[nforgerit]

German here. It's actually true that you see a lot of "public intellectuals" that publicly tell how bad they were at math.

I only realized that when Merkel as chancellor back in Covid times, after numerous meetings with other politicians and non-scientists, found herself explaining exponential growth on a press conference with her fingers.

Not sure about the 1970s hypothesis, though.

[KingOfCoders]

German here. Grew up in the 70s with anti-intellectual TV-shows (like Rappelkiste).

[48864w6ui]

Despite that Germany did manage to elect a p-chemist as BK.