[hackrmn]

Between the genuine weirdos, the autistic and/or the neuro-divergent, is there anyone left, really? Do the "normies" genuinely exist? Happy-go-lucky, knows a bit about everything but doesn't nerd out on anything, picks up every conversation subject and listens and holds their own in a manner that is just right? I am genuinely curious about the existence of these "superhumans".

[munificent]

There are many many of these socially-skilled normies. But, by virtue of being socially skilled, most have already pretty much filled up their social capacity and don't tend to show up at the kind of venues dedicated to helping under-socialized people meet up.

[xpe]

While there is often a "normal" (bell-curve fitting) distribution for individual factors, putting them together can be counter-intuitive.

> Even when considering just three dimensions, fewer than 5% of pilots were “average” in all. [1]

I would guess many/most people probably think they fall into either (1) the normal bucket or (変) the weird/fringe bucket. Either "I am pretty normal" or "I am an outsider". How many think "We're all fairly different once you cluster in any 3 interesting dimensions!"?

But people feel that dichotomy, which makes me think it is largely about perception relative to a dominant culture: the in-group versus out-group feeling. For example, atheists might feel like outsiders in many parts of the U.S., but less so in big cities and in other countries. In dense urban walkable cities (like NYC), people see diversity more directly and more often. Seeing a bunch of people is different than seeing a bunch of cars.

[1]: From "Curse of Dimensionality: Lessons from the U.S. Air Force Cockpit Design" by Maciej Nasinski (2025): https://polkas.github.io/posts/cursedim/

[shiroiuma]

I think it should be fairly easy to determine if atheists really are outsiders in parts of the US or if it's just perception: just look at voting results, and church attendance for any given area. I don't think it's merely perception at all; visit any rural area and you'll likely see a surprising number of churches relative to the population.

Also, seeing people walking around in public doesn't tell you anything about their religious beliefs unless they're in some sect where they make it obvious with their clothing or hairstyle.

[xpe]

> just look at voting results

"Just"? How would you build a predictive model that inferred aggregate individual qualities such as "% atheists" based on voting results? That would be a rather indirect and distorted path for estimation. There are better ways.

[shiroiuma]

It's not a great way, admittedly, but there is a very high correlation between Republican voters and religiosity. Very high turnout for Republican candidates plus lots of active churches in an economically-poor area I think is a reliable indication that atheism in that area is low.

[croemer]

Curious how that character 変 made it in there. Is that a typo for 2?

[timr]

it's a Japanese word for "weird". I'm guessing that OP is a bit of an Otaku (aka "obsessed with Japan") -- which is either ironic or completely appropriate.

[xpe]

I thought it would be weird to replace (b) with something, so I decided to search for characters from other languages.

[malnourish]

I thought it was an aposite joke. A, "you're local weirdo, or you, might count in a foreign language".

[AussieWog93]

My first thought was that they were an LLM, but then checking their profile it seems they've been around since 2012 and have a comment expressing that they seem to get accused of being an LLM a lot, and suggesting people don't do that.

[unsupp0rted]

Any sufficiently interesting person eventually gets accused of being an AI. Quite soon these accusations will nearly always be accurate.

[xpe]

> Quite soon these accusations will nearly always be accurate.

/headscratching They don't have to be, do they? It is possible that some people will build identity systems with norms that e.g. humans type with their own hands. These could become popular, at least conceivably, in certain areas. Hard to enforce for sure. And getting harder and harder to distinguish reliably.

[loloquwowndueo]

> Between the genuine weirdos, the autistic and/or the neuro-divergent, is there anyone left, really?

Heh this has a total “nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” vibe.

[Gigachad]

The "normie" doesn't really exist. Everyone is kind of weird in some aspect, which might not be obvious on a surface level.

But having gone to a bunch of programming meetups, the majority of people are perfectly pleasant and good to socialise with. The weirdos are usually non tech people who have an app or crypto idea they want help with. Or just total crazy people who just showed up to the first event they could find regardless of topic.

[joewhale]

that describes me but i would never say i'm a "superhuman". I feel like i'm a boring glue guy.

[itake]

People new to cities look for community.

[Havoc]

The OGs in the group tend to be well adjusted normal people. ie the people that started the group