Oh, true, thanks for pointing that out, apologies to lorcan, I was mistaken about which original-comment-writer I was replying to. I guess it was too late at ni

Oh, true, thanks for pointing that out, apologies to lorcan, I was mistaken about which original-comment-writer I was replying to. I guess it was too late at night for me to be writing comments in a discussion like that. To lorcan: The problem with your original comment was that it is technically true, but handwaves away a whole lot of really important detail about how someone's circumstances (e.g., family/community environment and inherited attributes like genetics and innate behaviours) influence one's ability to do that. To your credit, you acknowledged this in a later comment, but the crappy discussion was well on its way by then. Related to that is it conflates correlation with causation. Comments like this inevitably set off bad discussions, because that missing detail is what really matters about the topic, so you'll get arguments at cross-purposes, with some people supporting the truthiness of your point, and others trying to point out the gaps, and so it's hard to reach common ground because people are focused on different aspects of the issue. Anyway, as AnimalMuppet said, this is well past generating more heat than light, so I'm out and I hope others are content to move on too.