It's always interesting when things are upvoted to the front page but no comments. It makes to you think that this kind of article is resonating with people who are fearful of commenting because the conclusions would contradict a really powerful dogma in the community.
More like a lot of people find it interesting, feel completely unqualified to comment themselves, but are interested to see what Hacker News' resident experts in the subject have to say on the matter when they appear, as they unnervingly always seem to do.
There is a dogma in this community that is: success is all about perseverance and winning against adversity, independent of life circumstances. This article indicates that certain people will be, based on birthright, able to do that more effectively.
The other dogma, evident from the down votes and comments, is that there is no dogma in this community.
What if we just took birthright even further, by just replacing it with fate, assuming for the moment that everything is pre-decided?
I think that’s probably plausible, but it’s sort of besides the point because I there is no reason to believe that we can ever know this fate until it’s happened. Granted, in some contexts we are allowed to know this “fate”, and this context can just be replaced with “science”, or “the predictable things we know about our world”.
So bearing this all this in mind, if we took your idea even further - all the way to full on pre-destiny - I don’t see how it should change anything about our current world.
Basically, you might be right that there’s some kind of great master race sleeping amongst the rest of us, but it’s not really something that you get to “know”. Probably this dogma you speak of that people hold on to is because it’s just as plausible to believe in hard work as fate and no one really knows what to do, or else we’d all do it.
I’d add that even assuming that we can quantify birthrite to begin with, not to mention success, is basically starting from a false predicate. The world is manifold, shit happens, and any attempt to try and turn this stuff into inputs and outputs isn’t intellectually honest.
No, it makes YOU think this, because you have some fairly evident set of biases around dogma in the community.
I find THAT more interesting than why an article could get upvotes but the discussion might be delayed.
We all have biases. For example, when I read people who talk a lot about being fearful of contradicting community dogma, I tend to anticipate that they will be... Men who lean towards conspiracy theories involving women, minorities, and "the left" being in control of society and forming "witch hunts" and "mob justice," not to mention "cancelling people for wrongthink."
Of course, that has absolutely no bearing on who you may be and what you may believe. Recognizing my biases is the first step towards banishing them.
“De-platforming” and “safe spaces” exist and have been wielded against people who go against existing dogmas and codes of conduct. It is right to be worried about such things. Look at what happened to RMS. He even has a whole section on what gender pronouns to use on his personal webpage. Linus also came into disrepute. I wouldn’t call these men examples of the proverbial 4chan-frequenting incel as you seem to be implying.
I'm getting known as having biases, that's important to think about (that's what I interpret what you are saying). I'm a fan of your writing on Twitter and will definitely consider all you said here. For the record, I think my biases lean the exact opposite of what you say you would assume they are.
