[HPforGrownups] Re: Wizarding numbers: 24 000

[Robert Shaw]

No: HPFGUIDX 83557

o_caipora wrote:
> "Robert Shaw"  wrote:
> 
>> If there's an inconsistency present, then I'd like to pin it
>> down and find out just how big it is.
> 
> Due the fertility of Rowling's imagination, for which God bless her,
> there's just too much stuff for a small population. 

So we can conclude that wizarding society has a larger population
base than Hogwarts can account for.

Consistency require that either a considerable number of wizards
aren't Hogwarts educated, or that much of the support work is
done by non-wizards.

> 
>> However we don't know what contribution is made to wizarding
>> society by non-wizards.
> 
> We know that the WW is subject to time and decay. Besides the
> condition of the Black house, secret passages collapse at Hogwarts,
> and the school needs a custodian. All that fancy wizard stuff must be
> not only built, but maintained.
> 
> Let's take just the Hogwarts Express. It uses station and track, and
> has and engine and always just the right amount of cars.
> 
> Perhaps wizards didn't build the platform: engineers since the
> Pyramids have put passages into their drawings that they didn't
> explain to the stoneworkers. The cheapest use of wizard labor would
> have be to use a spell to alter the blueprints, and then enchant the
> entrance once the workers were gone. Even so, Platform 9 3/4 probably
> needs cleaning and repainting not much less than Platform 9 does. And
> all that track! 

Which could be done by muggles. A charm can make the maintenance
workers overlook the platform number and other oddities.

> Maybe most is Muggle track, with the signals charmed
> to keep other trains off when the Express is running. But even that
> implies someone to devise new charms as Muggle systems change,

Maybe, depending on how magic works.
If it responds to intent, the same cloak that makes you invisible
to the human eye will also make you invisible to video cameras,
and no new charms will be needed.

> 
> It's at least a dozen people, assuming they all work several tasks.
> And that's for a train that runs twice a year.

Trick muggles into doing all the manual labour and you're left
with a handful of desk jobs, which might take two people a
week, spread over the year.

The section of track through Hogsmead is slightly more problematic
but, given how little it's used, a single person in Hogsmead can
probably inspect the track every few months, and renew the
various self-maintenance spells.


> Another data point is Mundungis's trade in stolen cauldrons. Is a
> population of 24,000 sufficient so that the makers and buyers of said
> cauldrons don't trip over one another?  Somehow it doesn't seem so.

Is that trade confined to the UK?

> 
> Depending on
> your recipe, several to half-a-dozen kinds of seafood go into
> bouillabaisse, and no amount of analysis will permit a reconstuction
> of what "the Bouillabaisse" looks like swimming in the sea.

But it will let you determine all the creatures from which the soup
was made, which is enough.


Caipora also said
> 
> There are detailed stories of magical worlds. In Randall
> Garret's "Lord Darcy" stories such as "Too Many Magicians" magic
> follows consistent rules. In Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" the
> nature of magic is described, and the central plot device, the
> Warlock's Wheel, can be seen to be "valid" magic under the rules
> given.
> 
> Rowling doesn't have that level of consistency. She throws into the
> cauldron whatever looks tasty.
> 
Which doesn't stop coherent rules from emerging.

Pratchett didn't originally have any street plan in mind for
Ankh-Morpork, he just used names at random, but it proved
possible to construct a street plan which fitted all the references.

It's also possible that Rowling does have a consistent underlying
picture, as part of the background notes she has occasionally
referred to, but that Harry is not the kind of person who would
notice it.

>> Digressions aside, you are seriously underestimating the ability
>> of maths and science to extract data from noise.
> 
> There has to be data there, though. Even a single vertabra must have
> once been part of a creature that swam, crawled, ran, or flew.
> 
> Rowling's wizards, though, are not part of a real world. They are not
> even part of a world invented with great care given to consistency.
> 
Assuming Harry would notice the underlying patterns. He, and hence we
also, could well be missing two-thirds of the picture.

> 
>> Consider a small town, maybe 25,000 people.
>> 
>> A town that size will have a distinct sense of its own identity,
>> even today. Once, before communication got easier, it would
>> have had its own culture, divergent from the national mainstream.
> 
> Supporting three professional sports teams, a newpaper, a railroad,
> three or four transport systems, a large hospital, and several
> hundred government employees? Can you envision that?

You've double counted the railway, which is one of the transport
systems.

I know towns that size with most of those services. Allowing for
the effects of magic, I certainly can envision the town having all
of them.

The quidditch teams might only be the equivalent in skill, and pay,
of some third division straggler, but that's still a lot better than
the average amateur. People would still pay to watch them.

Also, I doubt that all goblins are bankers, and we have no idea
of their total numbers. Their other services could go a long way
to making up for low wizard numbers.

-- 
Robert