Given a magical world, why is the Quibbler ridiculous?

Question

Harry Potter is a high-magic setting and magic is everywhere. There are very few limits on what spellcasting can accomplish, given you know the right spell. (Some of those limits are Gamp's Elemental Laws of Transfiguration or the fact that you cannot return someone from the dead, but we don't get a lot of them. Felix Felicis, the Philosopher's Stone and Time-Turners give their users terrifying power over causality, mortality and time itself, respectively.) New spells and potions are invented all the time. Magical beings range from boring Flubberworms to square-cube-law-shattering dragons, on which there don't seem to be firm limits for what is "plausible" or not.

Yet when we are introduced to Luna Lovegood at the beginning of OotP, Hermione pooh-poohs the Quibbler as a conspiracy rag. It claims the Crumple-Horned Snorkack is real! It claims Cornelius Fudge has a battalion of Heliopaths and is pursuing a secret campaign of goblin genocide! How absurd.

Still disparaging the ridiculous idea of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, Hermione climbs into a carriage pulled by carnivorous skeletal pegasi invisible to those who haven't seen death, and makes her way to the castle.

What heuristic could Hermione (and the wizarding world at large) possibly use to evaluate the Quibbler as ridiculous or not?

In a world where criminals (and enemies of the government) are sent to an island prison guarded by floating spirits of despair, why is the idea of a secret government battalion of fire spirits so silly?

In a world where prejudice against "subhumans" is depressingly widespread (as Hermione well knows) and relations with goblins remain strained since the bloody Goblin Uprising of 17-whatever, why is secret goblin murder so absurd? Especially when Hermione knows Fudge to be pursuing a disinformation campaign against Dumbledore and Harry, and generally trusts the Ministry as far as she can throw it?

In our world we develop heuristics, based on our own experience and what we are told, to sort things into "believable" and "not believable." I know the square-cube law makes big animals cumbersome, and the biggest flying animal I've ever seen is a condor, so if you told me you saw elephants flying the other day I would be disinclined to believe you. Conversely, I've ridden in airplanes before and have a rough idea of how they work, so the idea of a supersonic plane like the Concorde doesn't weird me out.

The thing is, I don't see why someone growing up in the wizarding world would draw the line at anything. Students at Hogwarts are exposed to new and wondrous spells, potions and creatures all the time, and the apparent limits of possibility are pushed further with every passing school year. So what gives?

Answer 1

Magic, in the wizarding world, is certainly powerful. To us, coming from the outside, it might seem like it can do anything. But it can't, due to various rules and stipulations we only know in part. To us, they may seem arbitrary - reversing time, yes, but reversing death, no? - but the differences are probably clearer on the inside.

Consider our own technological society, and a newcomer to it, perhaps from the 18th century. We have airplanes that can cross continents in hours and rockets that reach the moons and instant video chats. But suggest to a native of the 21st century that you can teleport, or change your body's shape, and you'll be scoffed at like a crackpot? For our erstwhile time traveler, moon rockets being possible but teleports impossible must seem just as arbitrary, just like our confusion at why Ron and Hermione seem to arbitrarily dismiss some magical possibilities.

And it isn't just a question of magical/technological capabilities. Conspiracies are the same in both cases - Cornelius Fudge using Heliopaths to kill goblins is no different than the government keeping aliens in Area 51. It's not impossible, it's just ridiculously improbable.

Answer 2

Little that is in real tabloids and conspiracy theories is 'impossible'. Instead, it is dismissed because there is no evidence for it, and a simpler solution, for which there may be indicative evidence. The existence of magic does not invalidate Human Nature, Occam's Razor, or the Experimental Method.

Someone tells you that Hogwarts has creatures only visible to those who have seen death. People advanced a hypothesis, and provide a not too difficult way to falsify their hypothesis. It is disprovable, and therefore, people assume if it was not true, people would have disproved it by now.

By contrast, the Crumpled Horned Snorkack has, presumably, not been seen by 99.9% of the population, and there is no known method to make it reasonably likely to see it. As a comment above put it, this is the same as bigfoot. It's not particularly impossible that there would be one or more large primates. The absence of evidence means that a high degree of skepticism should be assumed.

Most conspiracy theories in this real world are not dismissed as 'impossible'. They are dismissed because they fail Occam's Razor - the simplest solution is likely correct. The '9/11 was fake' theory, for example, could be correct. But, lacking a clear motive, and with the explanation being too complicated, people dismiss it as nonsense.

Similarly, until someone can answer why Fudge wants to exterminate goblins, and why he needs to resort to a secret heliopath army instead of easier solutions, the fact that it is not impossible will not matter, and it will continue to be ridiculed.

Answer 3

Because it is.

Let's look at some of the articles:

• SIRIUS BLACK: Villain or Victim?

  This ridiculous article claims that Sirius Black is a pop singer. Everyone who's met him knows that he's real, is not a singer, and is innocent. It's ridiculous that they would print something that claims something so ridiculous. (OotP, ch 10)

• Article about Fudge

  Let's quote:

  he's had them drowned, he's had them dropped off buildings, he's had them poisoned, he's had them cooked in pies..."

Fudge was in pretty common communication with Dumbledore at one point. Do you think that Dumbledore would have somehow missed this? Or put up with it?

• Flying to the moon on a broomstick

  He flicked through the rest of the magazine. Pausing every few pages he read an accusation that the Tutshill Tornadoes were winning the Quidditch League by a combination of blackmail, illegal broom-tampering, and torture; an interview with a wizard who claimed to have flown to the moon on a Cleansweep Six and brought back a bag of moon frogs to prove it;

This is, quite simply, nonsense.

Answer 4

Because The Quibbler is a tabloid.

By their very nature, tabloids are for entertainment, not for breaking real news. They exaggerate or lampoon the world they're written for and aren't held to the same expectations as news publications.

That being said, they have been known to break real stories.

An example of this in the Wizarding World is when Harry Potter is interviewed by The Quibbler about the return of Voldemort. The Daily Prophet would not take the story, but The Quibbler ran with it, producing one of their most popular issues to date.

Answer 5

Even in a magical world, certain things are still beyond the realms of plausibility.

Despite the existence of magic, there are still certain things that are impossible and implausible. For example, Gamp's Law says that you can't conjure food. It's possible to do things like read minds and fly, but even the best wizards can't magic themselves a sandwich. However, it is possible and relatively simple to conjure drinkable water with Aguamenti. On another question, I attempted to figure out the likelihood of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack existing.

It's the same reason we on Stack Exchange can reject certain theories about the wizarding world. Figuring out what's logical and illogical in a magical world is what we do here all the time. We know the wizarding world pretty well, and we've only read about it in books. They actually live in it.

Imagine if some of the Quibbler articles were written as questions and asked here. "Was Sirius Black living as rock singer Stubby Boardman?" Picture seeing that as a question.

Answer 6

The other answers are excellent, but in short, the Quibbler presents a view of reality that differs from the worldview held by most of the wizarding world.

It doesn't matter that the worldview held by wizards is so different (and so much more fantastic) than the worldview held by muggles, it simply matters that to wizards, the claims of the Quibbler seem fantastical, exaggerated, conspiratorial, or otherwise inconsistent with their own idea of how the (wizarding) world works.

Answer 7

There'd be a few guidelines that can be followed to judge the relative quality of the Quibbler, or any other news source.

Firstly, the general quality of grammar, spelling and presentation. While quality newspapers will sometimes fail here, consistent problems in this area would indicate a lack of talent among those working for the paper. Opinion/Editorial content should be well argued, rather than relying on fallacious arguments.

Structure. You'd expect a serious newspaper to include 'dry but significant' content. This would include business, politics, science etc. Less serious journals would have a much greater percentage of fluffy news, such as entertainment and social/gossip pages.

Staff numbers. The wider (and more specialized) the content, the more people you need to give decent coverage. If you have the same people covering sport and business, you'd get less expert content.

Relationships. The newspapers of record would often be able to get interviews with a wide range of major figures (politicians etc), and ask more challenging questions. A paper that has a fawning relationship to one group would be less well regarded. One that is ignored by all the serious players will be starting with a disadvantage.

Peer groups. If the people in your circles have a low opinion of something, you'll be exposed to a lot of criticism regarding it.

The accuracy of the facts in the Quibbler are almost irrelevant. A newspaper that is trusted can feed its audience a diet of half-truths and complete lies. One that isn't trusted would be hard placed to convince readers of anything they haven't been told by a trusted source.

Answer 8

Please note that this is an out-of-universe answer.

Unlike other posters, I consider the idea of secret goblin genocide perfectly believable. In our world, we have had thousands of forced sterilizations, unethical medical experiments and other scary stuff, some of which may have been brought to the public by tabloids:

• Tuskeegee syphilis experiments (Washington Star, of all papers!)
• San Quentin
• Edgewood Arsenal
• sterilizations in Peru, Uzbekistan, California, India

By claiming through JKR's alter ego, Hermione, that the Quibbler is ridiculous, JKR amply demonstrates her own (and, by extension, Hermione's) narrow-mindedness.

Provably working memory modification techniques (the Obliviators) can go a long way; the goblins' fear and inability to face the truth, as well as wizards' contempt for 'lesser magical races' (cf. house-elves) are all that is needed to make secret genocide perfectly plausible.

You can ask yourself: how many children disappear each year without a trace in our world? Why?