cynthia1960 pointed out

[conuly]

that the odds of the wizarding world remaining secret diminishes with every passing year. Not that we ever got a solid answer as to why the Statute of Secrecy (Hagrid's explanation of people wanting magic solutions is either facile or outright inane) besides the fact that otherwise the books would have to be different.

At any rate, the real question isn't "how are they managing to stay secret" or even "how long can they realistically keep this up" but "what's gonna happen when the secret comes out". Because secrets do, eventually, tend to come out - and something like this, with as many moving pieces as it's got to have? It's going to come out. Somehow I think that the non-magic population is going to find this easier to adapt to than the ostentatiously ignorant of muggles purebloods.

Comments

[silveradept]

Absolutely. Especially in a post genome map society, there would be a lot of immediate research into seeing if the magic gene can be turned on and off, and serious ethical yelling about whether it's good to do so or not, and basically, Harry Potter turns into X-Men. And Potter is Magneto. (Granger as Xavier, maybe?)

[conuly]

What I'm interested in is this: Magic appears to violate all rules of physics. Could we incorporate magic into a unified theory of physics, and, if so, could we figure out how to replicate the effects of spells using technology?

That'd certainly upset a lot of people who are very intense about being superior to muggles.

[silveradept]

I think it would be doable, although I suspect quite a bit of supercomputer time would be put to the task. Because once magic exists, then the scientific laws of the universe have to be amended to account for it, to the point where the domain of magic is eventually subsumed into "really forking awesome science" and everyone can do it, even if they don't have the genetic disposition to it.