It's fascinating to watch Hanania try and do politics in a comment space more focused on academic inquiry, and how silly he looks here. He can't participate in this conversation without trying to make it about social interventions and class warfare (against the poor), even though I don't know that Bessis would disagree that the thing social interventions can't significantly increase the number of mathematical or scientific geniuses in a country (1). Instead, Hanania throws out a few brief, unsupported arguments, gets asked for clarification and validation, accuses everyone of being woke, and gets basically ignored as the conversation continues around him.

This feels like the kind of environment that Siskind and friends claim to be wanting to create, but it feels like they're constitutionally incapable of actually doing the "ignore Nazis until they go away" part.

1. From his other post linked in the thread he credits that level of aptitude to idiosyncratic ways of thinking that are neither genetically nor socially determined, but can be cultivated actively through various means. The reason that the average poor Indian boy doesn't become Ramanujan is the same reason you or I or his own hypothetical twin brother didn't; we're not Ramanujan. This doesn't mean that we can't significantly improve our own ability to understand and use mathematical thinking.)