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> Rather, it should be... "people who lifted a thing from the ground at any point of their lives"? Not that impressive. And, sure, just converting yourself from "people who lifted a thing" to "people [of the same sex] who actually go to the gym regularly and deadlift" will get you into 95%-ile of the first, broader domain within a couple of years, because people who regularly deadlift would already be less than 5% of the population.

I deeply disagree. Taking the whole population is the only sensible interpretation. Answering like "duh, you actually go to the gym, of course you're better than 95% of guys on Earth, that's so unimpressive, anyone could do it if they did it." entirely misses the point. The point is precisely that you actually did it, while 95% did NOT do it and now you are ahead of 95% of people in this thing.

If you always had to be 95th percentile in your current peer group (general couch potatoes, high school championship participants, world championship participants, Olympians, Olympic medalists, Olympic champions, Olympic champions twice in a row), then the 95 just doesn't mean anything. Then you just have to be the single very best according to your logic.

The point is not about "impressive" or not. It's about 95th percentile or not.

> Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people (for many activities, just doing it at all makes you 99%-ile or above across all people).

This is the start of the second paragraph of the article, so it sounds like you disagree with the premise of what we're discussing

Depends on how interpret participation. Unless someone participates, you cannot know their score, so I guess a bare minimum participation is indeed required to be able to make comparisons. Theoretically there may be a guy who can already deadlift more than you, he just never tried.

He gave another example which I think is more illustrative -- Overwatch. There it's clear he's referring to 95%ile of people who play Overwatch, not any video games, and even less so everyone on Earth. My guess is, though, that he would include the people who play the casual modes in Overwatch, not just the competitive modes.

> If you always had to be 95th percentile in your current peer group (general couch potatoes, high school championship participants, world championship participants, Olympians, Olympic medalists, Olympic champions, Olympic champions twice in a row), then the 95 just doesn't mean anything. Then you just have to be the single very best according to your logic.

This is the typical experience for the ivy league types common on HN though.

They had to beat their way into the 95% of their zone school, then 95% of their magnet high school, then 95% of their elite college's graduating class, then 95% of their big N corporate ladder, etc.

Despite the filtering at every step of the way, the curve is always bellshaped! And it feels like shit if you find yourself on the left side of that curve among your peers.

But I guess it's healthier to think along the lines of: "What do you call a medical student who finished last in their class? Doctor."

The typical HNer passed 95 in all those things you listed?

I think you're vastly overestimating the readers of this forum. Just by the numbers, you can't have so many people who aced through top-5% in Ivy League schools and darted through the corporate ladder in a top SV company. Not to mention that not everyone is American here.

We probably managed to be the 5% a few times but then we came here to settle down as the 95% in our current bracket.

If you look at the deadlifting example a little differently: you can get to the 95th percentile of 'people who go to the gym and actually deadlift' in terms of form and being able to lift relative to your height/weight/size/sex/muscle mass/etc.

All of the examples in this post perfectly apply to this situation: people don't record themselves and check form, don't upload those videos to the internet and get feedback, and don't get help from a personal trainer (one who actually knows something about form). This is why you see people in the gym all the time making basic mistakes: rounded back, non-vertical bar path, bending over too much/not enough.

They have more injuries, don't make progress, or don't get the results they want. Yes, you're not going to get to the top 5% in terms of weight lifted without a lot of dedication and time. But that's more of achievement over time/a career than your ability to execute the skill.

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, etc. will not dynamically update when the player is inactive in order to not discourage players. You have to lose games to lose your ELO category rank, although obviously you can go up and down the leaderboard without playing games. There are some gaming rank systems like CSGO that have some rank decay for inactivity but it is just at a flat rate.

So, "95th percentile" in these systems is not actually indicative of that unless it is based on the precise rank on the leaderboard. In many of these seasonal games rank inflation happens towards the end of the season because of this lack of passive decay. It means that at the beginning of the season, the top rank is very competitive, but as people become less active as the season goes on, it becomes easier to attain rank.

In a lot of domains, if you are 95th percentile, you are extremely competitive. You may be noncompetitive with the 99%ile cohort and the bottom of the 99%ile may be noncompetitive with the 0.1%ile, but to argue that that's not "very good" is just goofy perfectionism. The fact that the author is using goofy noncontrolled systems as an example to support his weakly-defined subjective argument only undermines his own case.

> [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.

Ranked and unranked already exist to address your insight

There was a recent example of one player at the top of one ELO system becoming the top ranked player of another [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Carlsen#Personal_life

Last I played, overwatch does indeed drop your elo once you are diamond and above (approx top 10%). Though I disagree with the author as one who climbed from bottom 25% to top 10% - it was quite hard and took months of deliberate, regular practice (~1000 matches). I found it nearly comparable to improving at medical school. I think the author underestimated the complexity of being good at overwatch.

It's all subjective based on how people vary in their natural competence at the skills required for the game.

Some people play Overwatch and in their first 1000 games they get to grandmaster. Others get to platinum.

People tend to assume it's easy to get to whatever level they got to, regardless of where they are on the skill curve.

"Waste" is a bit harsh for a hobby that trains for high levels of coordination, reaction times, communication, teamwork and tactics. In fact, the benefits of competitive video games are wide ranging and often surprising.

See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201502...

I think this is a deliberate misreading of what Dan wrote. I think it's obvious he's not talking about physical characteristics, or activities where learned skill has little influence on the outcome.(reaction speed, IQ, deadlifting, sprinting speed, endurance)

And it seems like most of the activities we care about rely on learned skills more than physical traits.

Now also his explanation also relies on how dedicated and competitive the average player is.

But the overall point of the piece is that we probably don't try to systematically improve on nearly as many life skills as we should which I think is a valuable and true insight.

On the other hand, I think its absurd to construct your comparison group as

> significant portions of their life time in a dedicated attempt to become better [at X]

Top 5% deadlifting normalized by body weight is not hard at all. It just requires consistency.

Agreed. 95th percentile of Olympic pole vaulter's? 95th percentile of horse jockey's? If you limit your scope the scope of what you are trying to achieve it gets much more competitive.