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95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

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Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#101

Post by gnicholas »

akerl_ wrote: post #97
gnicholas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious to know which of those guidelines covers this somewhat-novel situation. @-ing the mods may not officially be a thing, but I have to say whenever there is a comment starting with that handle that rises up in the comments, it gets attention right quick.

> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com. > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades d…

The first guideline is about submissions, not commenting. The second and third are not quite on-point because the commenter is not saying that the post is inappropriate per se, but that it's part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior.

I, for one, and glad that the commenter added to the conversation in this way. I can see I'm not alone, as the post was subsequently flagged (to be clear, I didn't flag it).

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#103

Post by wing-_-nuts »

tester756 wrote: post #90
brigadier132 wrote: post #72

I 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.

I'm in the top 15 bf4 tankers in the US. I run a very unique loadout that's very specific to my PTFO playstyle and the most common threats I deal with. It has glaring weaknesses that few ever exploit, but if you knew the game and actually tried to counter me, you absolutely could.

Sometimes, the .001% have simply found their particular niche in the ecosystem

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#104

Post by yixu34 »

norir wrote: post #68

I feel like implicit in this framing is the idea that one's sense of value is linked to where one measures up in some arbitrary task. Should I feel worse about myself if I'm only in the 95th percentile for some activity I enjoy rather than the 99th? Most things worth doing are more enjoyable the more skilled you are at them, but of course our lives are finite and we have to make choices that might limit our developme…

> but of course our lives are finite and we have to make choices that might limit our development of any skill.

This is a key point in Four Thousand Weeks (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54785515). For our hobbies, it'd be totally fine (and even preferable) to not worry about percentiles at all.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#105

Post by redblacktree »

allig256 wrote: post #76

Are there any good platforms out there that people would recommend where you can have your code reviewed? Either paid for or for free. As this article points out, feedback is an essential part of learning, and open source projects would be a great opportunity to get feedback on something you have sole agency over as opposed to many workplace projects where it's harder to receive feedback for your individual decisions…

Depending on how good you are at programming, LLMs would probably have some good feedback.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#106

Post by tgv »

voxl wrote: post #64

This is the kind of claim that needs actual evidence, otherwise it's just a dumb feel-good sentiment about how you _could_ be 2000 ELO on lichess if you cared. I tend to agree that with enough time and _appropriate_ training anyone can become quite competent at anything, but this is a significantly different claim than thinking you can be in the 95th percentile of persons who are engaged in the activity. It becomes e…

> I tend to agree that with enough time and _appropriate_ training anyone can become quite competent at anything

It's something I don't believe. There's no evidence for it, but that would also be really hard to obtain. You'll get better with training, practice, exercise, but quite competent is a level very many people won't be able to manage.

Physical competence is an obvious case. Roughly half the population is too young or too old to become e.g. a "quite competent" marathon runner, has ailments, handicaps, etc. An even larger part simply is not tall enough to reach beyond than absolute amateur level in certain sports (basketball, volleyball). And the differences don't magically stop at the blood-brain barrier.

I agree that more than 5% of the population could achieve the level currently held by the top 5%, but it's not a lot more.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#107

Post by furst »

mlyle wrote: post #74
madamelic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The article hints at this problem by saying 95th percentile is easy but the grind from 95th to 99th is more difficult, requiring explicit effort and reflection on your process. To use a gaming metaphor that hopefully lands, the XP grind from level 1 to 92 in Runscape is the same XP amount as the XP needed to go from 92 to 99 [0]. It is also illustrated with the Pareto Principle and the 90/10 rule where th…

> To use a gaming metaphor that hopefully lands, the XP grind from level 1 to 92 in Runscape is the same XP amount as the XP needed to go from 92 to 99 [0]. Do you get more XP on average when you're a higher level?

It really depends skill to skill, but generally yes. However, and keeping in mind this again varies a lot skill to skill, the increases are not even the same order of magnitude as the scaling for the xp required.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#108

Post by tptacek »

gnicholas wrote: post #101
akerl_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com. > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades d…

The first guideline is about submissions, not commenting. The second and third are not quite on-point because the commenter is not saying that the post is inappropriate per se, but that it's part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior. I, for one, and glad that the commenter added to the conversation in this way. I can see I'm not alone, as the post was subsequently flagged (to be clear, I didn't flag it).

They didn't add to the conversation. They inserted an off-topic digression about the submitter of the story, who has nothing to do with the story or with Dan Luu. Before other people downvoted and flagged it, it was sprawling out from the top comment on the thread. That's why we have these guidelines: to keep stuff like this from crudding up threads.

I'm also not sure what you mean by flagging; the story isn't flagged, and is on the front page right now.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#109

Post by no1pcjfan »

zlg_codes wrote: post #51
no1pcjfan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you can upvote/downvote/flag shit, you’ll get shit. The incentives aren’t aligned. That’s exactly why you’d have someone re-posting this stuff. People here aren’t old enough to remember when this happened on Digg, Nevermind Slashdot. Dang was in elementary school back then.

Agreed. There's something flawed about the voting model that totally messes with people socially. It ends up replacing actual discourse with gamesmanship. I assume the green handle is because you're a mod. ~~Given that you seem to understand the design problems and limitations, do you feel like modding sites like these is more of a hassle than other platforms? Investigating antisocial shit seems more complex than jus…

[flagged]

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#110

Post by jeremyjh »

netcan wrote: post #75

I'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 has a funny distribution because there are different populations to consider. I'd guess a chess.com 1200 is better than 95% of all people who know the rules and have played a game.

Yet to reach the 95% of any tournament rating pool is far more difficult. It took me nearly three years just to get to 1450 USCF, which is about 83% nationally. In that time I've done more than 50,000 tactics, played more than 15,000 total games (mostly online blitz and rapid) and at least 300 rated tournament games at a slow time control (this includes online games played at 45+45, only half that number are OTB). I've analyzed those tournament games, most of them with a coach. I've played through annotated game collections. I attend lectures at the club from an FM, and watch dozens of Youtube videos every week from streamers and instructors. I drill openings and endgames etc etc.

I have a lifetime goal just to reach 1800, which is about 95% I believe. Its reasonable to expect that to take at least 5 years, and also reasonable to think I will never achieve it. This is what chess improvement looks like when you start in your 40s. Any kid who takes the game seriously can get to 1800, a lot of them will do it in just a couple of years.

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