A possible moment from the Ministry Battle...

[Black Aeronaut]

Proginoskes wrote:

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ShinDangaioh
wrote:

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Jorlem wrote:

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Also not a fan of the lightsaber/Death Star thing. (I believe it was the
guy who wrote HP and the Methods of Rationality who said it, but I
could be wrong.) I much prefer "If you give Frodo a lightsaber, you have
to have Sauron react appropriately". Makes for a much better story, I
think.

Actually, the stupidity has a canon source and has been ignored by
EVERYONE so far.  Pewter Cauldrons.  Pewter is an
alloy metal.  The secondary metal in pewter is tin or zinc, but
the primary element in pewter is LEAD.  All the Potterverse
mages are suffering from lead poisoning.  Lead poisoning causes
stupidity and dementia.

I know that it's
really late and petty to be correcting you after so long, but I went and
looked it up.
Turns out that pewter's primary constituent is always tin,
never lead. Assuming the Wizarding World's state of
metallurgy is comparable to that of 15th-century Muggles, the pewter of
the cauldrons should be at most 4% lead (trifling metal), more likely no
lead at all (fine metal). Even if wizards took complete leave of their
senses and used ley metal, that's 15% lead. Granted, cooking something you intend to eat or drink in a vessel made of ley metal is a good way to get lead
poisoning, but the idea that pewter has a lead content of 50% or more
is bogus.
Metallurgical facts aside, "all the Potterverse mages are suffering from X, and X causes stupidity and dementia" is simply a better-justified version of "all the Potterverse mages are stupid", which Bob has already said he's going to avoid using.

If anything, I like to look at the Potter-verse as taking the Dilbert Principle to its logical conclusion, where the Ministry's middle management has become so saturated with incompetents that they have inevitably made it into actual positions of power.
...Of course, it could always be Negative Selection.