95%-tile isn’t that good, and there’s a corollary that I often see, where there’s a plateau of people way past that (say 99.5%-tile) of several hundred people who are good but clearly not the best. This is people who are actually working hard at something and are in basically every context indistinguishable from being the best but they themselves know that there is still a ways left to go. I’d argue that it’s actually not super hard to get to this point in a few things (say, maybe an hour a day on it) but then the difficulty ramps up exponentially until you’re basically dedicating your life to get past that. It’s interesting to see people who pick being 99.5%-tile at a few things versus those who choose to give their all into one thing where they become, say, top 10.
95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
81–90 of 191 posts
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#82I don't think I agree with this at all. I can see how you would have this impression with something like a video game or I guess public speaking where maybe a lot of people do it un-seriously and you can be better than most with some intentional effort. It's weird to choose a super mass market game like Overwatch to make that point though, if you were in the 95th percentile of Starcraft players, that would truly be s…
It probably depends on your objective. 352 lb is about the cutoff before you become a competitive weight lifter. Most people probably don't want to do that. Same thing happens in gaming, 95th percentile is probably about where you get to the point of "learned how to play the game up to the competitive level". The majority of my hobbies are non-competitive. If I get to one day be a 95th percentile hiker, I will be ecs…
I see what you're saying, but my point is that even for non-competitive pursuits in the physical world many can involve deep levels of skill that take years to develop. Cooking is another great example, almost anyone can make dinner for themselves but making a really delightful meal for guests requires a lot of skills that take a lot of time to develop. You can go quite deep there, and while hard to measure become better than 95% of home cooks would be impressive.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#83I'm 70%-ile online chess player. That is average relative to players active on lichess in a given month. I'm better than most people (maybe top 10% even) that "play a little." I'm (I assume) well below average for adult tournament player. The pool matters. I think if I took lessons and dedicated a serious 100-200 hrs over some period, I might reach 85th in my online pool. 95%-ile is currently ELO 2075... just under w…
Chess is an unusually good example of there being a system in place to rate people. Master of, say, CSS is not like that.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#84The Overwatch example does not really make sense. The author assumes that if people are frustrated by frequently losing, it would be logical to put in effort to improve their skills. But their win rate should remain mostly constant as their skills improve since at the same time they would be moving up the ranking and would face better players. So there is not a strong incentive for the average player to put large effort into improving in the rankings.
In real world activities (eg programming) your skill level is often directly tied to strong incentives such as income. I don't think it is reasonable to think that it would be as easy to move up in the "rankings" all the way up to 95% percentile.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#85The Red Quest had a similar point on the dating scene - ie. guys just aren’t trying very hard and it seems like strange behaviour but if you commit you can get excellent results.
Got any sources on this? I'm interested in the stats.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#86I don't think I agree with this at all. I can see how you would have this impression with something like a video game or I guess public speaking where maybe a lot of people do it un-seriously and you can be better than most with some intentional effort. It's weird to choose a super mass market game like Overwatch to make that point though, if you were in the 95th percentile of Starcraft players, that would truly be s…
I'm not sure what the 352 is supposed to be. strengthlevel.com claims a 352 lb bench is ~95th percentile for a 180 lb male, but I've never seen anyone in a gym that can bench anywhere near that. IME even a 225 lb squat feels like 95th percentile. I don't think I've ever seen someone else do a 100 lb shoulder press (~20th percentile on SL). Usually I see something like 75 lb (doing fixed barbells), and once I saw 95 lbs.
The idea is most people who participate are probably closer to what you see at the YMCA or Planet Fitness, not a powerlifting gym. They could do a lot more with basic advice like "add weight".
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#87I would have to agree about 95th percentile being not that difficult. A streamer that I occasionally tune into (Asmongold) says that if you are seeking information outside of the game such as watching streams of the game, that makes you a top 10% player automatically. Most people are passive consumers and participants in their activities and that isn't exclusive to the individual. I am a passive consumer & participan…
> A streamer (...) says that if you are (...) watching streams of the game, that makes you a top 10% player automatically. Sounds like pandering to the audience. Performing better then 90% of people makes you a top 10% player. Self soothing about how what you like to do in your spare time makes you better then others is not making you any favors. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into being effective. In fact…
If you define "player" in this context as "person who bought the game and opened it at least once" then becoming top 90% in any given game really doesn't take much. If Steam achievements are accurate just playing the game for an hour will make you above average. Most people quit before that and thus have no time to learn the game.
I still agree with your last paragraph. In gaming as in professional life, a T-shaped skillset is really useful. Having broad knowledge and experience, even if it's mostly shallow, is incredibly useful.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#88The Overwatch example does not really make sense. The author assumes that if people are frustrated by frequently losing, it would be logical to put in effort to improve their skills. But their win rate should remain mostly constant as their skills improve since at the same time they would be moving up the ranking and would face better players. So there is not a strong incentive for the average player to put large eff…
This is why I miss games like Unreal Tournament where they had 8 bot difficulty levels. When you were in the mood for a challenge you could turn it up, and when you were in the mood for some easy blowing stuff up you could turn it down. Now everything's skill-based matchmaking and as much as it can manage you're always up against opponents who are equally good to you.
Or playing against people who are way better than you and sandbagged their rating. But you can't have an easy game unless you make a second smurf account and do the same. Which is a dick move because the people on the other end of it didn't sign up to play a much harder opponent.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#8995%-ile isn't that good.* * The caveat of course being that you dedicate all your available waking hours (not occupied with life-sustaining activities) to training and deliberately practicing a single particular skill/game and also trying to do your best every single time, which is incredibly mentally taxing. It's even more mentally taxing as you get older, since your fluid intelligence diminishes. Also, another auth…
I think the author's point is really that you can outperform a huge slice of people with just a little bit of careful self-reflection and asking for help, instead of putting even more effort into grinding and hoping you'll improve. Or, even: by throwing some deliberateness in to things we're doing, we can avoid a lot of frustration.
As someone who used to be an avid gamer and reasonably competitive, "a little bit of careful self-reflection" is definitely not enough to get you in the top 5%. Top 20%, sure, because the bottom 50% doesn't even try, and the next 30% tries just enough to learn the basic mechanics.
You need a certain time commitment and the ability to learn reasonably complex abstract mental models. Learning curves for many games are in the 1000s of hours. It's just not easy to fit into a busy work schedule.
Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
#90I think the way this is phrased is weird. It should probably be rephrased as "becoming 95% percentile at a thing is not that hard". Which I might agree with. Becoming good at a lot of tasks and skills really just comes down to finding the right approach to training and then doing that training. The last 5% is much harder because that's generally filled with truly talented people that also know how to train and are di…
last 5%?
I've been top 1% and slightly below 1% at peak in video games that have milions of gamers and I wouldnt say that top 5% is filled with "truly talented people"
Top 5% is just decent people, but they are very, very, very far from top 0.1, 0.5%, etc.
At 1% I've been faaaaar from 0.5%, 0.1% people.