The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.
You can shout fire in a crowded theater in the US anymore. (That is not to say that you're not going to be liable for any damages caused by it, after all, you can also drive a car, but it won't excuse you from any damages caused by your doing so.)
There is a big difference between refusing to support a repugnant moral position from the outside and "walking in and changing their policies by force". I do not at all advocate the latter, I advocate that when it comes to warrants in support of repugnant laws, Interpol simply stay hands off. Respectfully tell the requesting country they will have to find another channel of communication.
And who decides what these "repugnant laws" actually are? You act like morality is some sort of objective standard upon which anyone can readily just compare it to a list, and when it fails to match up, we can just reject it out of hand, but that's not the real world. Placing a burden upon Interpol to evaluate the worth of a warrant is just irresponsible, and will lead to animosity, and thus non-compliance.
Everything you've argued for in this debate has portrayed you as living in a fantasy world of readily-apparent black-and-white. And your suggested policy would very quickly ensure that Interpol would be a worthless agency that is tied up in red-tape, because every warrant passed on to it has to be evaluated, and confirmed before being disseminated. Thus, kidnappers and robbers, and murders would run away and it could take weeks or months for the warrants to pass through.
But then you've already stated a preference that if the person has fled the country, then they should be left alone. "Hurrah, they're gone, let's get on with life now." Which demonstrates perhaps why you're so interested in crippling Interpol. No one should be punished, they should just be deported. Hurrah, what a utopia!
If you're so in love with the ethics and morals, then get in your place woman and quit talking back to a man! Let me guess, you are right now ready to condemn my moral and ethical beliefs as inferior to your own, aren't you? For the record, I don't believe in a superior gender.
I never said that people can't judge the morals and ethical beliefs of others. Here is the difference: other countries are sovereign nations, and while I may judge their legal systems to be immoral, or unethical, I do not feel that I am justified in walking in and changing their policies by force.
Interpol has to live in the real world, and in the real world, the USA has not yet ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and continues to violate said Human Rights itself.
Life fucking sucks sometimes, and in order to ensure that other nations participate in Interpol, Interpol has to do its job without validating the worth or violation of every warrant. That job is appropriately left to the COURTS, not an executive agency.
Morals and ethics are everyone's job 24/7, no exceptions. We adhere to that or we are unethical. If we lend aid to unethical acts, we are unethical. Just following orders, that's the procedure, etc do not in any way excuse us from that. There isn't always a bright line between ethical and unethical, but executing someone for insulting a religious figure is well understood to be on the wrong side of that line in most of the western world today, and that is the world Interpol lives in.
And the idea of allowing people to willfully desecrate the name of Mohammad is just as strongly unethical to the Arab world, and other Muslim countries.
You act like the only worldview that matters is Western culture. Yet, they look at us with the same disdain. Suddenly now, you have us withdrawing from Interpol, them withdrawing from Interpol, and we no longer have a way to transmit warrants to countries that wold otherwise extradite people to our country. You know, because EUROPE WITHDREW FROM ANY SYSTEM THAT TRANSMITS MURDER WARRANTS FROM THE USA.
It's like you have your head so far up your ass that you can't see that restricting the system to suit YOUR personal morals creates a system where no one would ever work together, and the whole system would collapse. And now congratulations, no one has a method for distributing warrants internationally, and we return the world of "all I have to do is get out of the country, and I'm safe."
I suppose if the penalty was tickling, something no country or society in the world finds excessive, it might be a different matter, but that is not the case. The 'crime' is in insulting a long dead religious figure and the penalty is death, something that even the U.S. finds excessive for that "crime". Many of the other countries of the world find death an unacceptable penalty for any crime.
Right, but Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both agree that it's a suitable punishment. If they didn't have Interpol to distribute these warrants, then they would probably construct a "heresypol" or something like that in order to ensure that their warrants are distributed.
Interpol is not the US, and it is not Western Civilization. It's a neutral international organization, it is not their position to evaluate the suitability of warrants. Otherwise, they would likely decline to distribute murder warrants from the United States over our capital punishment system.
If you REALLY can't distinguish between tickling and execution, then we can never possibly come to a meeting of the minds.
Of course I can distinguish between tickling and execution, that was the whole point of the analogy, to make it bloody fucking obvious that the punishment is trivial, or excessive respectively. What one or more countries view as perfectly justified punishment (capital punishment for premeditated murder) can widely be considered wrongful or barbaric by another country. How is Interpol to decide if they should distribute warrants when no one can agree on what is excessive punishment, and what are valid crimes?
When you see the old movies about the holocaust, surely you don't cheer when the Jews are killed even though it was, in fact, the law and it was being upheld?
No, and I honestly don't think that this specific person should be turned over, but that's NOT INTERPOL'S JOB. It's the business of the two sovereign nations involved. I think it's atrocious on both parts that this person is likely going to be executed because Malaysia won't grant him asylum.
I would stand behind that decision. Why should the civilized world support barbarism? I guess if we wanted him badly enough, we'd just have to take the death penalty off the table.
Which is a matter for the country that he fled to and the US to decide.
However, let us now consider a hypothetical. Country A wants their citizen XY back from Country B. The crime is heresy, and the citizen shall be subjected to reeducation to (in the views of Country B) brainwash the citizen into believing in magical fairies again.
Country B considers the act the be barbaric, and thus Interpol should not fill the warrant?
What if Country A wanted the citizen back to punish him by tickling him, which Country B considers barbaric, in exception to every other country in the hypothetical world, each of which feel that the punishment is totally appropriate, and not barbaric. Should Interpol then refuse to spread the warrant because Country B considers the warrant to be barbaric?
At what point, and who gets to decide that the warrant is "barbaric" enough to not issue it? Recall, that if the US were to execute the warrant in the article, they would hold an extradition/asylum hearing and likely grant the individual asylum. Unluckily enough for this guy, he fled to a country that will likely honor the extradition because they agree that the charge and punishment is not barbaric.
What are you talking about? Who modded this up? This is completely, flat out, undeniably wrong. The very phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comes from a US Supreme Court case known as Schenck vs. United States, when justice Oliver Wendall Holmes used it as an example of speech that would not be protected if it was factually inaccurate (eg: you can still shout fire in a crowded theater and cause a panic/stampede that gets people hurt, but there _has_ to be a fire, you are not allowed to shout fire and cause the same harm if there is no fire).
Except you forgot about Brandenburg v. Ohio...
"Imminent lawless action" is a standard currently used, and that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), for defining the limits of freedom of speech. Brandenburg clarified what constituted a "clear and present danger", the standard established by Schenck v. United States (1917), and overruled Whitney v. California (1927), which had held that speech that merely advocated violence could be made illegal.
and
The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.
Meanwhile, in actuality, Interpol in this case is more like the homeowner that says "There they are" when the Nazis come looking for Jews. They did not just passively watch when evil took place, the actively played a part in facilitating it.
They also don't just sit passively and watch when good is taking place, they actively play a part in facilitating it.
Do people not understand blind application of the law in order to ensure that countries don't ignore you? If Interpol hadn't spread this warrant, what is to stop them from spreading a warrant for a person from the US that is wanted for first degree murder? I mean, the guy might be put to death, and a number of countries consider that to be barbaric and inhumane.
Interpol is a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good, and it can be used for bad. But the only way to ensure that it can always be used is if it blindly operates according to the laws that establish it.
It is not the purpose of Interpol to decide of extradition is warranted, or if the warrant should be executed. Their job is to spread all warrants that are sent to it in compliance with the treaties that establish it.
Fire is illegal because it gets people hurt in a panic.
It's not illegal everywhere. For instance, it's not illegal in the United States to yell "Fire!" even if it's in a crowded theater, and even if you know it will cause reckless injury to others. The standard in the US has been shifted to a call for "imminent lawless action". Yelling "let's riot!" or "let's go kill people!" to an angry crowd is illegal in the US, while yelling "fire!" is not. (If they actually do go and riot and kill people, all the worse that your speech did cause imminent lawless action. If the didn't, then well, evidence that your words didn't call for imminent lawless action...)
Malaysia is a Sharia law country, if you are fleeing from Muslim authorities this is the last kind of place you go.
What a sad choice that the guy made...:( I would hope that an extradition hearing would establish a clear case for asylum, but yeah. If you're fleeing a claim of apostasy, don't flee to a country that would equally dislike the heresy that you committed.:(
So they're "just following orders"? I seem to remember that being a bad thing.
Except Interpol distributing the warrant hasn't caused any harm. The guy will hopefully have an extradition hearing to see if he should be exported. I would hope that the extradition hearing would satisfy any necessary claim for asylum, and they can kill two birds with one stone on that matter.
This is more like the home owner who refuses to hide a family of Jews from the Nazis because it would be against the law. Sure, he's not doing the most moral thing he could, but at the same time, he's not actually complicit in the actions of the third party. (Unlike if he had turned them in.) It's a neutral moral act, rather than a negative one.
TFTFY. I am aware that anecdote is not valid rational argument. However counter-evidence to a theory need only be a set of one.
For instance, if I had a documented case where an apple fell upwards through no explanation of application of force currently explainable, that would serve as a sufficient counter example to our modern theory of fundamental forces.
I am however on the IQ scale a "genius",... Standardized tests regularly place me in the top 99%.
I thought them "geniuses" were supposed to be good at maths. Maybe the second claim was more accurate.
Indeed good at math, however spontaneous conversation contains errors, and not rereading your post can let them creep out for all to see. It should have read, "at the top, in the 99th percentile."
Luckily for you you don't have to memorize it, as the function of every key is written on them.
I don't imagine you tried the demo... it actually had the function of every key written on it as well. "Which one contains t... ok, now which one contains t... ok, oh, that one only has t left. Done! 't' has been entered!"
I believe the way we natives handle this is by associating each common phrase with the correct pattern, not by going through rules and lists of prepositions.
Eh... I'm a little against "pattern learning", but you're actually entirely right. You should train your mind to just come up with the correct answer, rather than going through a set of rules. What I laid out is totally the scientific examination of German grammar. Just like knowing how breathing works doesn't tell you how to do it, or that people that do breathe actually are aware of what they are doing.
All that said, people who are learning a second language as an adult often cannot break around the internalization of patterns that native speakers internalize. As a non-native German speaker, I oddly always (within native variance) pick the correct pattern, but often pick the wrong gender. All this despite me having an incredibly flexible language acquisition unlike most adults.
So, learn the rule, stuff it in the back of your head, for when you have to make sure that you're using proper German, and then try your best to just learn to talk it without thinking about it.
I'm happy that your personal experience marks you as an outlier. This does not alter the fact that folic acid supplements and breastfeeding should be encouraged. "Theory of the day" my arse.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be encouraged, indeed they should. However, that doesn't mean that they are the cause of more intelligent children.
As a result my daughter never learned to write in cursive
... and nothing of value was lost? I, nor anyone I know, has had any use for knowing this "skill."
I use this "skill" to read my mom's handwriting, as she still writes in cursive. Elegant cursive, since she had some 20 years teaching it to students behind her.
That said, in Germany, there are still people who write in Sütterlin, and cannot communicate in writing with their descendants. Cursive formats can make dramatically quick changes, and do not impact large parts of our society. (We already talk different from our grandparents, why not write differently as well?)
Instead of spending billions on the schools, maybe we should first spend 0.001% of that on folic acid supplements for pregnant women, and encouraging breast feeding. It would make a bigger difference.
Eh... I was born before folic acid supplements were common, and my mom was discouraged from breast feeding (long story, medical condition, her health was more important than any benefits from breast feeding). I am however on the IQ scale a "genius", and I regularly aced tests in education. Standardized tests regularly place me in the top 99%.
You seem to be to advancing a "theory of the day" as well that folic acid and breast feeding help. Meanwhile, as you noted, the parent's IQ has more correlation with the child's IQ than anything else. This could be because of genetic stock, but as well, just a whole culture and attitude about learning. A high IQ parent has both nature and nurture to maximize their child's IQ.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry that you speak a different dialect.
Apparently her name is Virginia Da Cunha, so just go to Google pictures and search for "Virginia Da Cunha racy photos" (warning: NSFW! )
The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.
You can shout fire in a crowded theater in the US anymore. (That is not to say that you're not going to be liable for any damages caused by it, after all, you can also drive a car, but it won't excuse you from any damages caused by your doing so.)
Wish I could forget about Natalie Portman, petrified, and covered in hot grits...
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
There is a big difference between refusing to support a repugnant moral position from the outside and "walking in and changing their policies by force". I do not at all advocate the latter, I advocate that when it comes to warrants in support of repugnant laws, Interpol simply stay hands off. Respectfully tell the requesting country they will have to find another channel of communication.
And who decides what these "repugnant laws" actually are? You act like morality is some sort of objective standard upon which anyone can readily just compare it to a list, and when it fails to match up, we can just reject it out of hand, but that's not the real world. Placing a burden upon Interpol to evaluate the worth of a warrant is just irresponsible, and will lead to animosity, and thus non-compliance.
Everything you've argued for in this debate has portrayed you as living in a fantasy world of readily-apparent black-and-white. And your suggested policy would very quickly ensure that Interpol would be a worthless agency that is tied up in red-tape, because every warrant passed on to it has to be evaluated, and confirmed before being disseminated. Thus, kidnappers and robbers, and murders would run away and it could take weeks or months for the warrants to pass through.
But then you've already stated a preference that if the person has fled the country, then they should be left alone. "Hurrah, they're gone, let's get on with life now." Which demonstrates perhaps why you're so interested in crippling Interpol. No one should be punished, they should just be deported. Hurrah, what a utopia!
If you're so in love with the ethics and morals, then get in your place woman and quit talking back to a man! Let me guess, you are right now ready to condemn my moral and ethical beliefs as inferior to your own, aren't you? For the record, I don't believe in a superior gender.
I never said that people can't judge the morals and ethical beliefs of others. Here is the difference: other countries are sovereign nations, and while I may judge their legal systems to be immoral, or unethical, I do not feel that I am justified in walking in and changing their policies by force.
Interpol has to live in the real world, and in the real world, the USA has not yet ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and continues to violate said Human Rights itself.
Life fucking sucks sometimes, and in order to ensure that other nations participate in Interpol, Interpol has to do its job without validating the worth or violation of every warrant. That job is appropriately left to the COURTS, not an executive agency.
Morals and ethics are everyone's job 24/7, no exceptions. We adhere to that or we are unethical. If we lend aid to unethical acts, we are unethical. Just following orders, that's the procedure, etc do not in any way excuse us from that. There isn't always a bright line between ethical and unethical, but executing someone for insulting a religious figure is well understood to be on the wrong side of that line in most of the western world today, and that is the world Interpol lives in.
And the idea of allowing people to willfully desecrate the name of Mohammad is just as strongly unethical to the Arab world, and other Muslim countries.
You act like the only worldview that matters is Western culture. Yet, they look at us with the same disdain. Suddenly now, you have us withdrawing from Interpol, them withdrawing from Interpol, and we no longer have a way to transmit warrants to countries that wold otherwise extradite people to our country. You know, because EUROPE WITHDREW FROM ANY SYSTEM THAT TRANSMITS MURDER WARRANTS FROM THE USA.
It's like you have your head so far up your ass that you can't see that restricting the system to suit YOUR personal morals creates a system where no one would ever work together, and the whole system would collapse. And now congratulations, no one has a method for distributing warrants internationally, and we return the world of "all I have to do is get out of the country, and I'm safe."
I suppose if the penalty was tickling, something no country or society in the world finds excessive, it might be a different matter, but that is not the case. The 'crime' is in insulting a long dead religious figure and the penalty is death, something that even the U.S. finds excessive for that "crime". Many of the other countries of the world find death an unacceptable penalty for any crime.
Right, but Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both agree that it's a suitable punishment. If they didn't have Interpol to distribute these warrants, then they would probably construct a "heresypol" or something like that in order to ensure that their warrants are distributed.
Interpol is not the US, and it is not Western Civilization. It's a neutral international organization, it is not their position to evaluate the suitability of warrants. Otherwise, they would likely decline to distribute murder warrants from the United States over our capital punishment system.
If you REALLY can't distinguish between tickling and execution, then we can never possibly come to a meeting of the minds.
Of course I can distinguish between tickling and execution, that was the whole point of the analogy, to make it bloody fucking obvious that the punishment is trivial, or excessive respectively. What one or more countries view as perfectly justified punishment (capital punishment for premeditated murder) can widely be considered wrongful or barbaric by another country. How is Interpol to decide if they should distribute warrants when no one can agree on what is excessive punishment, and what are valid crimes?
When you see the old movies about the holocaust, surely you don't cheer when the Jews are killed even though it was, in fact, the law and it was being upheld?
No, and I honestly don't think that this specific person should be turned over, but that's NOT INTERPOL'S JOB. It's the business of the two sovereign nations involved. I think it's atrocious on both parts that this person is likely going to be executed because Malaysia won't grant him asylum.
I would stand behind that decision. Why should the civilized world support barbarism? I guess if we wanted him badly enough, we'd just have to take the death penalty off the table.
Which is a matter for the country that he fled to and the US to decide.
However, let us now consider a hypothetical. Country A wants their citizen XY back from Country B. The crime is heresy, and the citizen shall be subjected to reeducation to (in the views of Country B) brainwash the citizen into believing in magical fairies again.
Country B considers the act the be barbaric, and thus Interpol should not fill the warrant?
What if Country A wanted the citizen back to punish him by tickling him, which Country B considers barbaric, in exception to every other country in the hypothetical world, each of which feel that the punishment is totally appropriate, and not barbaric. Should Interpol then refuse to spread the warrant because Country B considers the warrant to be barbaric?
At what point, and who gets to decide that the warrant is "barbaric" enough to not issue it? Recall, that if the US were to execute the warrant in the article, they would hold an extradition/asylum hearing and likely grant the individual asylum. Unluckily enough for this guy, he fled to a country that will likely honor the extradition because they agree that the charge and punishment is not barbaric.
What are you talking about? Who modded this up? This is completely, flat out, undeniably wrong. The very phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comes from a US Supreme Court case known as Schenck vs. United States, when justice Oliver Wendall Holmes used it as an example of speech that would not be protected if it was factually inaccurate (eg: you can still shout fire in a crowded theater and cause a panic/stampede that gets people hurt, but there _has_ to be a fire, you are not allowed to shout fire and cause the same harm if there is no fire).
Except you forgot about Brandenburg v. Ohio...
"Imminent lawless action" is a standard currently used, and that was established by the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), for defining the limits of freedom of speech. Brandenburg clarified what constituted a "clear and present danger", the standard established by Schenck v. United States (1917), and overruled Whitney v. California (1927), which had held that speech that merely advocated violence could be made illegal.
and
The First Amendment holding in Schenck was later overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). The test in Brandenburg is the current High Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to proscribe speech after that fact. Despite Schenck being limited, the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has since come to be known as synonymous with an action that the speaker believes goes beyond the rights guaranteed by free speech, reckless or malicious speech, or an action whose outcomes are blatantly obvious.
Malaysia is full of holidaying saudi people, so this was a fairly obvious choice. Additionally there are lots of flights between those two countries.
Sure, fast getaway... makes sense. However, still unfortunate. :(
Is there actually a law that requires Interpol to pass such warrants through, regardless of their content?
Please read the Anonymous Coward post directly above your own.
Meanwhile, in actuality, Interpol in this case is more like the homeowner that says "There they are" when the Nazis come looking for Jews. They did not just passively watch when evil took place, the actively played a part in facilitating it.
They also don't just sit passively and watch when good is taking place, they actively play a part in facilitating it.
Do people not understand blind application of the law in order to ensure that countries don't ignore you? If Interpol hadn't spread this warrant, what is to stop them from spreading a warrant for a person from the US that is wanted for first degree murder? I mean, the guy might be put to death, and a number of countries consider that to be barbaric and inhumane.
Interpol is a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good, and it can be used for bad. But the only way to ensure that it can always be used is if it blindly operates according to the laws that establish it.
It is not the purpose of Interpol to decide of extradition is warranted, or if the warrant should be executed. Their job is to spread all warrants that are sent to it in compliance with the treaties that establish it.
Fire is illegal because it gets people hurt in a panic.
It's not illegal everywhere. For instance, it's not illegal in the United States to yell "Fire!" even if it's in a crowded theater, and even if you know it will cause reckless injury to others. The standard in the US has been shifted to a call for "imminent lawless action". Yelling "let's riot!" or "let's go kill people!" to an angry crowd is illegal in the US, while yelling "fire!" is not. (If they actually do go and riot and kill people, all the worse that your speech did cause imminent lawless action. If the didn't, then well, evidence that your words didn't call for imminent lawless action...)
Malaysia is a Sharia law country, if you are fleeing from Muslim authorities this is the last kind of place you go.
What a sad choice that the guy made... :( I would hope that an extradition hearing would establish a clear case for asylum, but yeah. If you're fleeing a claim of apostasy, don't flee to a country that would equally dislike the heresy that you committed. :(
So they're "just following orders"? I seem to remember that being a bad thing.
Except Interpol distributing the warrant hasn't caused any harm. The guy will hopefully have an extradition hearing to see if he should be exported. I would hope that the extradition hearing would satisfy any necessary claim for asylum, and they can kill two birds with one stone on that matter.
This is more like the home owner who refuses to hide a family of Jews from the Nazis because it would be against the law. Sure, he's not doing the most moral thing he could, but at the same time, he's not actually complicit in the actions of the third party. (Unlike if he had turned them in.) It's a neutral moral act, rather than a negative one.
Geniuses make typos, too.
Nice sample set of 1 there, Mrs Genius.
TFTFY. I am aware that anecdote is not valid rational argument. However counter-evidence to a theory need only be a set of one.
For instance, if I had a documented case where an apple fell upwards through no explanation of application of force currently explainable, that would serve as a sufficient counter example to our modern theory of fundamental forces.
I am however on the IQ scale a "genius", ... Standardized tests regularly place me in the top 99%.
I thought them "geniuses" were supposed to be good at maths. Maybe the second claim was more accurate.
Indeed good at math, however spontaneous conversation contains errors, and not rereading your post can let them creep out for all to see. It should have read, "at the top, in the 99th percentile."
Luckily for you you don't have to memorize it, as the function of every key is written on them.
I don't imagine you tried the demo... it actually had the function of every key written on it as well. "Which one contains t... ok, now which one contains t... ok, oh, that one only has t left. Done! 't' has been entered!"
Unless my life depended on it, I doubt I could ever train myself to use 32+ memorized "chords" to type all of the letters and numbers.
Unless my life depended upon it, I doubt I could ever train myself to use a 101+ key keyboard...
I believe the way we natives handle this is by associating each common phrase with the correct pattern, not by going through rules and lists of prepositions.
Eh... I'm a little against "pattern learning", but you're actually entirely right. You should train your mind to just come up with the correct answer, rather than going through a set of rules. What I laid out is totally the scientific examination of German grammar. Just like knowing how breathing works doesn't tell you how to do it, or that people that do breathe actually are aware of what they are doing.
All that said, people who are learning a second language as an adult often cannot break around the internalization of patterns that native speakers internalize. As a non-native German speaker, I oddly always (within native variance) pick the correct pattern, but often pick the wrong gender. All this despite me having an incredibly flexible language acquisition unlike most adults.
So, learn the rule, stuff it in the back of your head, for when you have to make sure that you're using proper German, and then try your best to just learn to talk it without thinking about it.
I'm happy that your personal experience marks you as an outlier. This does not alter the fact that folic acid supplements and breastfeeding should be encouraged. "Theory of the day" my arse.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be encouraged, indeed they should. However, that doesn't mean that they are the cause of more intelligent children.
As a result my daughter never learned to write in cursive
... and nothing of value was lost? I, nor anyone I know, has had any use for knowing this "skill."
I use this "skill" to read my mom's handwriting, as she still writes in cursive. Elegant cursive, since she had some 20 years teaching it to students behind her.
That said, in Germany, there are still people who write in Sütterlin, and cannot communicate in writing with their descendants. Cursive formats can make dramatically quick changes, and do not impact large parts of our society. (We already talk different from our grandparents, why not write differently as well?)
Instead of spending billions on the schools, maybe we should first spend 0.001% of that on folic acid supplements for pregnant women, and encouraging breast feeding. It would make a bigger difference.
Eh... I was born before folic acid supplements were common, and my mom was discouraged from breast feeding (long story, medical condition, her health was more important than any benefits from breast feeding). I am however on the IQ scale a "genius", and I regularly aced tests in education. Standardized tests regularly place me in the top 99%.
You seem to be to advancing a "theory of the day" as well that folic acid and breast feeding help. Meanwhile, as you noted, the parent's IQ has more correlation with the child's IQ than anything else. This could be because of genetic stock, but as well, just a whole culture and attitude about learning. A high IQ parent has both nature and nurture to maximize their child's IQ.