America's brainiest cities | Hacker News Reader

America's brainiest cities

money.cnn.com

12 pointsjedberg11 comments

Call it America's brainiest place to live.

I will do no such thing, CNN.

I grew up in the DC metro area. It's a horrible place, don't ever move there. Where SF has an entrepreneurship draw and LA has a fame draw and NY has a money draw, DC has a power draw. People literally move there so they can take their shot at being the best Machiavellian sonofabitch they can be. There aren't any brainiacs around there. Some very smart people, sure, but no brainiacs.

It seems to be one of those few places where people will be content to be absolutely miserable in their jobs for 20 years. There's a certain feeling to doing business in the area (even if it's not with the government), a certain soul-sucking tired grind, that doesn't seem replicated exactly the same way elsewhere.

*edit: the high prevalence of degrees also means that B.S./B.A. degrees have almost no weight. You'll commonly see the phenomenon of multiple degrees, multiple masters, very young PhDs...just so you can get noticed in the crowd. People seem to go to school forever out here.

Concur, I spent a '91-04 there after spending '79-91 in Boston. The whole zeitgeist including the attitudes of (most) managers is unhealthy. Heck, just compare subway passengers in both areas, the differences are stark.

The only reason for one of us to go there is if we're worried about age discrimination and want to solve it by getting a serious clearance and the work that goes with them. There's also a fair amount of space work in the area, but telecom in the area died pretty hard when that sector crashed early last decade.

Dear CNN, people with degrees != brainy people

+1 - In my experience educated people is a good thing. I work with many of them, and I live and am related to them. However intelligence and education are absolutely not the same thing.

Intelligent people have a tendency to educate themselves, the education doesn't make them smart.

I'm sadden by the bottom 10, 2 cities in Florida. I wonder how the state fairs as a whole. Fark might have a point with their Florida tag.

In Florida, I think it's something that will be fixed as time goes on. Right now, florida is home to several very large universities (Orlando has University of Central Florida, which is quite large now), but these colleges basically did not exist until sometime quite recently (the past 30 years maybe?). Right now they are going through a period of large growth, so I think that while the older generation mostly did not go to college, the current generation will be going to college in increasing numbers.

Additionally, while Florida is still mostly known for its gigantic tourism industry, there are newer industries popping up throughout central florida. Biotech is quite large in Orlando, and additionally optics is quite big throughout central florida (Tampa and Orlando).

So I think in the future, the trend will be towards more education in florida.

That's a good point.

I did not realize UCF was that new. I'm guessing USF is probably not that old either.

I've only lived up in north Florida (tallahassee) while in college at FSU and that town is almost 30% students so that number doesn't match my experience in the state. I think that holds for Gainsville and Jacksonville too albeit, Jax it's mostly due to the type of industries there.

Ironic link text is ironic.

Is this article suggesting that cities have a sort of "maturation" process whereby the city attracts smarter people the older it gets?

I've heard that Los Alamos and/or Huntsville have the most PhDs per capita, which makes a lot of sense, but may not actually be true.

After reading this, I also found this interesting article on degrees per square mile: http://blog.robpitingolo.org/2010/05/where-smart-people-live...

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