something about a MYFAROGS joke here (via oligopsony)

This is dumb. What I want is a Harry Potter fanfic set in a world where blood purism is correct.

If I understand Jensen correctly, he claims that an isolated example of a high level of some polygenic trait in an individual drawn from a population otherwise low on that trait will regress to the mean in subsequent generations, whereas the same trait as a matter of course in a population high on that trait will not.



For example, suppose that the Dutch are genetically taller than the Pygmies. And suppose that both members of an average Dutch couple are 6′0, and both members of the tallest Pygmy couple in all of history are 6′0. We should expect the Dutch couple’s children to be on average around 6′0; we should expect the Pygmy couple’s children to be on average much shorter (although still taller than the average Pygmy). I think this is because everyone has recessive alleles that aren’t determining their own phenotype but might contribute to the phenotype of their children depending on what their partner brings to the table; regardless of random variation in an individual’s phenotype we should expect those recessive alleles to be on average the average for their population..

If this is true, and if magical ability is a polygenic trait, then we should expect the children of pureblood wizards to have on average the same ability as their parents, and the children of Muggleborns to have on average lower ability. So even if Muggleborns have to qualify at a certain level of magical ability to be allowed into the magical community, their children will have lower heritable magical ability. This means Wizard-Muggle breeding will gradually decrease the magical ability of the wizard race. It’s unclear what percent of wizards are Muggleborn, but the books make it sound pretty substantial. Since every generation new Muggleborns are being added to the gene pool, then assuming random intermarriage and no continued effect from whatever process positively selected magical ability in wizards in the first place, as long as marriage with Muggleborns is allowed wizarding ability should get gradually weaker with every generation.

The dirty secret of the magical community is that there is no such thing as the Interdict of Merlin. It’s a myth created by the liberal media at the Daily Prophet to explain why wizards can no longer live up to the magical deeds of their ancestors, with the reality being that the blood purists are 100% correct and every generation of interbreeding means less and less magical ability and soon it will die out completely.

A good exploration of this topic would treat it as the morally complex issue it is - can we really exclude brilliant wizards like Hermione from the community on purely statistical grounds? Is it possible to believe that Voldemort’s methods were unspeakably evil, but that it would be ethical to pursue the same goals by more “nudge” style methods like incentivizing pureblood wizards to only breed with one another? Is this why the Sorting Hat is under orders to stick so many of them together in Slytherin House?

I wouldn’t expect the Metapedia folks to be able to do this correctly, but that they don’t even try is more evidence that fascists are utterly incompetent at everything.

