Sometimes I really wonder what the crowd I interact with here on HN is really like. Are they true tech intellectuals, or are they people who wouldn't hesitate to hurl racial slurs if there wasn't the threat of being banned or flagged.
They're normal people - some of them good and some of them bad - some bright and some dim.
I'm not trying to be mean when I say this: don't kid yourself into thinking you're in a club with the cream of the crop, anywhere - you're just setting yourself up for disappointment in the best case and horror in the worst case.
People who think HN is specially smart are funny. They mistake active moderation by the community with intelligence when the registration form doesn't have an acceptance exam, so literally no reason to believe that.
I think very few people on this forum would qualify as intellectuals, most are just ordinary people. Now, some users certainly present themselves as Renaissance polymaths, but typically they just suffer from Engineer's Disease :)
Needless to say, even "intellectuals" can be racist.
> Needless to say, even "intellectuals" can be racist.
Not "even" intellectuals. Eugenics and racial superiority were progressive intellectual concepts less than 100 years ago, with people writing self-important letters to each other about it.
A couple of decades has taught me that there's no hard boundary between those two sets. The concept of "public intellectual" itself is a bit suspect, since it becomes just another form of celebrity and/or cult leader.
