Comment by rotw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rotw | Hacker News Reader

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Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking. What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery. For people good at math, sciences and computing and other occupations considered "nerdy", capability in these fields and stereotypes of intelligence associated with them become a point of pride and they begin to identify with people far smarter than they are, despite actually being unexceptionally intelligent. HN has talented people, sure, but I think it's definitely fair to say there's a large population of people who flatter themselves thinking they're geniuses who regularly post, upvote, and comment on this kind of article with "me too!" sentiments. Pointing this out has nothing to do with the kids in this article, who are genuinely exceptional and certainly worthy of sympathy and nurturing.

>Your comment is exactly the attitude the person you were replying to was mocking.

What is being mocked is the attitude we should care for people? Think about that for a second.

>What that person saying is that a lot of reasonably intelligent people who are nowhere near geniuses like to think of themselves as geniuses as a form of narcissistic self-flattery.

Yet the parent comment didn't have that in it. How can the grandparent be mocking the parent if the grandparent is mocking those who chime in 'me too' while the parent doesn't do that?

The comment mocking the article and mocking HNers that have experienced it just proves the premise of the article.

And the article was about a minority population of vulnerable, at-risk children, some of whom go on to commit suicide.

And the top HN comment was mocking. Think about that for a second.

There are a lot of people that hate the gifted, just because of the way they were born. They relish the opportunity to take them down a notch.

Perhaps, but from a utilitarian standpoint, isn't that ultimately a good thing? If we agree that our society needs to improve the way it copes with and nurtures its extraordinarily gifted, then surely a wellspring of sympathy -- even if initially misguided -- from the merely intelligent is a step in the right direction. "Bright normals" tend to occupy the higher echelons of cultural influence in this country, and they certainly represent well in the higher income deciles. I'd argue they are the perfect advocates for those who may, in fact, be unable to advocate for themselves en masse. (Whether through extremely low numbers in the general population, or through being unable to connect on the same level as the gen-pop average.)

Actually Great GP "mocking" comment would have fit perfectly in a parody of HNers posts/comments. We keep seeing them from time to time, and LOL at them. But not as a top comment on a sensitive article about the problems of gifted children (a minority of a kind).

For that matter, even on posts of mental health issues, people comment and proclaim "me too", do you and GGP think, even there people are just trying to carve out an image out of vanity.

Simple fact is this, GGP's comment angered a lot of people - I too wrote few draft replies earlier and deleted them. But you comment, made me say, what the heck?

Actually, to such low value comments as that of the GGP. May be we should allow reddit like replies. You reap what you sow.

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