Category: Stupid Questions

What is the possibility of my heritage being Scottish, if my DNA is 48% Welsh?

Hmmm…

Assuming it’s actually possible to separate Welsh DNA from Scottish or English DNA – not to mention Irish DNA – then … it’s hard to be sure.

The difficulty lies largely in determining the number of other nations – sovereign, non-sovereign, dependency, federation, territory (disputed or not). The usual figure of 193 regards the UK as one country, not 4. There’s a second figure of 250, which includes dependencies, but that still considers the UK as a single country, not 4.

So I’ll go with 300, which I freely agree is an under-estimate. Wales being one of the 300, if we subtract that we’re left with 299 other countries. Scotland is one option amongst that 299. The probability that the remaining 52% of your heritage is Scottish is therefore

p(Scottish)=1/(300–1), or 0.003.

You’re welcome!

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What is the psychology of not being good at writing novels?

Congratulations! You’ve won my first Idiotic Quora Question of 2022!

Astonishingly enough, in my decades of being a psychologist, I have never come across The Psychology Of Not Being Good At Writing Novels.

It must be in the same book as The Psychology Of Not Being Good At Making Soup, The Psychology Of Not Being Good At Left-Handed Wanking, and The Psychology Of Not Being Good At Writing Sincere Quora Questions.

Do the Irish feel British?

Yes I know most of them live in another country, but do they relate to British people?

Irish from the Irish Republic? definitely not.

Irish from Northern Ireland? if they’re nationalist/republican, definitely not. If they’re unionist/loyalist, then you’re into some interesting issues. Some definitely do feel British, but I’m not convinced they are in the majority.

Those who do feel British tend, IME, to be more fixated on the monarchy as a symbol of Protestantism and less on the nation, and many actually despise the British secretly for their ‘irreligious’ and ‘immoral’ behaviour – all that low church attendance, gay marriage and abortion, etc. Of the remainder, there’s more of an identification as Northern Irish or ‘Ulstermen/women’*, which, if anything, makes them more Irish than the Irish, as the people of Ulster have always considered themselves a race apart from the cattle-thieves and silk-wearing namby-pambies of the more southerly kingdoms. O’Donnell Abú, Faugh a ballagh, and all that.

* Yes, I know Northern Ireland is only six of the original 9 counties of Ulster. However, if Americans who couldn’t even find Ireland on a map can claim to be Irish, then I think there’s a strong case for Nordy bucks to call themselves Ulsterfolk.