Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ll one up you. I contend people here are simply average even in their domain of expertise, let alone anything outside of it. It’s not a special hideout for geniuses, it’s a generic forum not unlike Reddit. The only reason it appears the way that it does is via selective moderation.
I won’t argue with the point about not everyone being geniuses (I know a sample of one that isn’t). But the discussions here are still 100x more civil than all other alternatives. That, alone, makes it seem people are at least closer to the genius side of the spectrum.
On the other hand, what betrays this community as being not much more sophisticated than anywhere else is the low quality, trite, and reactionary comments (sometimes not even relevant to the information in the article) that don't get flagged or downvoted despite adding nothing to the discussion and having been repeated countless times in the same thread. It's clear people have strong biases and aren't afraid to air them out instead of discussing the posted content and they're supported by their peers who hold the same biases.
I started lurking here about 6 years ago and every year the comments have become more and more predictable (and not in a good way), exactly what I had noticed happening on Reddit until I stopped visiting because it had exhausted its usefulness to me.