[DoreenMichele]

It's generally a bad idea to assume that a specific person to whom you are replying is "representative" of some average you believe is true for a particular population. Furthermore, most people seem to have ideas about HN demographics that are inaccurate.

Here is one poll, fwiw, of where HN members live:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378

[bryanrasmussen]

You probably missed how I started off my statement with "that probably" they might be perceived of as rich by much of the world where $1,480 PPP dollars a month is the average.

Also the poll you linked would seem to agree with my position that much of HN is probably significantly above that wage point and might be thought of as rich.

Finally if you believe something is representative of a population and you are correct in that belief then statistics tells us that it is probably a good idea to assume that a specific person drawn from that group is most likely to possess that representative property. However to be polite you should probably start off with some words like "probably" to catch the outliers who do not possess the representative quality.

[DoreenMichele]

Story after story after story suggests that one of the biggest problems that "minority" groups have is being the woman or the black guy in charge at work and people assuming their white male underling is the boss because he's white and male and that's "the norm."

Erring on the side of betting that a specific individual is whatever you feel is "the norm" helps keep social problems alive.

In the US and many other countries, that amount of money doesn't constitute "rich." It will not pay your rent, make sure you eat etc. Acting like poor people in the US have it overall better than someone in some other country because they are American is a really lousy argument. It's a subtle way to dismiss the very real problems of a lot of people in developed countries.

The poll I linked to shows that HN has people from all over the world. People seem to think it's mostly programmers in California and New York and there are certainly plenty of people that fit that demographic. There are also lots of others who do not.

And every comment that asserts that if you are on HN, you must be a well-heeled programmer only makes it that much harder to everyone here who isn't such to express themselves effectively and feel comfortable representing a different point of view.

Your comment essentially is a personal attack on someone based on your opinions of the "averages" of this forum with no real data. And the more comments like that get to stand, the more likely it is that people who aren't well-heeled programmers from developed countries will feel silenced and unwelcome here. It doesn't make your assumptions true but it does make it more likely that they will appear to be true and that harms meaningful, constructive discussion.

Given the "scientific" framing of the guidelines and search for truth -- for something meaningful and real and how to have useful conversations about that -- which shapes discussion here, I think this is a really problematic thing to do.

[bryanrasmussen]

>The poll I linked to shows that HN has people from all over the world. People seem to think it's mostly programmers in California and New York and there are certainly plenty of people that fit that demographic. There are also lots of others who do not.

Almost all of the people self-reporting locations in the poll you linked to were from places where the average wage is significantly higher than $1488 PPP per month. When you count up how many people are coming from those places where the average wage is significantly higher than the average global PPP wage it is pretty highly concentrated people earning more than the global average.

Are there people who don't match that, sure, which is why I said probably. Probably evidently isn't a good enough word for you.

You also get lots of people on this site making significantly more than poor people the world over make who complain about their finances. To anyone making the average global wage I am unimaginably rich but I'm doing quite poorly from my own viewpoint.

Your high moral stature essentially means that kind of thing can't be discussed either.

[squigz]

Very well said. Thank you.