[ohsnap]

Not sure what world you live in but I have never heard students argue in favor of African Americans having heritable lower intelligence. Such a discussion would instantly be shamed and publicized. Pretty sure your making this up.

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10445181 and marked it off-topic.

[plonh]

Been seeing this announcement frequently recently. Thank you!

Of course, you could also collapse subthreads automatically (like reddit) when a comment gets downvoted very low) instead of policing manually.

[tptacek]

"Pretty sure you're making this up" is no way to argue, let alone be taken seriously, on HN.

[ohsnap]

when someone uses a personal experience to bolster an argument, it is appropriate for someone to question the validity of how likely it is. It's not an ad hominem or a personal attack.

[InclinedPlane]

It is an extremely common argument. A few years back a book called "The Bell Curve" came out which put forward that argument.

[ohsnap]

was in 1994. I wouldn't call it common. Though occasionally Andrew Sullivan would comment in this area.

Regardless, I think the parent post was just exaggerating some hypothetical conversation in class to improve his/her argument. The probably of students arguing in class that some of their classmates are genetically inferior is highly unlikely. And if they did the probability of it not causing a massive twitter shit storm is close to 0.