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Comment by w-ll | Hacker News Reader

if i've learned anything in the last year... there might actually be a sizeable amount of people (who you might not interact with on daily basis) that actually deeply believe it

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My parents believe that Coliseum and Notre Dame weren't built by humans, so yeah pretty safe bet!

Who do they think built them?

Some kind of highly anthropomorphic non-human entity is highly popular throughout history.

ayylmaos?

Flavian Amphitheatre ("Colosseum"): Sasquatch Trolls.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris: A fragile temporary alliance of vampires and werewolves.

Obviously.

If you are taking about relative importance, then these people's voice will be negaliable compared to main stream views.

If you are talking about absolute number, then of course it could be substantial, but that's true for any situation, I.e., there are just more people there.

Haven't we learned anything when looking at America over the past 5 years? "Nobody important actually thinks that" becomes legitimate nationalistic pride.

Well, that's one thing I now point out often to American people (I was born and raised in China), American nationalism is not same as Chinese one. To some degree, Chinese nationalism went beyond the narrow view point already in the Mao era. Chinese people nowadays are very sensitive to nationalism topics, but they are also rational. I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better. That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be. So they are relatively adept in managing the sentiment.

"I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. It's that Chinese people have a conviction that they can do whatever other people can do, and probably can do some better"

Are you sure about this? Because if the view that humanity developed in china is still popular, despite strong dna evidence suggesting otherwise - I do see nationalistic skewing of facts here.

> humanity developed in china is still popular

Factually wrong statement

1. The claim was that Chinese were developed in the China land. Not humanity as a whole

2. People do not take such claim seriously.

Your statement appears that majority or at least large number of Chinese support this ridiculous claim.

> 2. People do not take such claim seriously.

This reads "I don't, and I assume others don't, too", which, again, America has proven even the most ridiculous of ideas are believed by _some_, and oftentimes _lots_ of people.

Isn't that need to considered in relative term? Some people showing certain behavior, when they are below certain percentage, just not going to affect the overall outlook of the nation. And we are talking about the national sentiment of China, comparably speaking, that applies to equally large scale sentiment in US. For example, there are a lot of people believe in flat earth theory, but that does not stand to be a US sentiment, one cannot claim that US people believe in flat earth. Same, one cannot claim Chinese people believe they are evolved from independent source than people living in other countries.

> For example, there are a lot of people believe in flat earth theory, but that does not stand to be a US sentiment,

Nobody but you in this thread is speaking in absolutes. _Some_ to _lots of_ US citizens believe the earth is flat.

> Same, one cannot claim Chinese people believe they are evolved from independent source than people living in other countries.

_Some_ to _lots of_ Chinese people _do_ believe this. You keep saying "Nobody actually thinks ___", which isn't true.

Never meant to say nobody actually think. I was saying it's ratio is very low. My English might not be precise.

> I never saw Chinese people disapprove facts for national pride. ... That's one benefit of tight propaganda control, as the CCP knows very well how powerful and uncontrollable the nationalism can be.

CCP propaganda has a long, terrible history, to the present day. They require compliance with it and hire people to spread it. The CCP regularly stirs up nationalism, for example over the Nine Dashed Line.

You prove my point, I.e., CCP can very well manage China's nationalism sentiment.

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