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Comment by daveslash | Hacker News Reader

The people who hang out here on HN probably have more complexity to their personalities than your "average Joe/Jane". We're probably the outliers to the statistical model - and my guess is that we'd all be surprised how accurate Pandora's insights are for the general public.

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> The people who hang out here on HN probably have more complexity to their personalities than your "average Joe/Jane"

I think that statement is a load of crap and elitist. You're not more complex than the rest, you just gloss over their complexity since it is not in your frame of reference.

so do I!! Wow, I would likely argue quite the opposite is true, hackers are generally deficient in many other areas. Complexity comes in many forms, and just having an affinity for highly deterministic systems (computers) is likely a feature vector of diminished complexity. But very likely that's also crap.

someone else said it nicer, but herd mentality describes many who think they are special. The user of sites similar to this become painfully predictable. There are those on the extreme to one side or another, but the rest are herd animals basically typing long winded "ME TOOS"

I think if you go to any web forum you'll get people saying similar things about themselves vs. "the general public."

People do tend to think this way, but when applied to the topic that the forum is built around, this line of thinking is probably accurate.

People on HN are probably more tech-savvy than the general population. People on DefensiveCarry are probably more CCW-savvy than the general population. People on /r/Seinfeld probably tend to be some of the show's/comedian's biggest fans.

I understand and agree that the claim that we have more "complex personalities" is a little suspect, but a lot of these sorts of claims probably have something to them.

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