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Poll: How Old Are You?
- Freeaqingme 4y agoI wonder if the moment this poll was published has any impact on its results. I.e., if it was published on a Tuesday during business hours would there be a different audience than the people reading HN over the weekend?
- loceng 4y agoFollowed by a "How Old Do You Feel?" poll?
- autotune 4y agoI am 30 but still feel 25. My dad is in his 60s but also still feels like he is 25. Lol.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoI've felt about 55 since I was 15.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qeternity 4y ago> 105-255 > 2 points Why am I not surprised.
- ShivShankaran 4y ago
- dsr_ 4y agoIn any survey of humans, there will be some small percentage of the responders who are in a mood to just tweak the system. Distinguishing them from people who genuinely hold marginal beliefs (fake moon landing, flat earth) or even from people who socially adopt positions that they don't really believe (Jesus is returning in 2032, Kim Il Sung is guiding our leadership to victory) is often difficult.
- user_7832 4y agoI wonder if HN would benefit from a [serious] tag the way some subreddits use it. Though, if OP could give a longer description of why they're running such a poll (I guess to see the demographics) I would expect more people to answer seriously rather than give low effort/joke responses.
- sph 4y agoNAK. Hacker News is pretty serious compared to most social media, and I love that. Which makes some rare harmless comments or posts like this one actually good to encounter once in a while. The seriousness-to-joke ratio of this site is just perfect in my opinion.
- user_7832 4y agoOh yeah I definitely agree that the jokes here are quite tolerable compared to most/all other sites. It's just that a lot of joke answers early on in the life of a post may make other users who may otherwise seriously respond, look at the responses and go "Aah it's a joke post/it's filled with joke responses, better not waste my time". Consequently the post may not see many upvotes and die out quickly. In comparison, a post like this has the potential to easily get a few 100 upvotes with good discussions on the (changing/constant etc) demographics. But if a lot of initial responses are jokey in nature we may lose out on that.
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoWhy did the 105 year old chicken cross the road? To do a second upvote.
- sph 4y agoFair enough. But I think in generals polls need a fake answer for bots, trolls or they will contaminate the other results further. See the reference to the Lizardman's Constant someone linked elsewhere in this thread.
- 4y ago
- jl6 4y agoIKR, what a waste of an 8th bit, when a 7-bit integer would have met the requirements. Software bloat has reached new extremes.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIf you give people power, they'll use it to fuck with it. - Boaty McBoat Face
- BLKNSLVR 4y agoFrom The Catcher in the Rye: > If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the “Fuck you” signs in the world. It’s impossible. > It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another “Fuck you.” It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. I think that's also the point that J. D. Salinger may have been trying to make here. Peace is a good, well constructed, true and correct data set. There is no peace. One must always correct for the lack of peace.
- gruez 4y ago"Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%" https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and... edit: as of right now 105-255 is sitting at 3.6%, which is pretty close to the constant of 4%.
- sph 4y agoProbably u8 underflow from time travelers and unborn babies visiting the site.
- Beltalowda 4y agoI think it's all the humans in reptile shape that can live up to 250 years old filling in their real age. Proof David Icke is right!
- photochemsyn 4y agoEveryone's converting to Greenland shark years. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37047168 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37047168
- bediger4000 4y agoIs this the "lizardman constant" showing up?
- narag 4y agoWhy am I not surprised. That's the "you insensitive clod" option.
- dan-robertson 4y agoWell a similar thing happened with roughly the same poll like 10 years ago. Moderation on this site has improved but it’s still grown a lot and there aren’t really consequences for lying here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
- DangitBobby 4y agoIt's a big enough age range so people probably think it's a joke answer. And because you can vote multiple times, there's no harm in voting it.
- sph 4y agoThe fact that the ranges aren't equal makes it pretty useless to parse, unless entered in a spreadsheet later, and I couldn't be bothered to do that. There's no reason to have one category for the 5 years 16-20, and the most common age group of Internet savvy working age adults to be lumped in two 10 year "26-35" and "36-45" ranges. Oh well. It's just for fun I guess.
- awb 4y agoI could understand smaller age ranges for younger folks because they’re developing at a more rapid pace. For example 30-40 age range would group together people with relatively similar life experiences, but a 10-20 age range would not.
- sph 4y agoSure, but this is a forum for entrepreneurs and software engineers, it does not target the world demographic. To be honest, I don't understand what "they develop faster" means either. One year of age is objectively the same length whether you're 10 or 90. What has growth speed and brain development got to do with anything?
- dqpb 4y ago> One year of age is objectively the same length whether you're 10 or 90. A 20yo is 100% older than a 10yo. But a 90yo is only 12.5% older than an 80yo. The older we get, the closer in age we become.
- awb 4y ago> To be honest, I don't understand what "they develop faster" means either. Maybe there’s a better way of phrasing it, but I mean the rate of change is faster when you’re younger. A 10yo will have very different preferences, life experiences, brain development, etc. compared to a 20yo (10y apart). Yet a 30yo and a 40yo (also 10y apart) will be fairly similar in these categories on average. Because at 10yo the body and brain are changing more rapidly than they would be at middle age. So if you were doing any kind of marketing or social science report based primarily on age, you’d typically want narrower age bands at lower age ranges and higher age bands at middle and older ages in order to create the most homogeneous groups.
- miduil 4y agoCan't believe I'm reading here for almost ten years already, which means I've started at ~18. Kudos on everyone who is young and reading HN, or lobste.rs, or any other special interest group/community. I remember back then, I was still in high school, it gave me a lot of "dissonance" about "real world" (including me hanging around in the local hackspace) and what we did in school. I hated every single moment in school. Stay with your dreams, everything you do will matter at a later point in your life. Even if you're just having a series of never finished attempts, it somehow pays out at a later point. Curiosity is key. <3
- neogodless 4y agoIf you're 105, should you upvote both 96-105 and 105-255?
- 404mm 4y agoyah. This is clearly wrong. If you are 105 or more, you should be able to vote as many times you want… you legend!
- fnordpiglet 4y agoIf you’re 105 and still taking internet polls you’ve gained age but not wisdom
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hgomersall 4y agoWho uses inclusive upper bounds? My complaint is that 15, 25, 35 etc are missing...
- zaphirplane 4y agoWhat’s the point of this ? And will there be a follow up poll “which month were you born on” ?
- equilibrium 4y agoYes.
- fmax30 4y agoAnd then another follow up what was the name of your first pet
- Beltalowda 4y agoCongratulations! This is the 1 millionth comment on Hacker News and you won a price! To collect your $10,000 reward please send me your credit card details so we can transfer the money.
- cesarb 4y agoI don't know what was the intention of the one who posted this poll, but for us in computing, it's relevant to know what we have experienced. For instance, if you were born last century, there's a good chance that you've personally experienced MS-DOS, Windows 95, and floppy disks; someone born this century might have started their computing life without having to worry about CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT, high memory, and other 16-bit arcana. Someone born last century could have experienced the world before the Internet (and the dial-up world of BBS), while someone born this century most likely already had good Internet access as a child (in the developed world at least). And so on.
- zaphirplane 4y agowe can interact with comments on the insight and value they provide and not thru the lens that 23% of HN poll responders used windows 95
- emptyparadise 4y agoINT_MAX
- 11235813213455 4y ago2**31 - 1
- pfdietz 4y agoMOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM
- sys_64738 4y agoIs age really an unsigned byte?
- DonHopkins 4y agoI was a kid, then I was a teen, then I was twenty-something, then I was something-something.
- fatcat500 4y agoLooks like we have some old timers in here
- anotherevan 4y agoCould you all please get off my lawn?
- etothepii 4y agoWhy do I have to do maths to answer the question and why are all the answers negative.
- jeswin 4y ago36-45 is just as big as the 26-35 group, I must say I'm surpised! I'm close to 42 and I've been here for 15 years now (as a reader more than as a contributor); when I joined I certainly didn't expect to be here for that long. Testament to the quality of discussion, although it has gotten a bit partisan of late. I was on Slashdot prior to that for about 10 years. What was most appealing about HN was the information density, and the discouragement of jokes. I guess if you distil a UI down to the basics (HN just being pure text) there is a certain timelessness to it. Slashdot soon felt bloated and stuffy and I never went back. Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website. Edit: I think 36-45 was the largest group when I started writing the comment. It isn't now.
- xtracto 4y agoI'm 40 myself. I also came here from Slahdot. What attracted me to HN was that /. culture at the time (during 2000s) was VERY pro open source. In my youth I was a fierce OS advocate, including founding a LUG and whatnot. Reading HN comments and stories at that time felt fresh: There were startups making money with software, there was people that valued different things and could have a good discussion. I think it was me naturally maturing from my 'communist' youth to 'capitalist' adulthood. Funnily as time passes it seems theres more pro-open source feeling in here. Even some of the Destop Linux discussions that happen here remind me of old /. discussions. And it's hilarious that I'm often on the opposite side of the argument from when I blindly defended Linux 20 years ago.
- swah 4y agoThats interesting - what do you feel changed in your view of open source?
- Beltalowda 4y ago> Having said that, the fact that the 16-20 and 21-25 is so under-represented doesn't bode well for the future of the website. I don't think it necessarily says all that much; at that age many are probably busy doing a lot of other things: going out, dating, studying, getting your career off the ground, whatnot. Things like children that you may have later in life also take up a lot of time, but the patterns of that are different (e.g. more "quiet evenings" at home).
- rgbrgb 4y agoDiscovered HN looking over a classmate’s shoulder in discrete math class at ~20 or so. Now 33. Quit a bigco tech job, sold a yc startup, married my partner, had a baby. Still here. Lots of appreciation for the orange site and its many serendipities. Still one of the only places on the internet w real discourse between actual biz and technology experts.
- nnoitra 4y ago
- dan-robertson 4y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734
- c3534l 4y agoOh god, I'm in the same category as the 45 year olds. Kill me now.
- Beltalowda 4y agoIs it sad that I had to think how old I am?
- zaivala23 4y agoHow do I cash my points in?
- ss108 4y agowhat is with the order of the poll options? they are ordered neither numerically nor by votes (?)
- gabrielsroka 4y agoThey're random on purpose.
- gabrielsroka 4y agoPoll results: https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=33480849 https://gabrielsroka.github.io/hnpoll.html?id=33480849
- lukasfischer 4y agoI‘m wondering about gender diversity of hn.