Comment by fab13n | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fab13n | Hacker News Reader

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> a world-class brain surgeon can believe that the pyramids were constructed to store grain

Carson is a world-class surgeon trying to convince whatever subset of the Republicans (a) can decide the outcome of the primary and (b) aren't already secured by Trump.

He probably says whatever nonsense he thinks will please rednecks with a 90 IQ and an sinking feeling that "their" country and its core values are being pulled from under their feet.

And I can understand if he's a hard time empathising with people who think that >6k years ago, when pyramids where built, the Earth didn't even exist.

TL;DR: I think/hope he's failing at understanding plebeians, not Life. It might be wishful thinking because I don't want to live in a world where someone could be both so smart and so dumb.

This isn't a new position for him, unfortunately. Here's a link to a video[0] of him in 1998 explaining it at a commencement speech.

I guess this could be taken out of context, and he's actually just being sarcastic, but I don't think so.

[0] http://www.buzzfeed.com/natemcdermott/ben-carson-egyptian-py...

And I can understand if he's a hard time empathising with people who think that >6k years ago, when pyramids where built, the Earth didn't even exist.

I think he's one of those people, actually. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ben-c...

The problem is that you assume people who feel their country and its core values are being pulled are necessarily 90 IQ rednecks. There are a lot of intelligent socially conservative people. One who can't admit that is brainwashed.

> you assume [conservative] people are necessarily 90 IQ rednecks.

I don't; I assume that the "90 IQ redneck" subset of conservative voters are the ones worth trying to seduce, according to GOP candidates. Because that's whom their political speeches and positions seem targeted towards.

I guess that's because there are many of them, and until recently they've been easier to influence. I must admit there's a bit of shadenfreude in seeing Trump out-rednecking the GOP elite at the game they invented for themselves.

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