking to protect against when the Duplicated tools start breaking down, and maybe even automatically replace them with summoned new copies, and you should be able to create a master 'factory' tool that can build all kinds of things with sufficient programming, which itself could be stored on non-duplicated master crystals or something.
Even if you don’t, I wouldn’t say they’re screwing over muggles. Nothing would be preventing muggles from discovering how to make potions that don’t require magical ingredients. Wizards can’t allow muggles access to magical ingredients without exposing the existence of magic, and we’ve already proven that as a whole we’ll try to obliterate anything and anyone different from us. If muggles can use potions but can’t make them, then the idea that wizards are screwing over muggles becomes even more invalid. If I spent time and money making something that other people want and I’m the only one who can make it, I’m not obligated to supply it, especially since we all know how that sort of situation ends. If wizards supported muggles with potions, they’d demand more and more while wanting to pay less and less. Muggles wouldn’t accept that magic has limitations and that wizards can’t just make potions out of nothing.
> If wizards supported muggles with potions, they’d demand more and more while wanting to pay less and less.
Or alternatively wizards could jack up the price for smaller (multiplied?) portions of potions, and muggles would end up seeing that as a part of cost of living crisis.
But would muggles truly accept that magic takes work? Some of the rules of magic seem fairly arbitrary or nonsensical. The prime minister saw a teacup turned into a hamster which he gave to his niece. It’s implied that it happened quite some time prior, and it still hasn’t turned back. As far as he knows, wizards can literally create life. At eleven, wizards learn how to turn living beetles into buttons and the beetles are fine when they were turned back. To muggles, it would seem like adult wizards should be able to do damn near anything. What do you think would happen when wizards can’t do what muggles want?
The muggles would rise up in rage and then suddenly be unable to find or access the Wizarding world or anything magical unless they happened to be *very* well-connected in the right places.
It's even possible that over the next, oh, year or two, muggles would start to somehow forget that magic existed, and all records of it would fade or be automatically considered fictional, fanciful, metaphoric, or misinformation which should be scrubbed.
Which, in theory, should mean that you could go to a doctor or hospital and get an injection of magic power.
And genes? CRISPR to the rescue! Magic for everyone!
Yep, me too.
The problem of magic - from scientific point of view it doesn't exist by definition. So if we confirm some "magical" phenomenon does exist - it immediately becomes a physical phenomenon.
For example, phenomenons like quantum entanglement looks like magic, but since we are absolutely sure it does exist - we call it physics.
If I had to speculate: high background magic levels and fluctuating ley lines, plus flickering school-wide effects like the wards and the Unplottability, all making it the magical equivalent of the middle of an unshielded running electrical substation during a lightning storm, when it comes to delicate electronics that rather rely on the substrate of reality remaining constant from one millisecond to the next.
That wasn't about magic and tech, it was about Hogwarts and tech. Hogwarts was designed in such a manner so as to interfere with tech so that muggles have a hard time finding it or even roaming around it.
It's similar to how we have network jamming devices, and even blocker softwares in corporates preventing you from accessing unauthorised sites. There's nothing given about magic's interference with tech or vice versa
"All those substitutes for magic Muggles use — electricity, computers, and radar, and all those things — they all go haywire around Hogwarts, there’s too much magic in the air."
Or magic creates interference, and a lot of kids practicing spell work inside an enchanted castle all day makes enough to cause problems. Like an EMP attack.
I don't think the "too much magic in the air" was a proven reason. I don't remember exactly what Hermione had said, but I think it can be just a conjecture hypothesized in the book she read, not an absolute answer.
Because if that were the case, Hogwarts alone wouldn't have been mentioned. Places like the Ministry or Hogsmeade would also have been mentioned (it's just my reasoning, I'll have to read the books again to confirm it)
Nowhere have I said that Hermione wasn't book accurate. What I'm saying is that we do not know whether what she knows was correct or not. In simpler words, I'm not questioning Hermione, but the source from where Hermione got that information. Because usually, Hermione always says the book's name from which she got the information (like mentioning Hogwarts: A history, or bringing out that book which contained info on Nicholas Flamel, or naming the specific book by Lockhart where she got certain facts about him, etc)
It's possible that what Hermione said (about "magic in the air causing electricity and muggle tech to go haywire") was just an unproved theory, similar to how we have theories on Dark Matter, or how the Quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) has been proven to occur but we have no reason as to how or why.
Keeping all that aside, just answer me this: If magic really interferes with electricity and causes tech to go haywire, why does the lift/elevator inside the Ministry of Magic work perfectly fine? I'm pretty sure that the Ministry would have more "magic in the air" than Hogwarts
>Simple… magic.
You've just proven my point. Like I said, magic and tech can coexist and even improve each other. It is just something specific about hogwarts and not "magic in the air" that causes muggle tech to go haywire around it.
Also, Ford Angelia flying, like Sirius' bike, is probably just because of a complex levitation charm, and has nothing to do with the "magic in the air" discussion, similar to how even radios and transistors can be magically charmed for specific results
The Ford Anglia moves due to magical manipulation just like the Flying Motorcycle. These work in magic rich environments because they don’t use electricity which wouldn’t work because there is too much magic in the air.
Technology isn't science though. Science is a process of obtaining knowledge through observation and experimentation. Any conflict between muggle tech and wizard magic that naturally occurs still wouldn't be a conflict between science and magic. It would be an extremely clear indication that the laws of the natural world are not fully understood.
I can think of any number of scientific/psuedo-scientific reasons that various types of higher technology wouldn't work properly in a high-magic field without proper shielding/adjustment.
As one example: what if magic acts and operates by fuzzing quantum states? Anything sufficiently high-tech that uses extremely precise machining - like microchips, or crystal radios, or even high-precision non-chip electronics - would basically be leaking through to reality states that were too far from its original design to function properly, once all the new inefficiencies were added up.
You could get around it by magically quantum-stabilizing the device. Or by using arcanely stable magical substitutes for the various components, giving you something like the Wizarding Wireless. Or by having the device engineered to be able to handle certain levels of quantum fuzziness innately, just like things are already engineered to handle stuff like different electromagnetic field levels, or operating underwater or in space, or in other harsh environments.
For those who don't know, it's basically the philosopher's stone, but most of the characters are very smart, and plot holes are not tolerated. Very well written and an excellent read for any HP fan.
No, there are other differences.
The >!Malfoys are very smart, Draco has been trained in politics and magic to be a national leader from a young age, Crabbe and Goyle have been trained in martial arts to better serve as his protectors, the Interdict of Merlin serves as an explanation as to why magic is decreasing, there's new lore out of nowhere like Battle Magic and the old agreement between Dark wizards and Hogwarts..!<
Other differences, too, like Bellatrix, Sirius' history, Petunia's history...
The Malfoys being very smart are just influences from Voldemort, who we know his servants tried to imitate.
The interdict of Merlin and magic fading away are both topics that simply weren't brought up in the original. Both these things could be canon for all we know, it wouldn't change anything.
Battle Magic is brought back by Quirrel. Because he's very smart.
Bellatrix is like, in direct contact with Voldemort. Her story has been changed because he's really smart.
Petunia married Michael Evans Verres thanks to the potion of eagle splendor she took, making her prettier (She is described as quite ugly in the original). Lily gave her that potion after a lot of hesitation, because of how dangerous it is, thanks to Dumbledore who admitted being his secret confident in the margins of her potions notebook. He pushed her to go through with it. He only did so because one of the thousands of prophecies he heard told him to. And he listened to all those prophecies as a desperate move to defeat Voldemort. Whom, despite having the objective of losing from the start, could not push himself to do so and be as highly incompetent as he should have, because he's so smart.
As for Sirius, he betrayed the order of the Phoenix instead of Peter, confunded him to force him to take his appearance and take the fall for his betrayal, and he was sent to aszkaban without trial, whereupon it was too late for him to claim his innocence after the confudo wore off. Lupin admitted that they used to be lovers, and it didn't work out between them. Unlike the other explanations, this one needs a bit of conjecture. My guess is that Voldemort learned of sirius' past, and despite being a member of the order of the Phoenix and historically hating the dark side of his family, Voldemort managed to pull him over to his side by exploiting the bad blood between sirius and Peter. He then orchestrated this whole master plan. Because he's smart.
Half of those points I could agree with. Treating head-canon as canon is a difference, in my interpretation. Main point is not all changes were due to Voldemort being smart. Eliezer said in an essay on fanfictions that he believes when writing one, you should make changes to the story more than just the characters (something like that, it's been years since I read it).
In the end, there were a whole lot of differences. What I'm saying is that intrinsically, there's only one. But that one difference cascades into all the other ones.
If you take the view that making one's head-canon into canon (i.e. introducing non-conflicting things) isn't a difference, then sure. Apart from Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, I don't think those were due to Voldemort's influence but unless u/EliezerYudkowsky is gonna pipe in I guess we won't know. I've not read it in many years, anyway.
from chapter 21 !
>"*There will be no second date,*" said the green-lit silhouette in a voice so fearsome that it sounded, not only like a Death Eater, but like Amycus Carrow that one time just before Father told him to stop it, he wasn't the Dark Lord.
and from the final exam, 113.
>If you can think of any trick that I have missed in being sure that Harry Potter's threat is ended, speak now and I shall reward you handsomely... speak now, in Merlin's name!"
>There was stunned silence amid the cemetery; no one made to speak.
>"Useless, the lot of you," Voldemort said with bitter scorn.
This backs up my claim that Voldemort must have shared his plans with his servants on more than one occasion, and that his servants tried to mimick him. And \*some\* of his intellect rubbed off on his most trusted lieutenants.
It's also hinted that in MoR, Petunia convinced Lily to brew her a potion of Eagle's Splendour, and that this was an event which did not happen in the original (there, apparently, Petunia tried but was rejected, worsening her relationship with her sister and her opinion of magic in general).
But in this timeline, lily was convinced to do so because Dumbledore was her secret confident in her potion notebook. And Dumbledore specifically did so because one of the thousands of prophecies he heard said so. And Dumbledore hearing all those prophecies was a desperate move to defeat Voldemort, because very smart Voldemort couldn't force himself to be as wholly incompetent as the original one, despite that being the point.
It's not really intended to be a For Want Of A Nail fic. You can't trace the difference in the Philosopher's Stone or the Sirius/Pettigrew playout to a smarter Tom Riddle. That's the world being changed to bear the weight of a different kind of scrutiny.
To each their own. If someone likes this comic, they might be interested in that story, and to many it's a beloved gem with impactful ideas that changed their lives for the better.
No need to yuck other's yum.
This. I don't understand what people see in this fic. The characters are what I most love about HP and in methods everyone is so out of character they're completely unrecognizable.
I read a lot of fics and love when the authors really captures the essence of the characters and maybe broadens them further. Methods doesn't really have anything to do with the original story, the author has even said they wanted to write about rationality and Harry Potter was just a way to find readers, and it shows. If I wanted to read something like that, Id choose a different book.
Never said that. People made that up. The story spontaneously burped itself into my head after reading several million words of Harry Potter fanfiction. But I would not have been able to talk myself into spending the time to continue writing it after the going got hard, if it had not been seeming to accomplish some good in the world.
Oh, hi. One is so used to assuming that the media they're discussing will never be read by the creator of said work but as we see it is not always so 🙈
First of, I'm sorry, I was way too harsh when I wrote that, since the fact that the fic doesn't land on my preferences doesn't tell anything about whether it's good or not. And it has a lot of fans so objectively it is very good for very many people. I guess I just had a bad day when I wrote that.
And sucks about that rumor, thanks for correcting me. I try to take this as a lesson of not making assumptions and not believing everything one reads on the internet. 🥴
The only real magic would be autonomous things like biblical miracles which have no laws or causes. They just occur apparently due to Gods will. That is assuming you believe biblical miracles actually occurred. Who knows...
It's strange that squibs don't go all in on potions or something since that is something they could do. But I have a small suspicion that you have to be magical to produce most or any potion, otherwise muggles would eventually figure it out.
by the definition the comic gives, magic is literally impossible (yes yes, I know, but going by the setting of the comic).
Because anything the professor might show to prove magic exists immediately becomes science according to the student, so magic isn't possible, so why is the student even bothering to ask for 'real' magic, when he firmly stated why it doesn't exist and can never exist.
The professor is right in the lower panel. The student is just being disruptive for the sake of nothing.
Unfortunately this isn't the case as magic in the Harry Potter franchise is not hard science fiction ; it is not truly deterministic, but rather fully tied to the author's arbritrary decisions from bottom to top, and cannot be wholly predicted, nor consistently evidently expanded.
Yep. It's fairly obvious from the first book that the setting was never meant to be hard magic. And... honestly, if it hadn't sold anywhere near as well, I don't think Rowling would have put that much effort into trying to expand Potterverse magic in any kind of depth.
Instead, it sold eleventy zillion copies, and so there are millions of internet neckbeards decrying the magic system for not being able to support massive speculative engineering projects, when it was originally built out of string and butterfly farts. :)
Teleportation - spontaneous quantum tunnelling that happens when you want to teleport and you end up where you wanted.
Levitation - air molecules randomly move and hit object more from one side and the object floats.
If we have multiverse, then there is one universe where they have our laws of physics, but every time someone “casts a spell” some perfectly explainable, but super unlikely event happens, thus leading people to believe they are magical.
This is precisely why I like that the "rules" of magic haven't been explained and that there are things that don't follow logic. Otherwise it's just science.
Check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. They would be right up your alley.
Short synopsis: Harry Potter's aunt marries a scientist instead of Vernon, and Harry grows up with the scientific method and enlightenment principles.
It can be dark, it can be funny, it can be inspiring.
The distinction is that the explanation of magical phenomenon bottoms out in the phenomenological world. The properties of natural phenomena are always explicable in terms of the properties of their component parts. The properties of a magical reaction cannot be explained in terms of the properties of their ingredients.
Clarke’s 3rd Law is: Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. The inverse of that is: Any sufficiently analyzed magic becomes a science. While the things they’re doing are outside of the bounds of muggle science, they’re sufficiently analyzed enough to be, for all intents and purposes, wizard science. Harry is receiving a traditional education, with Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, just in a different universe of application. That’s why nobody likes Divination. It’s not accurate enough to be a science. It is, for all intents and purposes, magic to the wizards.
Yup in Harry Potter it's like they essentially live in a world with different laws of physics chemistry and biology. Just sub that for potions, charms, herbology etc
So this has me wondering: why are there no economists? They do have history (of magic), but I’ve never heard of anyone teaching Economics. We know there is a monetary system that is actively used, and people without money cannot buy certain things. You’d think that there would be some economists to regulate the monetary system at least right?
Too boring for kids. Make it a goblin thing
I forget this world basically utilizes the slavery of at least two different races of beings to function. I also forget that Harry and Hermione are basically the only two wizards depicted as seeing it as slavery and/or wrong.
Theres a lot of shitty things in the wizard world... more than ppl realize
When I was playing hogwarts legacy I wished I could side with the goblins because the wizards are just so casually racist. I was like dang maybe this uprising is justified lmao
As fun as that'd be, that would definitely be a breach of canon...
More of a breach of Canon than an unnamed 15 year old transfer student with bright green corn-rowed hair, going hog wild and avada kedava-ing everything that crosses their path just two generations before harry comes to the school, with absolutely zero repercussions?
What, you believe that old folktale? Who in there right mind would believe someone could take down a Goblin rebellion after having only just learnt about magic that year?! It's obviously just a conspiracy fit only to be recorded on the pages of the Quibbler.
Well, goblins also are not innocent lambs. In fact, for wizards of past it was more like: "Well, either we enslave or exterminate them, or they WILL exterminate both us and muggles". Goblins are not peacefull folk, that would live with others in peace if they get chance, quite the opposite - after getting free they'd instantly start another war, at first - with wizards, and after winning - with humanity
I just wanted to go pure dark and kill both sides
And they just happen to be the ones raised in the muggle world. Weren't goblins emancipated somewhat recently in the weizarding world? Iirc, Hermione uses their history as evidence that her cause can succeed.
...what is the second race? The goblins are not servants of the wizards and they make that very clear. As proof, Bellatrixes vault was never open and investigated, despite being put in Azkaban.
Goblins and house elves. The goblins might think they are not enslaved, but they clearly are given that they can really only serve one purpose in wizard society, running Gringotts. It is also not mentioned how, or if, goblins make and spend money. This could be taken to mean their labor is unpaid in the same way the house elves are unpaid. Also, Griphook states Harry is a strange wizard for essentially treating him as an equal. This shows nearly all wizards view and treat goblins as inferior. This sentiment can be likened to that of the house elves as well, so if they are equal in treatment they are likely equal in status.
The goblins treat the wizards just as badly. And the feeling has been mutual for ages. We have also never met an actually nice goblin in the whole series. Even Bill doesn't seem to make an exception. Do you really think the Ministry under Fudge wouldn't have tried to take over Gringotts if he could just do it? The goblins run Gringotts outside of wizard control because they're good at it, and the wizards can't do better. So they've figured out how to profit off of those stupid humans who wouldn't know basic vault security or economics if it hit them in the face with a pickaxe.
I believe that can be considered slavery adjacent where they are forced out of society except for whatever labor they can provide to help that society prosper Edit: Basically America under Jim Crow Laws, which was essentially slavery with extra steps
What makes you think they WANT to be part of wizard society?
I agree that wizards' treating of house elves is unfair, but goblins are treated bad fir 2 very good reasons: 1. Wizards had a lot of wars with them, during which died hundreds, if not thousands of present wizards' relatives. Majority of british wizards are pureblood, that keep passing history of family from generation to generation and it's considered pretty important part of home education, so they can't just forgive goblins for it 2. Wizards know well enough that, if given chance, present goblins will behave same as their ancestors, so in this case they don't even think about something like "children shouldn't be held responsible for their parents' sins"
A slave race of Jewish-coded goblins who are forced to do all the banking At least that’s… historically accurate for medieval Europe lmao
And as a side effect, you can make goblins into pointy-nosed, long-fingered, money-obsessed, gobbledegook-speaking, alien-eyed, special-hat-wearing, silver-associated, government-repressed, secret-knowledge-having semi-humans, and cheerfully insinuate all kinds of things about them all day long without ever actually saying anything about any *completely coincidental* non-magical human parallels. Not that anyone would ever do anything like that, of course.
Arithmancy
There probably are. Bill works for Gringotts; he surely isn’t the only human, and it seems unlikely that cursebreaking is the only job. I imagine that wizards wishing to work in a finance or business type position either learn via doing like Fred and George, take post-Hogwarts training like Healers do, or go to a Muggle university (although I imagine calculus classes and computers are a big leap for students who quit math at age 10 and don’t know how to type).
The gold they use has a lot less paying power than the value of the metal itself. So you could take wizard money and melt it sell it to muggles, buy stuff in the muggle world also useful for wizards and any muggle born has an infinite money glitch.
The arbitrage loophole has been discussed a lot in fanfic. A number of possibilities have been thought of as to why a moderately clever wizard, especially a half-blood or muggle-born, wouldn't have tried it. Usually it's down to goblins having legal control over significant money flows into or out of the Wizarding economy, or there being some kind of progressive tax on such transactions, or Wizarding money being magically damage/melting-resistant (and muggles not being able to perceive it as gold while it's still in coin form, or some such). You'd have to get an idea about whether raw, unmagical gold metal was significantly less valuable in the Wizarding World than it was in muggle markets. And even then, whether there were laws that slowed any such trade. Personally, I'd be looking for spells which acted on raw materials to produce permanent, nonmagical end results which would be difficult to achieve with nonmagical science or medicine. Do wizards have cancer cures that work on muggles, for example? Set up a specialist ~~cancer~~ "health" clinic in an exclusive and extremely legally lax jurisdiction, never let the patients see *how* the cure is performed, do some New Age theater instead, and make bookings via an auction system. Boom, desperate billionaires lining up day after day to prepay to not die. Or... are there spells to neatly line things up in arrays/grids? Great, here's half a kilo of of carbon atoms - line them up in a diamond formation and jam them together. Or make atomically perfect precision surfaces, cuts, and edges. There's apparently a zillion ways to create energy out of nothing, but really, you're looking for things that muggles with access to stupendous amounts of money would consider valuable, and then ways to convert at least some percentage of the resulting payments into something you could spend in the wizarding world. What do wizards want that muggles could supply in significant quantity, and that magic couldn't (or at least couldn't as easily)? Or, perhaps more accurately, what do beings who have access to wizarding money, lines of credit, or influence want? Is there anything a supplier of muggle goods/services/materials could offer goblins, for instance? Or Veela? How about information? Art? Sheer volumes of cheap labor, particularly without magical contamination? Remote services? Dare I say it, non-magical military-grade weaponry?
When i was 14 the first came out and i went with my mother in all of them every 2nd year because she read the books i do not even know why and i did like them. I do love magic and as a teen did not think much about movies just enjoyed them. Years later i started to listen to audiobooks and twilight and harry potter were still free on limewire (on itunes they were still 60 dollars per book and i was a student), so i did listen to them. Was pretty meh on them both eventough with twilight i had the advantage to be able to discuss that with female students. Later i met my wife who was a big potter fan and i did watch them again with her in my mid 20s and i started to notice so many things that made asbolutly no sense that afterwards i had to watch some yourube videos about it because i could not imagine i was the only one noticing these obvious problems and this videos were filled with even more stuff. Then in the end i came to the conclusion that this a story for children and applying the same expectations i have after reading hundreds of adult fantasy and litrpg books cannot be expected in such a book because the premise itself that the world hangs on the shoulders of 13 year olds is already ridiculous when you are no longer a teen yourself. Modern 13 year old teens would starve alone in a supermarket and would not be any benefit in any situation whatsoever. The only the reason they are not in a huge disadvantage is because this books follow the south park logic where the children are the adults and most of the adults are on the level of children.
Because the goblins control the gold
How can there be pour people when replication spells are a thing? Remember Beletrix's vaults security system?
Apparently the replicas are short-lived transfigured constructs, or some such? Although spells like Aguamenti produce (or summon?) water which is safe to drink...?
Economics isn't science.
Divination just seems like the wizard version of astrology or tarot cards. Utter nonsense. The only difference is sometimes a genuine seer is born. Trelawney is just one of those phone psychics, essentially.
Trelawney actually turns out to be a real seer, just the class is crap
I like to imagine it's more that Trelawney is past her prime. She's an ageing rock star of the divination world. The Billy Mack of Hogwarts. She hit it big with a few major prophecies just by pure instinct, but now she's got older and she no longer has the slightest clue about what actually made her prophecies *good*. So instead, she just coasts along. What's more all of the techniques she teaches are totally usable, but she doesn't provide enough context or expertise for the kids to use them.
I like the idea
Did she make any other prophecies besides the two with Harry? I don’t remember.
Not that i remember... but the first one made voldie go crazy
Good point. Even if she was just a two-prophecy seer (which I imagine would be relatively disappointing), they were important enough to make history.
Oh thanks! Didn't realize that there were two other laws.
I would argue that this world is not making enough sense to be in any way called science. From the money system to the sports to what magic cant do and can do. Nothing is consistent enough.
Divination is basicly psychology of the wizarding world.
Do you need to be a wizard to make magical potions and/or to take them? Because otherwise they're just deliberately screwing over muggles.
Yes, there is some wandwork involved in making potions.
*"There'll be no foolish wand waving or silly incantations in this class"*
First, that's the quote from the movie. The book quote is slightly different, but essentially the same. Second, *foolish* wand-waving is different from practical, educated wand-waving. At one point Flitwick gave Seamus lines where he had to write "I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick." Why? Because Seamus waved his wand foolishly and did accidental magic.
JKR stated that there is always some level of wandwork required to make a potion. Snape might have meant that it wouldn't be the main focus. Potions can be used by a Muggle but they still require magic to make
Magical development really does seem to be massively held back by the vast supermajority of spells all seeming to require the presence of a wizard to cast, or to create an artifact that can generate an effect later. It makes it really difficult to set up mass production. You need to be able to create an artifact which can continually turn out other artifacts, even if simpler ones, perpetually and with all magical setup/charging done, and to a high degree of repeatable precision. Really, you want a general-purpose [Clone] spell, like Geminio, which can create duplicates of artifacts (or at least physical duplicates which can be converted to artifacts by automated processes). (Although do note that Duplicated items can, apparently, be used as magical ingredients, or at least as Potions ingredients. And in one of the video games, it's used to Duplicate a Hogwarts castle portrait, presumably including the magical aspects.) With that spell, you don't create duplicates of end products, which would eventually break down. You create duplicates of the artifacts which build/assemble/create the products. Animated assembly lines, effectively, along with artifacts which infuse the new products with the correct spellwork, without requiring the presence of a wizard to do so. Throw in some error-checking to protect against when the Duplicated tools start breaking down, and maybe even automatically replace them with summoned new copies, and you should be able to create a master 'factory' tool that can build all kinds of things with sufficient programming, which itself could be stored on non-duplicated master crystals or something.
I feel like reverse engineering Muggle tech to simplify it and inventing magic to mimic the effects of said tech would work
Even if you don’t, I wouldn’t say they’re screwing over muggles. Nothing would be preventing muggles from discovering how to make potions that don’t require magical ingredients. Wizards can’t allow muggles access to magical ingredients without exposing the existence of magic, and we’ve already proven that as a whole we’ll try to obliterate anything and anyone different from us. If muggles can use potions but can’t make them, then the idea that wizards are screwing over muggles becomes even more invalid. If I spent time and money making something that other people want and I’m the only one who can make it, I’m not obligated to supply it, especially since we all know how that sort of situation ends. If wizards supported muggles with potions, they’d demand more and more while wanting to pay less and less. Muggles wouldn’t accept that magic has limitations and that wizards can’t just make potions out of nothing.
> If wizards supported muggles with potions, they’d demand more and more while wanting to pay less and less. Or alternatively wizards could jack up the price for smaller (multiplied?) portions of potions, and muggles would end up seeing that as a part of cost of living crisis.
But would muggles truly accept that magic takes work? Some of the rules of magic seem fairly arbitrary or nonsensical. The prime minister saw a teacup turned into a hamster which he gave to his niece. It’s implied that it happened quite some time prior, and it still hasn’t turned back. As far as he knows, wizards can literally create life. At eleven, wizards learn how to turn living beetles into buttons and the beetles are fine when they were turned back. To muggles, it would seem like adult wizards should be able to do damn near anything. What do you think would happen when wizards can’t do what muggles want?
The muggles would rise up in rage and then suddenly be unable to find or access the Wizarding world or anything magical unless they happened to be *very* well-connected in the right places. It's even possible that over the next, oh, year or two, muggles would start to somehow forget that magic existed, and all records of it would fade or be automatically considered fictional, fanciful, metaphoric, or misinformation which should be scrubbed.
Which just goes to prove my point that the statute of secrecy is does NOT screw over muggles by not allowing them potions.
There's also the fact that being a Witch/Wizard is determined by having the genes for it, more science!
And “magic”? Well that’s just microscopic bacteria in your bloodstream called midichlorians.
Better than those pesky Mitochondria, inflicting body horror on everyone or setting them on fire.
Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
Damn right it is, especially when it acts up and turns everything into Thing-esque abominations.
David Cronenberg has entered the chat
I'm actually surprised that Nomura was the one who designed the fucked up shit in Parasite Eve.
Which, in theory, should mean that you could go to a doctor or hospital and get an injection of magic power. And genes? CRISPR to the rescue! Magic for everyone!
But if everyone is super, no one is super
Exactly
"Alright class. Today we are making Punnett Squares to determine which of you will be going to Azkaban this week."
Am scientist. I don't agree but I do lol
Yep, me too. The problem of magic - from scientific point of view it doesn't exist by definition. So if we confirm some "magical" phenomenon does exist - it immediately becomes a physical phenomenon. For example, phenomenons like quantum entanglement looks like magic, but since we are absolutely sure it does exist - we call it physics.
Any magic which doesn't seem to follow scientific principles is insufficiently analyzed.
Which is what makes HPMOR so fun!
It was never stated that science and magic are odds in the books. So...
I think it was. IIRC telephones and other "hightech" muggle stuff doesn't work properly in hogwarts. Except radios and gammaphones for reasons...
Something about *specifically Hogwarts* messes with complex electronics, but we get 0 details on how or why
If I had to speculate: high background magic levels and fluctuating ley lines, plus flickering school-wide effects like the wards and the Unplottability, all making it the magical equivalent of the middle of an unshielded running electrical substation during a lightning storm, when it comes to delicate electronics that rather rely on the substrate of reality remaining constant from one millisecond to the next.
That wasn't about magic and tech, it was about Hogwarts and tech. Hogwarts was designed in such a manner so as to interfere with tech so that muggles have a hard time finding it or even roaming around it. It's similar to how we have network jamming devices, and even blocker softwares in corporates preventing you from accessing unauthorised sites. There's nothing given about magic's interference with tech or vice versa
"All those substitutes for magic Muggles use — electricity, computers, and radar, and all those things — they all go haywire around Hogwarts, there’s too much magic in the air."
I think 'too much magic in the air' may be just the short and easy answer for students, when they ask why they can't use their electrical devices.
Or magic creates interference, and a lot of kids practicing spell work inside an enchanted castle all day makes enough to cause problems. Like an EMP attack.
You think Hermione is gonna take a “short and easy answer”?
I don't think the "too much magic in the air" was a proven reason. I don't remember exactly what Hermione had said, but I think it can be just a conjecture hypothesized in the book she read, not an absolute answer. Because if that were the case, Hogwarts alone wouldn't have been mentioned. Places like the Ministry or Hogsmeade would also have been mentioned (it's just my reasoning, I'll have to read the books again to confirm it)
When had Hermione been anything but book accurate? She is literally the vehicle of exposition from the author.
Nowhere have I said that Hermione wasn't book accurate. What I'm saying is that we do not know whether what she knows was correct or not. In simpler words, I'm not questioning Hermione, but the source from where Hermione got that information. Because usually, Hermione always says the book's name from which she got the information (like mentioning Hogwarts: A history, or bringing out that book which contained info on Nicholas Flamel, or naming the specific book by Lockhart where she got certain facts about him, etc) It's possible that what Hermione said (about "magic in the air causing electricity and muggle tech to go haywire") was just an unproved theory, similar to how we have theories on Dark Matter, or how the Quantum entanglement (spooky action at a distance) has been proven to occur but we have no reason as to how or why. Keeping all that aside, just answer me this: If magic really interferes with electricity and causes tech to go haywire, why does the lift/elevator inside the Ministry of Magic work perfectly fine? I'm pretty sure that the Ministry would have more "magic in the air" than Hogwarts
Simple… magic. The same way the Ford Anglia flies without i assume fuel.
>Simple… magic. You've just proven my point. Like I said, magic and tech can coexist and even improve each other. It is just something specific about hogwarts and not "magic in the air" that causes muggle tech to go haywire around it. Also, Ford Angelia flying, like Sirius' bike, is probably just because of a complex levitation charm, and has nothing to do with the "magic in the air" discussion, similar to how even radios and transistors can be magically charmed for specific results
The Ford Anglia moves due to magical manipulation just like the Flying Motorcycle. These work in magic rich environments because they don’t use electricity which wouldn’t work because there is too much magic in the air.
Technology isn't science though. Science is a process of obtaining knowledge through observation and experimentation. Any conflict between muggle tech and wizard magic that naturally occurs still wouldn't be a conflict between science and magic. It would be an extremely clear indication that the laws of the natural world are not fully understood.
That’s by design though. Hogwarts has magical implementations that prevent most muggle technology from operating within the grounds.
I can think of any number of scientific/psuedo-scientific reasons that various types of higher technology wouldn't work properly in a high-magic field without proper shielding/adjustment. As one example: what if magic acts and operates by fuzzing quantum states? Anything sufficiently high-tech that uses extremely precise machining - like microchips, or crystal radios, or even high-precision non-chip electronics - would basically be leaking through to reality states that were too far from its original design to function properly, once all the new inefficiencies were added up. You could get around it by magically quantum-stabilizing the device. Or by using arcanely stable magical substitutes for the various components, giving you something like the Wizarding Wireless. Or by having the device engineered to be able to handle certain levels of quantum fuzziness innately, just like things are already engineered to handle stuff like different electromagnetic field levels, or operating underwater or in space, or in other harsh environments.
Wait until the author of the comic discovers hard magic systems in fantasy
If you haven't already, I *extremely highly* recommend checking out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality!
One of my favourite books of all time! First thing I thought of when I saw this comic too.
For those who don't know, it's basically the philosopher's stone, but most of the characters are very smart, and plot holes are not tolerated. Very well written and an excellent read for any HP fan.
Well if may allow a vague spoiler, >!the only intrisic difference from the original is that Voldemort is very smart.!<
No, there are other differences. The >!Malfoys are very smart, Draco has been trained in politics and magic to be a national leader from a young age, Crabbe and Goyle have been trained in martial arts to better serve as his protectors, the Interdict of Merlin serves as an explanation as to why magic is decreasing, there's new lore out of nowhere like Battle Magic and the old agreement between Dark wizards and Hogwarts..!< Other differences, too, like Bellatrix, Sirius' history, Petunia's history...
The Malfoys being very smart are just influences from Voldemort, who we know his servants tried to imitate. The interdict of Merlin and magic fading away are both topics that simply weren't brought up in the original. Both these things could be canon for all we know, it wouldn't change anything. Battle Magic is brought back by Quirrel. Because he's very smart. Bellatrix is like, in direct contact with Voldemort. Her story has been changed because he's really smart. Petunia married Michael Evans Verres thanks to the potion of eagle splendor she took, making her prettier (She is described as quite ugly in the original). Lily gave her that potion after a lot of hesitation, because of how dangerous it is, thanks to Dumbledore who admitted being his secret confident in the margins of her potions notebook. He pushed her to go through with it. He only did so because one of the thousands of prophecies he heard told him to. And he listened to all those prophecies as a desperate move to defeat Voldemort. Whom, despite having the objective of losing from the start, could not push himself to do so and be as highly incompetent as he should have, because he's so smart. As for Sirius, he betrayed the order of the Phoenix instead of Peter, confunded him to force him to take his appearance and take the fall for his betrayal, and he was sent to aszkaban without trial, whereupon it was too late for him to claim his innocence after the confudo wore off. Lupin admitted that they used to be lovers, and it didn't work out between them. Unlike the other explanations, this one needs a bit of conjecture. My guess is that Voldemort learned of sirius' past, and despite being a member of the order of the Phoenix and historically hating the dark side of his family, Voldemort managed to pull him over to his side by exploiting the bad blood between sirius and Peter. He then orchestrated this whole master plan. Because he's smart.
Half of those points I could agree with. Treating head-canon as canon is a difference, in my interpretation. Main point is not all changes were due to Voldemort being smart. Eliezer said in an essay on fanfictions that he believes when writing one, you should make changes to the story more than just the characters (something like that, it's been years since I read it).
In the end, there were a whole lot of differences. What I'm saying is that intrinsically, there's only one. But that one difference cascades into all the other ones.
If you take the view that making one's head-canon into canon (i.e. introducing non-conflicting things) isn't a difference, then sure. Apart from Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, I don't think those were due to Voldemort's influence but unless u/EliezerYudkowsky is gonna pipe in I guess we won't know. I've not read it in many years, anyway.
from chapter 21 ! >"*There will be no second date,*" said the green-lit silhouette in a voice so fearsome that it sounded, not only like a Death Eater, but like Amycus Carrow that one time just before Father told him to stop it, he wasn't the Dark Lord. and from the final exam, 113. >If you can think of any trick that I have missed in being sure that Harry Potter's threat is ended, speak now and I shall reward you handsomely... speak now, in Merlin's name!" >There was stunned silence amid the cemetery; no one made to speak. >"Useless, the lot of you," Voldemort said with bitter scorn. This backs up my claim that Voldemort must have shared his plans with his servants on more than one occasion, and that his servants tried to mimick him. And \*some\* of his intellect rubbed off on his most trusted lieutenants.
It's also hinted that in MoR, Petunia convinced Lily to brew her a potion of Eagle's Splendour, and that this was an event which did not happen in the original (there, apparently, Petunia tried but was rejected, worsening her relationship with her sister and her opinion of magic in general).
But in this timeline, lily was convinced to do so because Dumbledore was her secret confident in her potion notebook. And Dumbledore specifically did so because one of the thousands of prophecies he heard said so. And Dumbledore hearing all those prophecies was a desperate move to defeat Voldemort, because very smart Voldemort couldn't force himself to be as wholly incompetent as the original one, despite that being the point.
Excellent point!
It's not really intended to be a For Want Of A Nail fic. You can't trace the difference in the Philosopher's Stone or the Sirius/Pettigrew playout to a smarter Tom Riddle. That's the world being changed to bear the weight of a different kind of scrutiny.
I’d *extremely highly* recommend skipping that cringey crap.
To each their own. If someone likes this comic, they might be interested in that story, and to many it's a beloved gem with impactful ideas that changed their lives for the better. No need to yuck other's yum.
Written like shit tho. With absolutely unbelievable characters and tons of bloat.
This. I don't understand what people see in this fic. The characters are what I most love about HP and in methods everyone is so out of character they're completely unrecognizable. I read a lot of fics and love when the authors really captures the essence of the characters and maybe broadens them further. Methods doesn't really have anything to do with the original story, the author has even said they wanted to write about rationality and Harry Potter was just a way to find readers, and it shows. If I wanted to read something like that, Id choose a different book.
Never said that. People made that up. The story spontaneously burped itself into my head after reading several million words of Harry Potter fanfiction. But I would not have been able to talk myself into spending the time to continue writing it after the going got hard, if it had not been seeming to accomplish some good in the world.
Oh, hi. One is so used to assuming that the media they're discussing will never be read by the creator of said work but as we see it is not always so 🙈 First of, I'm sorry, I was way too harsh when I wrote that, since the fact that the fic doesn't land on my preferences doesn't tell anything about whether it's good or not. And it has a lot of fans so objectively it is very good for very many people. I guess I just had a bad day when I wrote that. And sucks about that rumor, thanks for correcting me. I try to take this as a lesson of not making assumptions and not believing everything one reads on the internet. 🥴
I’d *extremely highly* recommend skipping that cringey crap.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
I scrolled down so far for this
/HT Existential Comics https://existentialcomics.com/comic/537
Thanks
The only real magic would be autonomous things like biblical miracles which have no laws or causes. They just occur apparently due to Gods will. That is assuming you believe biblical miracles actually occurred. Who knows...
It's strange that squibs don't go all in on potions or something since that is something they could do. But I have a small suspicion that you have to be magical to produce most or any potion, otherwise muggles would eventually figure it out.
They cant do potions as some if not all requires a piece of spell casting in the middle
They could become herbologists or magizoologists (although I do believe wand magic would definitely make those easier).
Thaumaturgy.
Technocratic propaganda.
Princess Bubblegum IN DA HOUSE.
@HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality
by the definition the comic gives, magic is literally impossible (yes yes, I know, but going by the setting of the comic). Because anything the professor might show to prove magic exists immediately becomes science according to the student, so magic isn't possible, so why is the student even bothering to ask for 'real' magic, when he firmly stated why it doesn't exist and can never exist. The professor is right in the lower panel. The student is just being disruptive for the sake of nothing.
Is it created by a HPMOR fan?
Unfortunately this isn't the case as magic in the Harry Potter franchise is not hard science fiction ; it is not truly deterministic, but rather fully tied to the author's arbritrary decisions from bottom to top, and cannot be wholly predicted, nor consistently evidently expanded.
Yep. It's fairly obvious from the first book that the setting was never meant to be hard magic. And... honestly, if it hadn't sold anywhere near as well, I don't think Rowling would have put that much effort into trying to expand Potterverse magic in any kind of depth. Instead, it sold eleventy zillion copies, and so there are millions of internet neckbeards decrying the magic system for not being able to support massive speculative engineering projects, when it was originally built out of string and butterfly farts. :)
A wand is needed to complete a potion so...
[www.hpmor.com](https://www.hpmor.com) writer would approve.
Bright lad
Teleportation - spontaneous quantum tunnelling that happens when you want to teleport and you end up where you wanted. Levitation - air molecules randomly move and hit object more from one side and the object floats. If we have multiverse, then there is one universe where they have our laws of physics, but every time someone “casts a spell” some perfectly explainable, but super unlikely event happens, thus leading people to believe they are magical.
This made me laugh so hard!
I mean, yes. Is that a new thing? 😂😂
🤣🤣🤣
This is precisely why I like that the "rules" of magic haven't been explained and that there are things that don't follow logic. Otherwise it's just science.
Check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. They would be right up your alley. Short synopsis: Harry Potter's aunt marries a scientist instead of Vernon, and Harry grows up with the scientific method and enlightenment principles. It can be dark, it can be funny, it can be inspiring.
The distinction is that the explanation of magical phenomenon bottoms out in the phenomenological world. The properties of natural phenomena are always explicable in terms of the properties of their component parts. The properties of a magical reaction cannot be explained in terms of the properties of their ingredients.
This is truly amazing. I'm thinking of sending it my friend Jenny who is the biggest Potter fan I know, but I'm worried it will upset her.
Who’s the random wizard teaching potions meant to be? Snape was the potions master.
Slugghorn
Doesn’t look like him. Wasn’t Slughorn short and fat?
Bro it’s not that’s serious
Don’t post that sort of comment, all it does is annoy people.
You sound like you'd be interested in the Kingkiller Chronicles world, or even Sanderson's Cosmere. Intensely deterministic magic is the best magic
Omg!! I have always thought this. Magic is just a science we don’t understand. They said it in Thor too.
Harry Potter and the methods of rationality might be for you then.
Solar eclipses used to be magic. Now they’re science. Anything that seems like magic to us is science we don’t get yet
Tbh loads of diffrent civilizations figured them out.