Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 191 posts

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

#111

Post by ndriscoll »

bitexploder wrote: post #98
ndriscoll wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

I can squat 315, DL 425, bench about 230. Done 100-115 strict overhead press. I train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Plenty of guys stronger than me that I train with. I also go to a gym once in a while. I am solidly middle of the pack, especially considering I weigh 200 lbs. maybe if you are at planet fitness or something. Otherwise these numbers only take a bit of dedicated work to achieve. You would not look at me and think…

That's pretty much agreeing with the article.

> Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people... I'm also not referring to 95%-ile among people who practice regularly. The "one weird trick" is that, for a lot of activities, being something like 10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or 99%-ile among people who participate.

Someone who even calls it "training" and has specifically put in effort to be better is probably in the 95th percentile of people who do the activity.

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

#112

Post by zlg_codes »

HideousKojima wrote: post #55
zlg_codes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a big meme in the Smash Bros world, too. Tons of people who beat their friends but get bodied at tournaments. If I could stand the BO or the competitive atmosphere I'd consider it.

I always demolished my friends as Ness (to the point where they renamed PK Fire to PK Cancer) but Ness is one of the least competitive characters in tournaments and I'd get absolutely demolished because he's so easy to counter if you know what you're doing (hint: intentionally absorb his PK thunder when he's trying to get back on stage).

Same with myself and Link. I've been devoted to him the entire series, with side characters for fun, and without fail, he falls to characters with more movement options that can escape the zone and outspeed him up close. Ultimate made him much better with the remote bombs for the mindgames, but yeah I feel it. Solidly mid-tier this time around but still next to nobody playing him at the top, so I haven't seen much pushing of his game. Izaw was big in the Smash4 era and I think T, Tea? A Japanese player still plays him in Ultimate.

I keep telling myself if I ever get good at bomb-jumping to recover, my game will explode in potential.

Nice to find another Ness player in the wild; one of my IRL friends is a Ness and Lucas main. He was the first I ever played against that could do more than PK Fire and yo-yo. Those matches get rough with PK Fire's angles and how quickly the stick can come out and return that arrow...

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

#113

Post by tptacek »

potatopatch wrote: post #37
AirMax98 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spam. I like to come here and want to contribute new ideas to the discourse here. I expect others to do the same.

Bring us some fresh wine, the freshest you've got!

We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now.

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

#114

Post by gnicholas »

tptacek wrote: post #108
gnicholas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 flagge…

If you view this through a micro-lens, then it leads you to focus on the 'crudding up' of the thread. But if you take a macro view, then you consider the bigger-picture impact that the submitter's behavior has on HN as a whole.

Could the commenter have just emailed HN? Sure. But by commenting, the commenter shared this information with the community, who were then able to upvote the comment (I did) and flag the post (I did not). This is a valuable service IMO. It provides the HN team with additional feedback and alerts other HNers to a way in which the community is being used, perhaps not for the best.

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

#115

Post by TuringNYC »

For some people it is good?

I play video games to decompress and enjoy my time. If i want to be to 1% then i'd be grinding Leetcode, where it matters. I lost at video games all the time and it still achieves the goal of decompression and enjoyment.

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

#116

Post by qsort »

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…

Lichess is an incredible project and a true gem of open source, but an accurate source of ELO rating it is not.

As we speak I am rated 2227. I am unspeakably horrendous at chess. Online chess is more like a video game; my competitive mindset and nerdy minimax tendencies are single-handedly carrying me.

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

#117

Post by threatofrain »

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.

The world of video games can't be compared with anything else — except sports — in terms of competitiveness. If you're in the top 32 you're in the A-list of celebrities in that niche, and if you're top 64 you're a second-tier celebrity. Anything after that and it's hard to get paid.

Imagine a country where only the top 64 surgeons get paid.

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

#118

Post by no1pcjfan »

antisthenes wrote: post #85
born2meme wrote: post #15

The 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.

I personally don’t. Pick-Up has shifted over the years not many people do it the old school way. If you Google up Red Quest, he moved to Substack you can probably find the article. “Most guys just don’t care” or something like that.

And it’s true. People would rather get baited into online nonsensical outrage and neuter themselves by playing video games.

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

#119

Post by pvg »

gnicholas wrote: post #114
tptacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 flagge…

If you view this through a micro-lens, then it leads you to focus on the 'crudding up' of the thread. But if you take a macro view, then you consider the bigger-picture impact that the submitter's behavior has on HN as a whole. Could the commenter have just emailed HN? Sure. But by commenting, the commenter shared this information with the community, who were then able to upvote the comment (I did) and flag the post…

The view has been taken at sufficient zoom levels to have multiple specific guidelines and dozens of moderator comments. It's just not the case that nobody has thought about this much or discussed it on HN repeatedly.

As to 'valuable service', what the HN moderators ask in their own guidelines regarding feedback is very likely a better indication of value than 'IYO'.

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

#120

Post by gnicholas »

pvg wrote: post #119
gnicholas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you view this through a micro-lens, then it leads you to focus on the 'crudding up' of the thread. But if you take a macro view, then you consider the bigger-picture impact that the submitter's behavior has on HN as a whole. Could the commenter have just emailed HN? Sure. But by commenting, the commenter shared this information with the community, who were then able to upvote the comment (I did) and flag the post…

The view has been taken at sufficient zoom levels to have multiple specific guidelines and dozens of moderator comments. It's just not the case that nobody has thought about this much or discussed it on HN repeatedly. As to 'valuable service', what the HN moderators ask in their own guidelines regarding feedback is very likely a better indication of value than 'IYO'.

As explained above, none of the guidelines actually addresses this type of comment. Also, it's obviously not just IMO, since as I mentioned other people have flagged the post, presumably after being educated by this comment.
Post reply on HN