In my experience aptitude plays a far bigger role. Yes, you compensate for lack of aptitude with a lot of hard work, but that’s a different matter.

Often aptitude is not aptitude at all, but all of the above.

Then, during learning anything, the same thing also applies. How much support you get from teachers and parents. What sort of environment you have available to practice in. And a lot more.

Finally, when all other factors are equal, aptitude can play a certain role. But one that in an educational setting is largely irrelevant. Because if everything else is perfectly in place to teach something, including learning any prerequisites, aptitude is only something that matters in hindsight.

Which is extremely important as well. Labeling someone as lacking aptitude can be highly discouraging. Repeatedly hearing that they aren't “naturally” good at something can lead them to stop trying, even if it's not true.

Of course it’s not fair, life isn’t fair. But the good news is that you can quite easily compensate for lack of aptitude with more work, and that is most definitely the case for mathematics, up to and including undergraduate level.

I grew up in Sweden where everyone goes to the same kind of pre-school, that does very little math teaching. Still, the difference in aptitude when we started school was significant. But we all know this.

Your take is so black and white that it only holds up if you almost willfully ignore all other context. Obvious things like different kids having a different home experience, exposure to different things outside of school, exposure to different things in the years leading up to pre-school, etc. These are just a few factors that actually heavily influence where someone starts and how easily they pick up some subjects. Then there is the fact that following the same curriculum or even being in the same class doesn't mean getting the same attention from teachers. In fact, ironically those with "more aptitude" sometimes get more attention further increasing their headstart.

I honestly want to invite you to go back, read my other comment again, actually take the time to internalize it then reply back again.

Because you are very close to actually agreeing with me. Specifically because you mention the practice and extra work bit. You just don't realize it yet.

So even if we limit "aptitude" to a strictly genetic sense, it will still explain most of the difference in math ability at 7. All other factors related to growing up will add up to less than half of that.

Regarding practice compensating for genetics, I am not talking about having more supportive parents or more demanding pre-school, I am talking about Asian level hardcore drilling. That can certainly make up for most of the difference, at least when it comes to basic mathematics. But that means that the concepts that a child with math aptitude will pick up in 5 minutes will take 5 hours of drilling for another child.

That is again a simplification of reality, leaving out a lot of context and nuance.

1. You are right that research seems to indicate that intelligence is heritable, meaning that genetic factors play a role in individual differences in intelligence. Estimates of the heritability of intelligence typically range from 50% to 80%, depending on the study, age of the participants, and the methods used. I am guessing that this is where your "All other factors related to growing up will add up to less than half of that" remark comes from. However, that 50%-80% is in relation to the inheriting intelligence from the parents. It does not mean that it influence more than half of your intelligence. It also highly depends on the specific aspects of intelligence that is being measured.

2. If we are throwing in statements as borne out by science then you can't ignore that studies also show that factors such as education, nutrition, and socioeconomic status significantly impact cognitive development. In fact, some of the most critical periods for brain development occur in early childhood. Things like:

  a) Prenatal environment: Factors such as maternal nutrition, stress levels, and exposure to toxins can affect fetal brain development.

  b) Early childhood nutrition: Proper nutrition in the first few years of life is crucial for optimal brain development.

  c) Stimulating environment: Exposure to a variety of experiences, toys, and learning opportunities in early childhood can enhance cognitive development.

  d) Physical activity: Regular physical activity from an early age can promote brain health and cognitive function.

  e) Parental interaction: The quality and quantity of interactions with caregivers, including talking, reading, and responsive care, significantly impact cognitive development from infancy.

  f) I could go on for a while, but the picture should be clear enough. 

And some people are just lucky to have the right environment. I happened to have had access to some more advanced books from older relatives as a kid and I noticed that it gave me an edge over my peers in some areas.

(I mean, that's not my opinion, that's just how modern society has been running for... a century or two?)

Why does there have to be a slave just because there's a master? That is just one very specific meaning of the word, out of several dozen, and in the git context it was pretty clear that it wasn't used in that sense, but rather something like "master copy". So the master to main renaming thing was especially silly.

You are unironically doing the thing I was talking about by not noticing that I already said that about git's master branch. Master/slave is also a pretty common phrase in computing when talking about hardware, and its a pretty ugly concept when applied to humans, so I'm also not terribly surprised people chose to change their default branch name even if the association is only tangential. You wouldn't be surprised if the old name was 'ScrapedCornea' and people didn't love it. But again, its bizarre that a shift from 'master' to 'main', which is shorter, provokes this response. Do you feel personally critiqued by it somehow? Genuinely curious.

I personally have much closer ancestors, that were tortured by the communists within living memory. What if I told you that for this reason the word "comrade" triggers me? Or in analogy with the github situation, if I asked people to stop wearing Che t-shirts? Would you say that was reasonable, or a sign of insanity?

As I said, "allow list" is more descriptive if you don't know the word whitelist in the sense that it's easier to guess its meaning the first time you see it. My point is that this is not generally considered important, just look at 100 random words, most of them would be hard to guess the exact meaning of, even if like me you studied classical languages.

Then out of respect I would would attempt to stop using it around you, And if enough people agreed with you we would probably mothball it in favor of something else.

It just seems so futile to have to keep coming up with new words for the same thing, when the new words will inevitably become slurs in the same way, at least if anyone uses them. So it's not like we can avoid the offence, it is just transferred to a new word. Wouldn't it be better to accept that some people will say mean things, and focus on learning to live with that, and on making people be less mean?

And sometimes we return to them. Queer is a label I use for myself that's a reclaimed slur. I know plenty of gay men who call themselves fags. Some disabled people use "crip" as a term of endearment. But usually these reclaimed slurs are for the exclusive use of the members of the community internally.

But I'd hardly say it doesn't help: it means that today, you've not made someone wonder if you're insulting them on purpose.

We already constantly have to change so that our language doesn't sound dated. It's doubly important if it also avoids insult.

I have to wonder a bit about people who really don't want to stop using terms that have become insulting, but otherwise freely pick up new usages of words in other contexts. It seems to me like they just want to be insulting.

Maybe instead of wanting to be insulting, people just don't want to be insulted (called ableist, racist, etc.) for failing to keep up with modern slang. Can you see why someone might be upset about being made a de facto bigot when they are only guilty of aging?

At the same time, there are a whole lot of people who want to staunchly defend using language that has become offensive, and even use it gleefully. I have much less sympathy for this position.

I have plenty of sympathy for people who react to this needless cruelty with a total rejection of the concept and deliberate rebellion. Rationally, sure, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But this is an emotional response and I can understand it and sympathize.

Admittedly, I have sympathy for everyone. I ultimately believe in determinism; I can no more fault a serial killer for a murder than a cloud for blocking the sun. There is a utility to behaving as though good and bad people exist, rather than just good and bad outcomes: you can improve those outcomes. But witholding sympathy does not improve outcomes.

Yah-- using gender neutral terms when possible is nice, and someone has to coin those terms.

But what I'm talking about: there's a whole lot of these words that were initially offensive, or became offensive because they have been used derisively. If you insist on referring to people by terms they find offensive, even after correction, then you are being a jerk.

> using gender neutral terms when possible is nice

That's your opinion, and it tends to very strongly correlate with left-wing politics, it's not a consensus opinion.

It's been favored in pretty much every style guide for decades at this point. I am presently in the middle of the political spectrum, but I've spent the majority of my life pretty right-leaning. At the same time, I see no reason to choose words that might imply to a lot of people that I'm only talking about men, or to choose other words that might cause people offense.

It's funny how we can so clearly see this in so many domains -- referring to an unintelligent person as a "moron" would pretty clearly be not nice -- but are willing to defend doing it to other disfavored groups so strongly.

- but neither would it be an attempt to demean everyone who suffers from a learning disability. It would, instead, be an affirmation that low intelligence is an undesirable quality. And anyway, in practice, overwhelmingly such language is aimed at people of ordinary or even above average intelligence, with the intent of suggesting that the target is not meeting expectations.

No, but it might have that net effect, to whomever is in earshot.

> And anyway, in practice, overwhelmingly such language is aimed at people of ordinary or even above average intelligence

If you don't think the kid who is struggling in school is being called a "retard," I don't know what to tell you.

Another example-- the word "boy." There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the word "boy," but it was used by a lot of people to demean black men. I certainly wouldn't want to say it to a person who would think I'm doing the same thing to that point. And at that point, maybe it's time to prune the word "boy" as a word of address out of my language, and discourage my kids from the "booooiiiiii" that would be interpreted very poorly in the wrong situation.

36% of youth in 2009 reported having heard the word "retard" directed towards someone with an intellectual disability.

My wife's brother had a birth injury and endured it pretty constantly throughout his school years.

And given that there's people with that experience, perhaps it's time to heavily discourage use of the word in general. Calling your buddy it to be funny helps normalize it for the people who want to use it to be cruel, and gives them cover.

Haven't we been doing that in the US since 1990?

Our culture's imperfect, but there's a fair bit of evidence that it's a kinder, more courteous world-- especially for youth-- than 30 years ago. Taking some sharp edges off language may have helped with that.

But that is not the question here, I am merely pointing out that it's very easy to understand why some people may object to ideologically invented words, without have any issues with words that appear organically, like "mousepad". Pretending to not understand the difference is just a bad faith argument.

The use of gender neutral language as a favored practice has been largely settled in English style guides everywhere since I was a small child, and I am old. To a pretty big portion of the population, "chairman" sounds dated.

It's worth noting excessive prescriptivism cuts both ways. Once upon a time the singular "they" was widely accepted and used; then it was deprecated in favor of just using "he"; now people want to tell us using "they" to describe a person of undetermined gender is just wrong. Language is how we use it, and it's better for it to not contain excessive constraints or connotations that are unhelpful.

I don't know how you ascribe some particular uses of language that are outside the mainstream with my descriptive note that language has moved towards mostly using gender-neutral terms. I'm not blaming a lot on patriarchy; so it's not really fair to point out that a small minority of people who share my viewpoint that neutral language is preferable do.

> Historically, singular "they" was used to describe an indefinite, hypothetical or otherwise vaguely described person (e.g. the perpetrator of a crime before being identified) - not a definite person whose gender was simply unknown (e.g. someone unseen, known by a gender-neutral name). Further, its use is quite restricted - it doesn't admit all the inflections and noun-verb agreements that "he" and "she" do.

You're right that most of this historical usage of singular they isn't the personal singular they, but you still find plenty of it-- e.g. the King James Bible has quite a bit (perhaps influenced by translating from languages that tend to use equivalent devices).

"vnto thy gates, euen that man, or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones till they die."

> It seems to me that you propose entirely unnecessary constraints.

I think that if I talk about the "mailman" it could be misleading. Ditto for singular "he/his" for indeterminate gender. It seems more useful to use gender-neutral terms-- no need to edit it based on the actual gender that shows up.

The inclusiveness isn't even the primary reason why I feel this way. However, I have heard people say that they thought that it wasn't societally permissible for them to do something based on the way the nouns and pronouns used in sentences; avoiding that seems desirable, too.

I disagree that the standard use of established feminist terminology is "outside the mainstream". Anyway, the point is that they are obviously not gender-neutral terms. It is a blatant double standard to suppose that the term "chairman" disparages women by its construction (despite no such original intent), but that the term "patriarchy" doesn't disparage men by its construction (when it was specifically constructed to describe a construct, by academics who had free choice).

> e.g. the King James Bible has quite a bit

No, that's precisely "an indefinite, hypothetical or otherwise vaguely described person (e.g. the perpetrator of a crime before being identified)". Other examples I could find myself were not any more compelling.

> However, I have heard people say that they thought that it wasn't societally permissible for them to do something based on the way the nouns and pronouns used in sentences

Within the last quarter-century or so? Despite the readily available evidence of other people of the same gender doing that thing?

Using "patriarchy" to describe a specific male-headed familial structure is for the purpose of criticism is descriptive, just like "matriarchy" is. Of course, it can be misused, like in the cases you pillory.

> No, that's precisely "an indefinite, hypothetical or otherwise vaguely described person (e.g. the perpetrator of a crime before being identified)".

I thought you were drawing a different distinction; it's definitely the personal singular they. That exact type of usage is when I use "they" to refer to a person of indeterminate gender, e.g. someone to be hired.

> Within the last quarter-century or so? Despite the readily available evidence of other people of the same gender doing that thing?

Much less within the last quarter-century... in part because all of the style guides about this stuff changed about 40 years ago, when I was a small child.

Actually, the he or she agreeing with "them/their" later in a sentence is old and widely accepted. So a fair deal of this usage is a linguistic oddity.

> or its a person that considers herself "non-binary" and insists that you use gender neutral language.

The preferred personal pronoun thing is different. It has its own discussion and justification.

I am purely talking about "they/them" to refer to people of unknown gender, instead of "he" or "he/she"-- the singular, personal "they".

It went from occasional use in the 1300s-1600s to "wrong" in the 1800s. Now it's emerging as a best practice. Even though style guides that otherwise moved to gender neutral language in the 80's rejected it, it grew organically for quite awhile before starting to become accepted.

I agree with all your arguments, but just want to point out that this is not actually true. "Indefinite they" does inflect just fine. "Who attacked you, did you see them? No, but they dropped their gun." etc.

For example, if someone mis-dialled and called our phone, the conversation after would always be something like "Who was that on the phone?" "Oh nobody, they got the wrong number."

When I was at university, whenever I talked to my mum on the phone about any of my friends, male or female, I'd pretty much always use "they" unless I'd already mentioned their name, because if I ever made the mistake of mentioning a female friend, it'd turn into an hour long interrogation.

(Of course, having the tools in your toolbox that one would use to avoid pronouns sometimes lets you increase clarity; it's not a bad skill to have).

I disagree that words "become" slurs, in principle. Outside of a very few specific examples, where the term was constructed to insult, we know that words are insults because of the context in which they're used.

> It seems to me like they just want to be insulting.

It should be acceptable to insult people in certain contexts (not here, of course). But far more importantly, especially when it comes to terms like "idiot", "retard", "developmentally disabled" etc. etc.: when someone insults an idea, it's completely inappropriate to treat this as though some corresponding identity group had been insulted. Changing the words does nothing about it, anyway. When someone's purpose is to associate an idea with low intelligence, that will show through regardless of what word is used.

Aside from which, the treadmill isn't even remotely in sync universally. There are real discussion fora I've seen that take themselves completely seriously, where the word "stupid" is completely verboten and already has been for years - and not because of some general blanket policy against insults.

I disagree; perjoration is a well understood linguistic topic, and it tends to happen in particular with words associated with disadvantaged groups. Idiot, moron, mentally retarded, ghetto, gypsy, savage, spinster, etc.

> It should be acceptable to insult people in certain contexts

We might occasionally want to say negative things about people, but actual insult should be saved for playful contexts. I have a hard time defending deliberately being a jerk to someone else.

> it's completely inappropriate to treat this as though some corresponding identity group had been insulted

If we are describing another person with a word, in general, we should respect their desire to be called or not be called by that word. And when a word has taken on undesirable connotations, it's reasonable to pick a sane default that most people are not going to want to be called that.

> Aside from which, the treadmill isn't even remotely in sync universally. There are real discussion fora I've seen that take themselves completely seriously, where the word "stupid" is completely verboten and already has been for years - and not because of some general blanket policy against insults.

Sure, change is uneven and not all proposed change happens. I am fine with calling something "stupid"-- it's when the "stupid" is an idea belonging to a particular person or is being used to call someone a name that it's not so great. Of course, there's always context; if I was around someone that I knew was particularly sensitive about their intelligence, I would perhaps try harder to stay away from words like "stupid" or "dumb".

All of this, really, boils down to basic courtesy. If we're not told explicitly what is considered courteous, we need to make reasonable guesses based on the overall social context.

None of those meet my definition of "slur", except possibly "gypsy".

>I have to wonder a bit about people who really don't want to stop using terms that have become insulting, but otherwise freely pick up new usages of words in other contexts. It seems to me like they just want to be insulting.

Natural evolution of language feels natural. You start hearing and using terms as you need them. The word "gamepad" was scarcely, if ever, used 50 years ago, some inventions came to be and people needed a term to refer to a specific object, so they naturally picked up the term.

Start a campaign today to demand people stop using the word "gamepad" and start using "funtroller" with the threat of moral condemnation and you will find the same resistance.

Like LatinX, that definitely seems like a top-down word, that still hasn't caught on among actual Latinos.

This is exactly how I and most other Spanish-speaking hispanics I've talked to about it take it. It's usually someone who doesn't know Spanish using it, and the implication is that something is wrong with our language and anglos need to fix it for us (and that we're so backwards that even anglos who don't know our language are more qualified to fix it for us than we ourselves our, in our poor foolish backwardness)

Anyone who knew Spanish well would know that grammatical gender is vestigial and often meaningless. Why are rocks female but boats male? Why are cars male and trucks female? It's nothing to do with semantics anymore than there is an extant meaning to why in English i comes before e except after c other when said like a as in neighbor and weigh, etc.

But of course, the advocates for this nonsense don't know Spanish. When I do hear someone of latin heritage embrace latinx, invariably I find the are monolingual English-speakers who were not taught Spanish by their ancestors.

It's reminiscent of the "machismo" slur-- anglos using "macho" as a stereotype of toxic masculinity, even though the worst toxic masculinity I've seen is by far has been in the US, not Latin America.

It's all just a way to update anti-hispanic sentiment to account for modern progressive attitudes. Of course, that sort of thing went on 100 years ago too. The progressive-for-the-day attitudes were used to bludgeon Irish and Italian and other immigrants too then, you know.

If you want to "fix" my language I invite you to do so-- right after you finish learning it well enough to converse at even just a very basic 5th grade level. Until then, mind your business.

It bothers me because I feel there are political repercussions I don't like. Because the people trying to force Latinx on Hispanics keep trying to force people to think of them as an oppressed minority. That's a problem because they're trying impose a low status. That's never a winner.

I wish I could cleverly work in a "QED" here (from Latin) but it just doesn't fit.

By the way, QED is just a calque from Greek. (Like most things Roman...)

As an American, I'd find it hard (at least in my circles) to find an American who doesn't find it cringe worthy.

In fact, I don't think I've heard anyone use that term in at least forty years.

I recall one such poster getting upset over the word 'Chinaman'. Something this Englishman, sharing an office with two Irishman, a Frenchman and a Dane, found rather bizarre, particularly as the chap complaining was not Chinese themselves!

Such virtue signalling is at its worst when used to pile-on a speaker or post for uttering some perceived slight, or daring to suggest an unpopular idea or political view. It is bad for open discourse, even open society, and needs to stop.

As I see it, the US - the first place with a supposed egalitarian bent on the cosmopolitan society - created a system whereby people from all backgrounds and ethnicites could interact in the public sphere without tripping each other's emotional wires - that is the basis for Political Correctness. Keep your baggage at home, and out in the real world and in the market you can interact with everyone as equals (so, Mike Munger's "the answer is trasaction costs!").

The system worked pretty well for a time (fine, it's called the 90s). The problem is that the edifice kept on being built up, as more voices raised more touchy subjects that needed to be sanitized in public, enough that it began to bother people. I think that as alternative means of communication allowed people to more be "themselves" in the digital, if not real, public domain, the discrepancy between public discourse and private thought became more glaring.

Now, for every system, there are those who naturally like to uphold norms, and these are the ones you say are "virtue signalling" - I think they're just norm upholders. But for the rest of us, it takes only one euphemism that hits us the wrong way to get us questioning the whole over-built edifice. The fact that one political side arbitrarily took it up as a cause, of course, made the other side all the more dogmatic in its application.

So it will be eventually torn down and replaced by something identical and the cycle will continue anew. ~fin~

I think the Englishman comparison is not very smart. With the same logic, it's fine to use pedophile to refer to someone because it's grammatically constructed similarly to audiophile and no one never complained when associated to the word audiophile. I don't think a pejorative word (recognized as such in all modern dictionaries) stops to be pejorative because it exists a similar construction that is not pejorative.

And I don't think you need to be the one accused to be a pedophile to be offended when you see someone uselessly accusing someone else to be a pedophile. (but again, I would probably not have reacted, and have given the benefice of the doubt to the interlocutor, assuming they were unaware of the pejorative connotation)

To me, this set of words would already lean negative and imply someone hopelessly devoted to a specific country, not someone of that nationality, even if "Chinaman" didn't also already have a pejorative history.

It's a bit similar to how some people just posit that "The Ukraine" or "The Congo" is somehow pejorative just because most countries don't have a definite article.

The term that does exist, Chinaman, already has its own pejorative sense. It doesn't need that from me.

All I'm saying is that these other words (again, words that I didn't "make up," but also that nobody actually uses) would sound negative too, and are the actual parallels to the term in the parent's example.

By using the name of the country rather than the demonym for its inhabitants, it implies some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it, rather than a simple point of history about a person's ethnic heritage, over which the person had no control.

Not that any normal person thinks that there is anything negative with "some sort of preference for the country as country, to the degree that a person defines themselves by it". It's politically quite extreme to see that as "pejorative".

I'm having real trouble coming up with a single country that has the demonym "[Country name]man."

There is a meaningful difference between the name of a country and the term for someone from that country. The second is inherently neutral, because no one controls where they're born. The first connotes that someone defines themselves by their connection to the country as a country (or that the person calling them that sees that as their primary identity, subordinate to the identity of the country itself).

People who claim that "The Congo" is offensive don't say that because it's not the official name (which it is), I guess they just presume that there must be some colonial racist reason, and not just the fact that it's named after a river.

"Republic of the Congo", or "République du Congo" in French, "du" being a shortened form of "de le", "of the". Other French speaking republics just have "République de N".

Except it isn't. Not without "The Republic of ..." (or "The Democratic Republic of ..." if we're talking about that other much larger country the phrase usually refers to) in front. And given that there are two such countries -- there's absolutely no modern use case for "The Congo" as a country name in any case.

which is clearly untrue.

Yes, there are two Congos. Both of them have "the" in their official name:

-République du Congo (The smaller one, with Brazzaville)

-République démocratique du Congo (The larger one, with Kinchasa)

It is true that the official "Republic of the Congo" is typically shortened to just Congo" in everyday speech, my original point was just that there is nothing "racist" or colonial about say "The Congo". It is not called that as a slur because it's somehow lesser than e.g. Namibia, it is just that it's named after the Congo river. But I have heard many people who like to be offended have a vague idea that the "the" is somehow offensive because most countries don't have it.

As regards the river basin. When applied to the respective countries individually (and without the "Republic of" qualifier), which are after all the context we're talking about here (not the river basin) it has an entirely different connotation. And again, there's simply no modern use case for "The Congo", by itself, as a name for either of these countries.

Whatsoever.

What connotation is that exactly? Does "The Virgin Islands", or "The Hague" for that matter, also have that connotation in your mind?

I am again just saying that there is nothing racist about the "the" in "The Congo". It is just a natural way to shorten "Republic of the Congo". It might be unusual nowadays, but that does not mean that there is anything pejorative about "The".

"Use case" has nothing to do with it, nothing about language use is fully "rational" or "optimal". It is obviously _possible_ to make do without the article, but what I am getting at is the misdirected anger some people seem to feel towards it.

The connotation of intentionally ignoring their very, very, very clearly stated preference as to what their official name is. Neither of these countries refer to themselves as "The Congo" as such, and they've made it known that they would prefer that you not do so as well. That's all there is to it.

"Use case" has nothing to do with it,

Au contraire. Language is all about use cases.

It's use cases über alles, in fact.

And yet "Chinaman" is considered derogatory. If you believe the Wikipedia page, it has been considered so since at least 1965 in British English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinaman

You might not consider it logical for "Chinaman" to be considered derogatory when similarly structured words like "Frenchman" are not, but the reality is that if you use the term then you will be evoking the current meaning.

> and needs to stop

The point of the article is that you can't stop the euphemism treadmill, no matter how emphatically you request it.

A Dane, a Swede, a Norwegian (Norseman brings to mind beards and battle-axes), a German, a Welshman, a Luxembourger.

English is weird!

Source: An native English speaker of His Majesty the Kings English, not one of those weird leftpondian dialects :-)

It is usually easy to understand if you just look into it.