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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

on the other hand, burning man seems to select for people who want to win a darwin award, so i'm kind of surprised at the low death rate.

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Not really. Around 50% of attendees have graduate or doctorate degrees. It selects for people that are smart, curious, wealthy, and not risk-adverse. This is very obvious if you’ve ever been.

That is exactly the group i would expect to do stupid things. People with graduate degrees tend to be intellectually smart but not street smart. People who are wealthy tend to grow up being shielded from the consequences of their actions.

You make some wild generalisations there.

Can you back up your claims?

Have you actually been to Burning Man?

well, yes. That was the entire point of my original comment, that the data is not matching my biases, which surprised me.

I'd also point out that saying 50% of attendees are X doesn't really mean much. Hypothetically, If 0.1% of normal society take absurdly stupid risks, and 0.3% of burning man people take absurdly stupid risks, that would still be selecting for people who take absurd stupid risks.

would you expect that statistics would back you up on this? that people with graduate degrees are more likely to say, die in an accident?

That would be inconsistent with my comment, so no I would not expect that. (my bias would be that grad students on average lack street smarts, so those that engage in activities requiring street smarts would get into trouble. I would not expect the average grad student to be more likely to die in an accudent)

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