> "It's important to associate with people that are better than yourself."

We hear this repeated often, but how does it really work? It's impossible to do if everyone tries to follow this advice, because if you associate with people who are better than yourself, then they themselves being with you associate themselves with people worse than themselves.

It only works if we consider "better" in multiple dimensions; I associate with people who are better than me in a given dimension, while I'm better than them in some other dimension.

But then isn't it simply trivial / obvious that everyone is better at something and worse at something else?