The Overwatch example reminds me of Playing to Win (http://www.sirlin.net/ptw), and in particular, "the scrub" section (http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub). "A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win."
95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
151–160 of 299 posts
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#152On the flip side. Sometimes you're just not that good at stuff despite your best efforts. In college I really struggled with math. Which was a challenge because computer science has you take a lot of math classes. In my calculus class I studied so hard for the final. Did every problem in the book. And I still just got a B in the class. At the same time my programming classes were really easy. I didn't study at all an…
"Amadeus" is famously fictitious. In real life Salieri and Mozart were friends. It's good dramatic writing but that's all.
I'm somewhat disappointed that, of all the possible stories and lessons one could tell about Mozart's life, the one that Hollywood chose to immortalize on the silver screen is simultaneously depressing, disparaging, and false.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#153I pulled the Fide player database for standard play ratings. The set of ratings had a minimum of 1001, maximum of 2862 (Carlsen), an average of 1663, and a standard deviation of 349. The 25th percentile had a rating of 1428, 50th percentile: 1663, 95th percentile: 2237, and top percentile: 2862.
Given those ratings, the 95th percentile has a ~100% chance of beating the 25th percentile, a 96.75% chance of beating the 50th percentile, and a 0.38% chance of beating Magnus Carlsen.
I think 1 in 20 is fairly rare. It's just that something being rare and something being hard to reach aren't always the same thing. It's likely just a matter of "trying hard to reach x" is the fairly rare thing. That doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile accomplishment. Sure, only having a 0.38% chance of beating Carlsen doesn't look great, but then you're comparing yourself only to the top players and not looking at the whole picture.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#154Overwatch is a mass participation activity that is casual for most. Performance at the 95% is a joke to a professional. Just like a marathon. 95% of all runners is something like 3:15. That’s more than an hour slower than a decent pro. It really means nothing and people aren’t competing with each other in this way. A pro doesn’t care about a recreational participant. Usually the people who are pretty good at least ha…
OP is also being really misled by survivorship bias, ie. the bias that since he was able to accomplish this by what felt like "putting in the time to fix his mistakes", so must others be. There is such a thing as natural talent in gaming and it accounts for a huge portion of success. It's talent specific to that game or genre of games, it's not "the ability to learn" or "the ability to effectively review one's mistak…
To your second point, I find that people who have a "natural" knack for something have a very hard time understanding it's not easy or even physically possible for others to do what they do.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#155Unimpressed with the argument. Different people play competitive games with completely different mindsets and you are also not just competing against your peers, for example, you may be playing someone with much less free time to dedicate to the game. Same goes for some real life hobbies.
That's significantly different than getting to the top 5% in your class, where everyone is supposed to be peers and dedicated.
I think this really comes down to the level of competition for each particular activity. Getting "Legend" in Hearthstone for example means pretty much nothing (can be achieved while playing quite casually), while getting top 5% in a cellular biology class with 80% premed students is very impressive.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
So your long term goal is stability, and you'll be reliable and consistent in addition to the talent they've clearly already noticed by bringing you in for an interview. From a thematic perspective you're a sturdy foundation they can build their company on. See how much better that sounds? And there are probably better ways of putting it. Granted if an interviewer isn't looking for that mentality it could be an issue…
I don’t think I’d be able to pass/stomach an interview where I need to justify the need for a consistent paycheck.
Then I'm not sure how you've stomached any interview with a private company. Companies don't give you a consistent
paycheck because you have a natural right to one. They give you one because you wouldn't produce value for them if they didn't.
The S&P500 analogy is truly apt, because as a private employee you are by definition a financial investment for the company. They pay you on the condition you make more money/produce more value for them than you take. Every day at work is you justifying the existence of your paycheck. If you want a bigger paycheck you need to prove a higher valuation to justify it (either by producing more internally or getting a higher external offer). If you become a bad investment you will be treated the same way as an under-performing stock in a portfolio. Maybe held onto in the hopes that you'll improve, maybe held onto for legal reasons (they can't legally fire you due to X law) but eventually losses are cut.
Most interviewers expect you to at least be average so they're not going to insult you by asking you to work for free (that would make you less likely to work for them), but if you walked in and could convince them that you would produce quality work 70 hours a week, for free, until the day you were too medically infirm to work, and that you weren't too good to be true, they'd have no reason not to take you up on that offer.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is because improving your rank at hearthstone is a matter of playing as many viable games as possible. the outcome of most matches is mostly dependent on randomness as opposed to player error. The largest source of randomness being the order of card draw, which can turn around a highly favorable or unfavorable matchup between decks. the actions of players have very little impact in hearthstone. in a typical game…
1) naming yourself "hearthstonebad" isn't conducive to good discussion 2) the commenter stated his time budget: an hour a day. This doesn't seem excessive to make the argument "rank is merely a function of game time" 3) 2-7 choices is an under estimate. Past MtG pros have observed that attack ordering has more tree breadth than MtG attack phases. Saying the choices are straight forward is misguided when top players w…
Indeed, the skill is designing a deck to be less sensitive to such randomness, adapting a side deck, reading the opponent's tactics to counter them or exploit them and responding correctly to the challenges if things go wrong.
Essentially, making your own luck. Tree depth in card games is about the same as the deepest card combo times hand size, and for every card you can also hold it or get it burned.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#158Yeah, no, that's just about lousy definitions. The premise suggests that it's easy to become 95%-ile in anything, say, deadlifting among men who deadlift and not just entire population of the planet Earth. Before I can suggest author to try, he hastily corrects himself, that it doesn't mean "95%-ile among people who practice regularly", so "men who deadlift" is invalid domain after all. Rather, it should be... "peopl…
95th percentile of the Overwatch ladder is also not the same thing as 95th percentile of competitive tournament players. This entire article is just full of category fallacies to try to support a vague subjective assertion. Gaming ladders with automated ELO systems are also not run like tournament ELO systems in more controlled environments like competitive chess. Games like Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft, Hearthstone, et…
> [Unlike chess] Games like Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft, Hearthstone, etc. will not dynamically update when the player is inactive in order to not discourage players
Elo (as used in chess) does not update if you aren't playing games. It's a common criticism of it.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genius is, in my experience and from what I know of history, is something people are born with though. I've met (and worked with) exactly one person I would place near the designation of "genius". I wasn't under the impression that he didn't work hard to gain knowledge, but he just had a different way of approaching problems. I like to think I'm pretty good at what I do, but I could be struggling with something for h…
Exactly. Some people just have it. I was referring to easy-labeling people genius .
Agreed, it's thrown around way too frequently.
Re: 95th percentile isn't that hard to reach
#160On the flip side. Sometimes you're just not that good at stuff despite your best efforts. In college I really struggled with math. Which was a challenge because computer science has you take a lot of math classes. In my calculus class I studied so hard for the final. Did every problem in the book. And I still just got a B in the class. At the same time my programming classes were really easy. I didn't study at all an…
Amadeus is a movie that really resonated for the reasons you mention. However, another movie that really resonated, and offers a counterpoint to you’re-either-born-with-it-or-not fatalism is Gattaca.
(Of course, one could argue that Amadeus is a “true story”, whereas Gattaca is science fiction.)