LogFAQs > #985810125

KingInBlack posted...

As for statistics, did you know there was an explosion in the population of left-handed people when teachers and priests stopped beating children who used their left hand? For ages left-handedness was considered "Satanic" and "unholy" and "wrong", so children were beaten until they switched hands. This makes it look like left-handedness didn't exist until a certain time period.

Oh, absolutely. You see people similarly insisting that there are "so many" queer people now because of some "gay agenda," seemingly oblivious to the fact that until relatively recently it was extremely common to assault and/or kill people who were openly queer. Assuming that there's some kind of positive selective force at work because the incidence of a given trait increases after removing the negative selective force that had been keeping the incidence down is really terribly silly, but it's also terribly common, especially among people who never experienced the negative selection first-hand and/or believe that it was a good thing.