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Where are the people smarter than us hanging out?

In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?

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The highest-IQ group chat that I'm in was formed years ago for a group project in one of the PhD-level math classes that I took back in grad school. Afterwards, we became friends, and the channel was repurposed for shitposting, and occasionally talking about research. Coincidentally, most of us ended up in the same city by one means or another, and the chat survives to this day.

Overall I think it's extremely hard to judge people, even in real life, until you've seen their work.

so like econjobrumors