# Population decline

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-decline/674416>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 21, 2013, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-decline/674416 "2013-11-21T08:11:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2013, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/population-decline/674416/11 "2013-11-21T15:08:54Z")

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> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> septimus, why did you reply to my post with your objection and not to all the other posts?

I like to debate ideas, and often ignore poster identities. Your response here seemed peculiar enough that it jogged my memory. You don’t like me.

> [@Some words have not changed for 15,000 years!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-words-have-not-changed-for-15-000-years/657761/40):
>
> septimus writes:
> 
> \> I am quite aware that most Amerindian specialists reject the Amerindian  
> \> hypothesis. (Note that they would have important career-related motives for  
> \> doing so.)
> 
> Oh, come on. You can’t do any better than “There’s obviously a conspiracy among the professionals in this field”? You’re claiming that the linguistics professors of the world who specialize in American Indian languages are a tightly-knit group who regularly get together to control the world? They are the ones responsible for wars, depressions, and, just incidentally, declarations that anyone who claims to have reconstructed the earliest forms of American Indian ancestral languages is a crank. Why did I ever leave the field thirty-six years ago? If I had stayed, you would all be bowing before me in terror.

I think this is one of the silliest and least appropriate responses that’s ever been directed against me at SDMB. I did respond to it in that thread, pointing out the charge of “career-related motives” was one made by linguists. I’m curious: Were you in a funny mood that day? Or do you still feel that your response was appropriate?

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