There are many things that a given individual believes which are ‘heterodox’ in their social circle. For example, I have long thought that intelligence tests are predictive of life outcomes, and somewhat heritable in a genetic sense (these are both true, the objection of skeptics usually rests on the fact that they are skeptical of the construct itself). As I have explained here before I did not always hold to these views. Rather, when I was in seventh grade a teacher who mentored me somewhat took me aside after class, and suggested that perhaps some of my slower classmates were not quite as lazy as I obviously presumed (I tended to get impatient during mandatory group projects). When I was 5 years old and starting kindergarten my command of English was rather weak, and my mother explained to me that Americans were a very smart people. By the end of the year I was excelling. Throughout my elementary school years I frankly had a smugness about me, because I accepted what my parents told me, that academic outcome is a function of the virtue of effort. And I had quite a bit of virtue if the results were any gauge.
But …