Sandbox Discussions

[Marri]

Isn't that box set in the early nineteenth century?

[Kappa]

Also adolescent death rates among wizards might be different from among Muggles. Are there statistics on adolescent wizard death rates?

[Moriwen]

A quick googling isn't giving me great statistics on adolescent deaths in the 1800s (mostly it wants to give me information on under-5 deaths), but what I can find seems to suggest wizards would do a lot better.

Disease (cholera, TB, smallpox) is a major killer, and wizards, in addition to being generally hardier, seem to have really fantastic magic healthcare; even assuming it's proportionately more primitive in the nineteenth century, they can probably still deal with those pretty well. Plus, just having their kids off secluded in a boarding school in the country for a big chunk of the year is going to protect them from the worst of the epidemics. There's some suggestion of wizard-specific diseases (e.g., dragonpox), but in such a small population those are going to have trouble taking any kind of serious hold. Also, sick kids might just get sent home and then not counted as a death at Hogwarts. (Not to mention that a fair number of lives are probably saved just by being spared the medical treatment of the day!)

Another big chunk of deaths is from child labor; this is the Industrial Revolution, lots of adolescents are working in incredibly dangerous factories or mines. Hogwarts may be dangerous compared to a modern private school, but it doesn't look so bad compared to working in a textile factory where you have to remove obstructions from machines while they're still running because you're the one small enough to fit into the gaps.

Plausibly Hogwarts also manages to take a chunk out of suicide rates: not that I'm impressed with the state of their mental health care, but they've got cheering-up potions and charms, which beats the general 1800s mental health treatment by rather a lot. Add in a decent number of involved adults who are likely to notice if a kid starts acting differently (again, not something the average teenager at the time had), plausibly some magic that might catch suicide attempts in time (something in the wards? portraits keeping an eye out?), and some implicit pressure to Wait Till You're At Home So You Don't Ruin the Perfect Record, and it seems like they might be making a sizable dent there.

Wizards have good birth control already, so they also get to save the chunk of older teenage girls who would otherwise have died in pregnancy or childbirth, which is definitely not trivial at the time. Also, that plus the low birth rate means that wizard infants probably get breastfed for longer, resulting in healthier children in general; those health effects could definitely still be significant at Hogwarts-age.

[DanielH]

The only statistic I know of for Hogwarts student death rate (ignoring the outlier that is the second war with Voldemort and ignoring the Triwizard Tournament which I think was already discontinued) is Timothy’s statement. There are also dangers associated with Hogwarts; I would be surprised if Peeves never killed anybody, for example.

The sandbox is set in 1802, and that makes it more impressive. I assume the Muggle death rate in the relevant age range was a lot worse then, after all. Still, a lot of the work leading to Cam not being impressed with the statistic happened between 2004 and 2179, not between 1802 and a daeva-less 2016. I’m actually curious how much of that was because of daeva.

[AndaisQ]

I think if Peeves had actually killed anyone they would try harder to exorcise him. He's an asshole, but he's aware of his boundaries. (Also, I don't know that he was around at that point? I always thought of him as a relatively recent addition to Hogwarts.)

[DanielH]

He was around since the Founders, and in 1876 (which is, admittedly, after this) the then-caretaker tried to trap Peeves using an assortment of weapons as bait. They had to evacuate the castle for a few days until the Headmistress negotiated a peace treaty.

(https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/peeves)

[AndaisQ]

Huh. Guess he cooled down sometime in the 20th.

[jalapeno_dude]

you seem to lack the instinct that sufficiently qualified people just shouldn't have unchecked power, on principle

This is the best summary I've seen so far of where I differ from Bells on political philosophy, and why I'd be uncomfortable living in any of the worlds ruled by them.

(Also, the sequence of posts that I'm talking this quote from is really fantastic. I'm impressed and mindboggled at the amount of work that must have gone into them. Thanks for them, lintamande!)

[Kappa]

Yes they were so good!!!!! Timothy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3

[Unbitwise]

you seem to lack the instinct that sufficiently qualified people just shouldn't have unchecked power, on principle

This is the best summary I've seen so far of where I differ from Bells on political philosophy, and why I'd be uncomfortable living in any of the worlds ruled by them.

It seems to me that there's no fundamental reason against it, but in practice people change — people even fail to honestly predict their own future selves — and can have mental illness, be threatened by others, etc. If you had an Actual Magical Bell who is immortal-in-the-good-way and fears no outside threats, we might see something definitely better than human-nature-as-it-is-seen-today.

My concern about life under a Bell would be that we see them failing to think about the preferences, and plans and practices based on assumptions she is going to break, other people might have about the world they live in. Obvious called-out-in-story example being in Eos-Effulgence she might well have not permitted consensual violence if she hadn't personally met a Joker.

Less obvious example is the recurring problem of Teleportation Into Awkward Situations (which I acknowledge actually occurs for the sake of the story). A fundamental element of how people arrange their lives is the idea that nobody can be in your house (or whatever) without passing through the intervening doors (or windows or walls, which is obviously-irregular). Break that and you break lots of things more subtle than that. Ripper's offense ought to be acknowledged on behalf of everyone and not just a personal quirk. If you have sufficiently targeted teleportation then it is wrong to use it without prior agreement for anything closer than “the outside of the relevant building” or “as close as you could hypothetically get by walking without bypassing any closed doors or receptionists”.