Comment by egeozcan
4 years ago
> The average IQ sample here is higher (period).
If you asked me, that'd be my guess as well, but saying it such a way that it projects hopelessness for the rest of the humanity is a bit too much :)
Narcissism is dangerous as it tends to create and feed extremist communities. For an example, see any political forum full with extremists (these days it's hard to find any without) and observe how often they call themselves intelligent (or woke, or whatever fancy words they use to work around the obviousness of self-flattery).
I get what you are saying, but there are a couple of points that make this different..
First, of course is a subjective experience and therefore prone to error, but i came to this conclusion by observing this community over a long period of time.
Second, the communities you mention have mostly common ideological guidelines and goals, working like a cult or a religion. Therefore there's this feeling of belonging. HN is far away from that as people here have all sorts of different beliefs, background, etc. It's an heterogeneous community that will hardly agree on anything.
There's also no sense of belonging here, to a group, or a brand. etc..
There's no HNer, not a club, or have a card in the sorts of "Mensa" that you would proudly show to tell how smart you are.. as most of us are anonymous here.
So i don't think the patterns apply here. I think some people spend too much time on toxic social networks and suddenly start to see 33 all over even when the number is 21, because his neurons are seeing the same pattern too many times with these algorithms that are optimized to turn us all into neurotics.