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I reject that premise. It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive. But assuming a Japanese child will have patienc

I reject that premise. It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive. But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.' I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.) I have a math brain. I've been teaching her math since she could speak, mainly because she seemed to want to impress me and it's how she would get my attention. Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?

rusk 2y ago
It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator. You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant. It takes a village to raise a child. [rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.) Except they do matter, unless you're going to "raise" a child by locking them in the apartment until they turn 18. Otherwise, as soon as they go to kindergarten[0], it's entirely out of your hands. They say[1] that minimum viable reproductive unit for homo sapiens is a village. And the corollary to that is, the village will find our child, whether you want it or not, and they will have as much say in their mindset and values as you do. You can influence that, but only so much, and not everywhere all at once[2]. (Also obligatory reminder/disclaimer that group-level statistics are not indicative of any individual's character; individual variance in-group is greater than variance between groups, etc.) EDIT: > Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead? No, you do you - and I respect you for passing on your interest in maths to your daughter, and I hope it'll stick. The point is, whatever the culture you're embedded in, she will be exposed to its tropes in aggregate. It doesn't mean she'll turn into a stereotype; no one ever does (see the disclaimer above); it's just that when someone doesn't like some aspects of their culture, "shopping for a village" that isn't reputed for those traits is one of the historically tried and true methods of reducing the risk. EDIT2: To add another personal anecdote, there was a defining moment in my life early on, that I'm certain changed my entire life's trajectory. In my primary school, I ended up in a class with some rather unruly, mischievous kids, under a walking pathology of a teacher; by the time I was 12 and it was time to switch to secondary school, I already picked up on some of the bad behaviors. My mom went through some extraordinary effort to get me placed in a math-profile class[3], despite me not showing much aptitude or interest in sciences, just so I get away from the rascals. It paid off. I may have started as the dumbest kid in the group, but this group wasn't into mischief, and instead was supportive to intellectual pursuits; I ended up befriending a bunch of nerds, and quickly becoming the nerdiest of them all. I can't imagine that happening if I stayed with my primary-school crowd. In fact, they'd probably bully my fledgling interest in programming out of me, so I pretty much owe my entire career and the shape of my life to that one choice by my mom, to move me to a different "village". -- [0] - And maybe earlier, if they go to daycare, or you're socially active and they tag along; and no later than when they go to school - unless, again, zip-ties and a radiator are a major part of the upbringing approach. [1] - Well, someone on HN says that; I think they may have even coined it. Either way, it's true. [2] - I grew up in a Christian offshoot that's a borderline cult. I can tell first-hand that, no matter how hard they try, even a strong fundamentalist culture that works hard on staying true to its values and pretty much defines themselves in opposition to "the world", can only do so much to resist the local culture in which people are embedded. And, when they try too hard, they just end up bleeding members. [3] - A brief moment in time in Poland where we had 3-school system and profile classes in the secondary school.
- genewitch 2y ago
  I'd have to find a copy to see if it cites its source but paraphrased I've heard it: > People mechanically can have kids, physically, before they're mentally able to take care of them. The [village] elders would raise and teach the children while the adolescents worked at things adolescents do better than elders So "it takes a village" used to be literal, and as we in this part of the west started to isolate and nuclear family the whole idea that the elders should have plurality input to the neuroplasticity kinda went wayside. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They all died when I was young but my sister was younger yet. I moved all our kids to be within 15 minutes of their living grandparents. They werent teens when we got here. My youngest spends 3/7th of their time at grandma's house. I'll let you know how all this works in like 30 years. I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root. There's arguments about in groups and globalization and if it's better to amalgamate and if so, community based child raising has gotta go. Please do not ask me to spell this out as I won't be.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    The way I understood the line about "minimum viable reproductive unit" I quoted is different, more straightforward: a nuclear family can't survive alone. Two people and a kid just can't survive in the wilderness; we've evolved to function in group. From this POV, the "village" is still there, it's always there. It may not be a literal village, and you and me might both be pretty much alone except for our partners, when it comes to parental responsibilities. However, the modern "village" is the society we live in - our neighbors, our friends, co-workers, the market economy as represented by people selling good and providing services we need to survive; later, also parents of children our kids go to school with. These are all people we interact with daily, share the same material and social environment, and we all influence each other. There's no way to avoid that influence (in fact, if you try, the "village" will start getting worried, possibly to the point social services might get involved). It's always there, and once your kids start education, they'll be interacting with other members of society unsupervised - this is what I mean by "village finding your child". > I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root. I 100% agree with that. I think it's fundamental. But it works only up to certain size; it's not that globalization is in opposition to that, it's just that to form societies larger than ~150, you need replacements for "shame and pride" as behavioral regulators to keep a group from self-destructing. Hence leaders and rules - and applied recursively a couple times, you end up with presidents and districts and rule of law and bureaucracy and all the staples of modern life, existing next to and on top of groups of families and friends.
pbasista 2y ago
> assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought ... I agree that it is weird. And I did not read the article. But I would assume that this is not the point it was trying to make when referring to race or location backgrounds. When remarks like these are made, I would think they usually refer to a neighborhood. For instance, a well-groomed neighborhood at a good location vs. a slum at the outskirts of town, perhaps without electricity or even without running water. The race is mentioned in that context often not because it would have a direct impact. But because there is, unfortunately, a correlation between people living in poor neighborhoods and people of racial minorities. I would think that the implication then is that a bad neighborhood is one of the factors which drive bad social behavior.
opdahl 2y ago
You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago? Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.
- silisili 2y ago
  > You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood! Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area. Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO. Heck, kids in Loudoun county grow up completely differently than kids in Baltimore county. What does that tell us about the US, if anything? I'm guessing Japan is the same, but I'm not educated enough to speak to it.
  - the-lazy-guy 2y ago
    Did you notice that you just devided kids in Loudoun and Baltimore in 2 groups, giving them as examples of different environments? You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
    - silisili 2y ago
      > You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically. Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood. Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.
pjc50 2y ago
> I have a math brain. You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary. A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes. I know sociology has poor reproducibility, but cultural and behavioral differences are definitely a thing. I used to have a Korean colleague who'd moved to the UK specifically because he did not want his kids growing up in the Korean school system. They will always be ethnically and "genetically" Korean, and I would assume he would teach them the language, but he wanted them to be less culturally Korean because he thought they would be happier that way.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  I've got a buddy who's dad is an American who was stationed in Korea, and his mom is a Korean citizen. He talks a lot about the cultural clashes he faced growing up and having trouble feeling like he fit as either a Korean or an American. It's clear the two different cultures really pulled at him strongly from two different places.
  - boilerupnc 2y ago
    There’s been a phrase in the South Asian diasporas for a while that captures this idea. ABCD [0] where “C” reflects the confusion (aka two way value pulling). As a person with first generation immigrant parents who raised us in the rural Midwest of America, the C is a real feeling. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-born_confused_desi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-born_confused_desi
- neom 2y ago
  My wife is Korean, I met her over there doing some Samsung stuff, she was very frank with me that if she didn't marry me she would probably have married someone like me because she wanted to be able to have a family outside of Korean culture. I love my wife, I have a wonderful marriage and I learn so much from her daily, I feel quite blessed.
hector126 2y ago
(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature) Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al). There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.
starfallg 2y ago
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.' You are making several jumps in logic to get from A -> B. Japan has an education system which teaches the importance of certain values, patience and self-discipline among them. Here is the short-film "Instruments of a Beating Heart" currently on the Oscars shortlist about this very point - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRW0auOiqm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRW0auOiqm4
lupire 2y ago
> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Not "bad" , but less fully invested... Maybe? It's isolating being the only non-Mandarin-speaking family at a math people gathering. It's quite striking in the high-level math community.
lolinder 2y ago
> I have a math brain. Where do you think that math brain came from? There are only three factors that could really influence it: 1. The way you were raised. 2. Your genes. 3. Some metaphysical explanation. I'm going to set #3 aside for a bit because there's no way to test that hypothesis. That leaves the way you were raised and genes. What correlates with the way you were raised? Culture. Your parents' culture is tightly correlated with the way they raised you, and when speaking about groups and averages it's fair to say that in general affects outcomes. So if you take this explanation, TFA is not wrong to say that culture would affect outcomes. What correlates with your genes? Your ancestry, which is (imperfectly) correlated with race. So if you take this explanation, OP would not have been wrong to say that on average race would affect outcomes. (That said, I don't think they actually do—they strictly mention culture!)
rayiner 2y ago
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience. Sorry dude cultural differences are real. When I got married to my American wife, my Bangladeshi mom pulled her aside and said, “you know, we don’t get divorced.”
xedrac 2y ago
I have a math brain as well. But I also have 5 kids, and despite my teaching them very similarly, one of those kids cannot do math at all, another is average, and the remaining three are brilliant at it.
- silisili 2y ago
  So you are saying that making a claim about math ability by culture, in this case your family's specific culture, is inaccurate. I'm saying the same thing, applied to a wider level.
sanderjd 2y ago
Since you have a math brain, you can probably conceptualize the concept of statistical distributions, right? In any discussion of this sort of thing, what people are saying is that different circumstances lead to different distributions in outcome. Does that really seem surprising to you? To me it would be very surprising if wildly different characteristics turned out to have identical distributions across every metric. But this constantly gets lost because some people want to ignore that distributions differ, and other people want to ignore that the distribution is not destiny for any individual.

rusk 2y ago

It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator. You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant. It takes a village to raise a child. [rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.) Except they do matter, unless you're going to "raise" a child by locking them in the apartment until they turn 18. Otherwise, as soon as they go to kindergarten[0], it's entirely out of your hands. They say[1] that minimum viable reproductive unit for homo sapiens is a village. And the corollary to that is, the village will find our child, whether you want it or not, and they will have as much say in their mindset and values as you do. You can influence that, but only so much, and not everywhere all at once[2]. (Also obligatory reminder/disclaimer that group-level statistics are not indicative of any individual's character; individual variance in-group is greater than variance between groups, etc.) EDIT: > Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead? No, you do you - and I respect you for passing on your interest in maths to your daughter, and I hope it'll stick. The point is, whatever the culture you're embedded in, she will be exposed to its tropes in aggregate. It doesn't mean she'll turn into a stereotype; no one ever does (see the disclaimer above); it's just that when someone doesn't like some aspects of their culture, "shopping for a village" that isn't reputed for those traits is one of the historically tried and true methods of reducing the risk. EDIT2: To add another personal anecdote, there was a defining moment in my life early on, that I'm certain changed my entire life's trajectory. In my primary school, I ended up in a class with some rather unruly, mischievous kids, under a walking pathology of a teacher; by the time I was 12 and it was time to switch to secondary school, I already picked up on some of the bad behaviors. My mom went through some extraordinary effort to get me placed in a math-profile class[3], despite me not showing much aptitude or interest in sciences, just so I get away from the rascals. It paid off. I may have started as the dumbest kid in the group, but this group wasn't into mischief, and instead was supportive to intellectual pursuits; I ended up befriending a bunch of nerds, and quickly becoming the nerdiest of them all. I can't imagine that happening if I stayed with my primary-school crowd. In fact, they'd probably bully my fledgling interest in programming out of me, so I pretty much owe my entire career and the shape of my life to that one choice by my mom, to move me to a different "village". -- [0] - And maybe earlier, if they go to daycare, or you're socially active and they tag along; and no later than when they go to school - unless, again, zip-ties and a radiator are a major part of the upbringing approach. [1] - Well, someone on HN says that; I think they may have even coined it. Either way, it's true. [2] - I grew up in a Christian offshoot that's a borderline cult. I can tell first-hand that, no matter how hard they try, even a strong fundamentalist culture that works hard on staying true to its values and pretty much defines themselves in opposition to "the world", can only do so much to resist the local culture in which people are embedded. And, when they try too hard, they just end up bleeding members. [3] - A brief moment in time in Poland where we had 3-school system and profile classes in the secondary school.

genewitch 2y ago
I'd have to find a copy to see if it cites its source but paraphrased I've heard it: > People mechanically can have kids, physically, before they're mentally able to take care of them. The [village] elders would raise and teach the children while the adolescents worked at things adolescents do better than elders So "it takes a village" used to be literal, and as we in this part of the west started to isolate and nuclear family the whole idea that the elders should have plurality input to the neuroplasticity kinda went wayside. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They all died when I was young but my sister was younger yet. I moved all our kids to be within 15 minutes of their living grandparents. They werent teens when we got here. My youngest spends 3/7th of their time at grandma's house. I'll let you know how all this works in like 30 years. I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root. There's arguments about in groups and globalization and if it's better to amalgamate and if so, community based child raising has gotta go. Please do not ask me to spell this out as I won't be.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  The way I understood the line about "minimum viable reproductive unit" I quoted is different, more straightforward: a nuclear family can't survive alone. Two people and a kid just can't survive in the wilderness; we've evolved to function in group. From this POV, the "village" is still there, it's always there. It may not be a literal village, and you and me might both be pretty much alone except for our partners, when it comes to parental responsibilities. However, the modern "village" is the society we live in - our neighbors, our friends, co-workers, the market economy as represented by people selling good and providing services we need to survive; later, also parents of children our kids go to school with. These are all people we interact with daily, share the same material and social environment, and we all influence each other. There's no way to avoid that influence (in fact, if you try, the "village" will start getting worried, possibly to the point social services might get involved). It's always there, and once your kids start education, they'll be interacting with other members of society unsupervised - this is what I mean by "village finding your child". > I think a large, maybe even the main part of why community of family and close friends raising children together works: humans are uniquely motivated by shame and pride, and having that many eyes on you leads to quick corrections before bad habits take root. I 100% agree with that. I think it's fundamental. But it works only up to certain size; it's not that globalization is in opposition to that, it's just that to form societies larger than ~150, you need replacements for "shame and pride" as behavioral regulators to keep a group from self-destructing. Hence leaders and rules - and applied recursively a couple times, you end up with presidents and districts and rule of law and bureaucracy and all the staples of modern life, existing next to and on top of groups of families and friends.

pbasista 2y ago

> assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought ... I agree that it is weird. And I did not read the article. But I would assume that this is not the point it was trying to make when referring to race or location backgrounds. When remarks like these are made, I would think they usually refer to a neighborhood. For instance, a well-groomed neighborhood at a good location vs. a slum at the outskirts of town, perhaps without electricity or even without running water. The race is mentioned in that context often not because it would have a direct impact. But because there is, unfortunately, a correlation between people living in poor neighborhoods and people of racial minorities. I would think that the implication then is that a bad neighborhood is one of the factors which drive bad social behavior.

opdahl 2y ago

You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago? Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.

silisili 2y ago
> You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood! Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area. Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO. Heck, kids in Loudoun county grow up completely differently than kids in Baltimore county. What does that tell us about the US, if anything? I'm guessing Japan is the same, but I'm not educated enough to speak to it.
- the-lazy-guy 2y ago
  Did you notice that you just devided kids in Loudoun and Baltimore in 2 groups, giving them as examples of different environments? You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.
  - silisili 2y ago
    > You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically. Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood. Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.

pjc50 2y ago

> I have a math brain. You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary. A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes. I know sociology has poor reproducibility, but cultural and behavioral differences are definitely a thing. I used to have a Korean colleague who'd moved to the UK specifically because he did not want his kids growing up in the Korean school system. They will always be ethnically and "genetically" Korean, and I would assume he would teach them the language, but he wanted them to be less culturally Korean because he thought they would be happier that way.

technothrasher 2y ago
I've got a buddy who's dad is an American who was stationed in Korea, and his mom is a Korean citizen. He talks a lot about the cultural clashes he faced growing up and having trouble feeling like he fit as either a Korean or an American. It's clear the two different cultures really pulled at him strongly from two different places.
- boilerupnc 2y ago
  There’s been a phrase in the South Asian diasporas for a while that captures this idea. ABCD [0] where “C” reflects the confusion (aka two way value pulling). As a person with first generation immigrant parents who raised us in the rural Midwest of America, the C is a real feeling. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-born_confused_desi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-born_confused_desi
neom 2y ago
My wife is Korean, I met her over there doing some Samsung stuff, she was very frank with me that if she didn't marry me she would probably have married someone like me because she wanted to be able to have a family outside of Korean culture. I love my wife, I have a wonderful marriage and I learn so much from her daily, I feel quite blessed.

hector126 2y ago

(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature) Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al). There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.

starfallg 2y ago

> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.' You are making several jumps in logic to get from A -> B. Japan has an education system which teaches the importance of certain values, patience and self-discipline among them. Here is the short-film "Instruments of a Beating Heart" currently on the Oscars shortlist about this very point - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRW0auOiqm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRW0auOiqm4

lupire 2y ago

> Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Not "bad" , but less fully invested... Maybe? It's isolating being the only non-Mandarin-speaking family at a math people gathering. It's quite striking in the high-level math community.

lolinder 2y ago

> I have a math brain. Where do you think that math brain came from? There are only three factors that could really influence it: 1. The way you were raised. 2. Your genes. 3. Some metaphysical explanation. I'm going to set #3 aside for a bit because there's no way to test that hypothesis. That leaves the way you were raised and genes. What correlates with the way you were raised? Culture. Your parents' culture is tightly correlated with the way they raised you, and when speaking about groups and averages it's fair to say that in general affects outcomes. So if you take this explanation, TFA is not wrong to say that culture would affect outcomes. What correlates with your genes? Your ancestry, which is (imperfectly) correlated with race. So if you take this explanation, OP would not have been wrong to say that on average race would affect outcomes. (That said, I don't think they actually do—they strictly mention culture!)

rayiner 2y ago

> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience. Sorry dude cultural differences are real. When I got married to my American wife, my Bangladeshi mom pulled her aside and said, “you know, we don’t get divorced.”

xedrac 2y ago

I have a math brain as well. But I also have 5 kids, and despite my teaching them very similarly, one of those kids cannot do math at all, another is average, and the remaining three are brilliant at it.

silisili 2y ago
So you are saying that making a claim about math ability by culture, in this case your family's specific culture, is inaccurate. I'm saying the same thing, applied to a wider level.

sanderjd 2y ago

Since you have a math brain, you can probably conceptualize the concept of statistical distributions, right? In any discussion of this sort of thing, what people are saying is that different circumstances lead to different distributions in outcome. Does that really seem surprising to you? To me it would be very surprising if wildly different characteristics turned out to have identical distributions across every metric. But this constantly gets lost because some people want to ignore that distributions differ, and other people want to ignore that the distribution is not destiny for any individual.