Hacker News Reader

Well that's what we would like to think of ourselves.

That's covered by "self-selected."

Self-identified seems more fitting?

HN is maybe 1.5 standard deviations above mean, which is a very dangerous place to be.

No, everyone on HN likes to think they're at least 1.5 std from the mean (when in reality they're below that). Very different from actually being 1.5 std from the mean. This is an even more dangerous place to be.

1.5 std is only 120-125 IQ

Makes sense. Someone on HN is typically average. Everyone likes to think of themselves as slightly more intelligent, but the reality is... most people are average... including the modern programmer.

I would say that in the past... the average IQ for programmers was higher.

> HN readers are self selected high cognitive ability people.

Tech literate maybe, but if we judge from the deplorable quality content of the front page the past 1.5 year...

Unless editorialized titles and 2500-word essays on CRUD are what high cognitive ability people are into now!

I am aware there are exceptions to this, which is the reason I joined the site, but I've become disappointed over time to see that they are indeed a minority.