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Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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While I think the retardation you're talking about is genetic, a lot of other things that feel similar to retardation can be caused environmentally. Disease, severe head trauma, severe malnutrition, environmental poisoning. All bad things that if they happened to them, might happen to you if you get too close to them.

Human nature isn't a fine grained thing, it tends to over rather than under index its fears. Humans recoiling from the ill is something of an inchoate sense of germ theory of disease, or of a social order in which strong allies are valuable while weak allies are liabilities.

This is why so many heroic legends relate to carrying the ability to discern the secret abilities and importance of those who we reflexively recoil from.