[reducesuffering]

You would be average if you actually thought this site doesn't have a selection bias out of the world population. If you think HN averages out to a middle of the pack student, people who spend their free time reading text, you have quite the social bubble around you. There's also like 25 $1b+ founder/ceo's out of 50k.

[paulcole]

Believe it or not the world has a lot of people who are above average whose lives don’t revolve around computers. There’s just as many losers here as anywhere.

[reducesuffering]

First part, of course, but since HN is only like 50k that doesn’t say much about HN.

Second part, there can forsure be many “losers” here but it’s quite ignorant to think there’s the same percentage struggling in math classes as the general population. Think about it. If you took 100 HN’ers where do you think they skew on succeeding on math tests or even taking classes like Calculus compared to gen pop? The average person even in the US doesn’t have a Bachelors degree. Do you think that applies to HN? Or that it’s not correlative with educational success?

[paulcole]

I never said anything about calculus or math.

I said that HN is mostly average students and I haven’t heard anything that changes my mind, regardless of whether you think a lot of people here are good at calculus. How do you think HN readers fared in art/literature/English classes?

[reducesuffering]

Pretty fucking good, actually. That's why we're here writing copious amounts of text, more Bachelor's (a big general education) than average, reading articles, and upvoting ACX posts, someone who was top of the top in English class writing competency.

[paulcole]

Agree to disagree, I guess.

I’d give you a B- or so if you turned in your comment as an essay, given the easy-to-spot sloppy error and other issues.

• Bachelor shouldn’t be capitalized unless it’s the full degree title like Bachelor of Arts

• Copius writing doesn’t mean good writing

• ACX should be explained the first time you use it

[reducesuffering]

All that just to typo copious too, sheesh. 15 second long HN comments hardly reflect the writing strength of putting arguments to an essay. Or I guess IRC (Internet Relay Chat) folks are illiterate. So again, maybe you are the average ones if you think it's indicative of HN's success in their English/lit classes.