scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2y9zdr.md

[Q] [D] What happens if someone goes public about magic to the muggles?

• Author: u/Enveritas *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2y9zdr/q_d_what_happens_if_someone_goes_public_about/

• Score: 14

• Created: 2015-03-07T21:34:54

Post:

Not just in HP, in any of the many fantasy universes that are based around a magical world that is kept a solution secret. I mean, at least some series (like Pact) do a slightly less half-assed attempt at explaining why than others (like Harry Potter).

But in general, it never seems to be seriously considered as an option that someone would manufacture a way to effectively go public. And what would happen then? Let's use HP as the baseline example.... What would the political, scientific, social ramifications be?

Comments:

u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (40 minutes later)

You'd have to figure out how magic actually works in the Harry Potter world, and how their society is structured, neither of which are clear from reading the text. And you'd also have to know how intertwined the magical and muggle worlds are, which isn't clear either - the muggle Prime Minister knows, and family of muggleborn children seem to know, but who else? What are the points of connection?

If the people running the masquerade have been wiping away memories for hundreds of years, and if that doesn't result in a war, then at the very least there needs to be Truth and Reconciliation type of thing. But there are too many variables to know how that would shake out.

More generally, a single motivated individual with strong proof is always going to be a problem for any secret, and having a community of diverse individuals is going to tend to produce people with their own views on things. Unless there's some magic compulsion, really strong magic, or the nature of reality itself, the masquerade doesn't seem like it can last long.

u/Aquareon [+4] (8 hours later)

"More generally, a single motivated individual with strong proof is always going to be a problem for any secret"

Word of advice, never be that guy. Fastest possible way to destroy your own life.

u/Jello_Raptor [+7] The Last Tool User (8 hours later)

Ahem

Never let people find out you're that guy.

It's very hard, but doable if you're careful, smart, and don't keep an open/bidirectional channel.

u/Aquareon [+3] (9 hours later)

If they do find out, prepare to get your shit pushed in so far it comes back out your mouth as food. You will never work again. You will never have another lasting relationship. How do they do this? A good example is what the Church of Scientology does to people who leave it, spreading false rumors about them, putting up flyers in their neighborhood, etc.

Maybe you're 007 and especially good at subterfuge. I'm not. Never had a taste for deceit so I never got good at it. The last ten years of my life have been uninterrupted grinding misery. Two weeks of which I spent homeless, living on a hole covered by a tarp.

Maybe I just suck at it and everyone else is skilled. I don't know that for sure. So my advice is to simply keep your mouth shut and your head down unless you want to be F'ed in the A as hard as possible for the rest of your life. There's a certain sort of naieve person who sees Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and the Wikileaks guy as romantic heroes. That's a mistake imo. You don't want their lives.

u/Jello_Raptor [+6] The Last Tool User (18 hours later)

No you don't, and I'm sorry to hear that happened to you.

Honestly, most of the advice on how to whistle-blow with minimal repercussion has been assembled after Manning and Snowden. For governments in particular we've got a much better idea of their actual capabilities, and other institutions who cause issues for whistle-blowers can be kept in the dark with the same measures.

Cult like organizations are different, because their goals are to keep anyone from leaving. Most of the advice to keep whistle blowing from ruining your life is built around maximizing the number of people who could have done it, and making sure that you never do anything more that could lead to you being found out. (With the implication that you should get out of said organization soon before things have a chance to come to head)

Getting out of an organization that wants to prevent all attrition and uses tactics like slander to do it is difficult but for different reasons. And there's not as much you can do to keep from coming to the attention of retaliatory measures.

u/Enveritas [+4] (10 hours later)

The parallel between a whistle-blower on magic and Edward Snowden esque figures is something I didn't consider, and interesting.

However, the US Government is a public, known institution, with secrets. In the case of magic, it's the existence of the institution itself that's a secret. Even if the leaker gets crucio'd to death, the cat's still out of the bag, isn't it?

u/Stevwen [+10] (21 minutes later)

This theme is expounded on with a lot of thought in the HPMoR spin-off: Following the Phoenix which branches from the main story near Chapter 81. Full "disclosure" doesn't happen until around chapter 99, but I enjoyed this alternate timeline turn of events as much as canon HPMoR.

u/eaglejarl [+6] (10 hours later)

Point of interest: a few weeks ago; I was requested to do a metafic of FtP. That's my next project, which I'll be starting in about an hour.

u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (37 minutes later)

As somebody who's read it, could you tell me what it does well, and also what it doesn't do well?

(No story is perfect, after all)

u/dhighway61 [+5] (an hour later)

It does action and narrative very well, but it is not a rationalist work of fiction.

u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)

Thank you. That helps a lot. >:]

u/sidhe3141 [+5] (4 hours later)

It's certainly possible that Harry Potter and the Natural 20 might explore this at some point.

My own thoughts:

• New social movements would probably blame real, misattributed, or imaginary ills on mages. Existing witch hunts would claim vindication. Depending on the political climate, you might see people trying to lynch mages or outlaw magic.
• Governments would probably try to either recruit or conscript mages; after all, you can't have a "sorcery gap".
• Cults would probably spring up venerating magic users or magic itself. Most would probably be benign.
• Legal systems would eventually be overhauled, both to incorporate magical methods and to add protections against, say, someone being memory-tampered into confessing or someone else compelling juries to acquit. This would be very controversial and probably take a while.
• Various groups, both governmental and private, would start offering rewards for things like Muggle-usable magic items or testable theories of magic.

Edit: Of course, one of the big places to start is to look at why magic is kept secret and work from there. Odds are that someone in either the mage or muggle power structure benefits from it.

u/Izeinwinter [+4] (21 hours later)

This is a very common weak point for modern-setting fantasies - Far to many people just go with "It is a Secret" without covering the two most basic aspects that really do need covering: "Why" and "How".

There really has to be a pretty darn compelling reason for the magic world to be in the shadows. And religiously motivated persecution, while frequently used, really doesn't make much sense if you think about it - Having magic that works means that your religion wins. Anything else makes about as much sense as a world in which religious bigotry persuaded people in general to not use electricity.

I've seen good reasons in fiction for the magic to be secret - "There is only so much of it, and many more magic users would make it nearly-impotent" is very popular, and has a built in reason for everyone on the inside to keep their gob shut.

I've played a bit with a setting in which the standard fate for anyone catching on is to be hit with a banishing spell - Earth is the best place to be a mage because it has all the fun stuff and all of the non-practitioner humans, so it's occupied by the most talented and skilled practitioners -the ones who have centuries of practice and tradition enhancing their ability to use mana very efficiently - and any noob that starts practicing gets spotted due to their colossal drain on the leylines and summarily punted to another planet.

u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (4 hours later)

Several people have addressed Harry Potter, I will attempt to outline the answer to the question for Nasuverse...

Scientific: Magecraft in Nasuverse gets weaker the more people use it. The mysteries that make up magecraft get weaker the more people understand them ("degradation of mysteries"). The collective will of the planet, Gaia, and of mankind's collective subconscious, Alaya, also act to suppress magecraft. Magecraft would likely get weaker if secrecy is broken... however, people accepting the existence of magic might reduce Alaya's suppression of it. How this finally balances out it anyone's guess. In-universe, the Magus Association is completely against any risk to secrecy, so they must think magecraft would ultimately be weakened. The Magus Association uses the scientific method for the most part, so they are probably right, however they are also heavily bound by tradition so they could be wrong to at least some extent. At the very least, the whole degradation of mysteries thing is really going to mess with the normal scientific procedure of replicating experiments.

Social: Many Magi experiment on people, and the Magus Associaton allows this so long as secrecy is not put at risk... So if the details of this get out there is going to be some kind of reckoning.

Political: The nobility of the Magus Association are all wealthy, upper class European aristocracy. I am not sure how there political power is going to be effected by them being exposed... I imagine some might consider trying to use their magecraft to take control and rule openly since secrecy is broken anyway. Also, the vampires in the setting, the Dead Apostles, might consider trying to openly seize power since mankind is becoming aware of them anyway. Probably going to be some massive causalities because of this.

Religious: In universe, the Church (not clear if Catholic or Orthodox, because this setting was created by Japanese people who don't care about the difference) actually has the strongest Thaumaturgical Foundation because they established it early in their history and they have the most widespread belief and faith. I imagine the fact that the are able to consistently train vampire hunters and the have genuine power is going to lead to a revival of faith.

u/None [+1] (a day later)

"Obliviate!"

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