Hacker News Reader

top 1% would be such way out of range. top 0.0001% would still not make it justice.

Yes - probably a lot of regular commenters on HN are among the top 1% in intelligence.

Maybe top 1% of thinking they are ;)

1 out of every million... Yeah, that sounds about right to me as an actual lower bound.

Not sure if you’re being facetious? There were not 100 people of the same calibre as JvN in the US or even the world surely.

JvN, the finished product, probably you're right.

But of the people born with his tools? How many were born into a setting that even cared for intellectual things? How many of them would be born into a wealthy family that could afford to hire private tutors for all their kids?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com