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Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I agree with this at all. I can see how you would have this impression with something like a video game or I guess public speaking where maybe a lot of people do it un-seriously and you can be better than most with some intentional effort. It's weird to choose a super mass market game like Overwatch to make that point though, if you were in the 95th percentile of Starcraft players, that would truly be something, since the skill ceiling is MILES high.

For anything with a physical component I think this whole thing falls apart completely. For something like weightlifting the 95% percentile for men is around 160kg or ~352lbs. Going from sedentary to that lift could take years of effort. Musical performance is similarly something where the effort to do anything at all is quite large.

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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 lbs.

The idea is most people who participate are probably closer to what you see at the YMCA or Planet Fitness, not a powerlifting gym. They could do a lot more with basic advice like "add weight".

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 much based in my build and appearance.

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.

> Otherwise these numbers only take a bit of dedicated work to achieve

I think you may be underselling that a bit. I got to something like 370-80lb DL while weighing 185 some years ago, and it took nearly 3 years of dedicated work, eating tons of boring chicken, and a lot of lifestyle changes. It was pretty hard work and a of hours in total. I still lift weights, but don't have the focus and dedication to maintain that kind of lifting routine. Even at my max I was probably only edging into the "advanced" category.

That’s wild to me, many high schools across the country have people that can do 370lb DL at 185lb.

I can understand the struggle at an older age, but age matters a lot here.

I mean sure, but they're pretty much in the top 5 ish percentage points of lifters.

My numbers were similar to yours, but I agree with OP that it wasn’t really “difficult”. Sure, you have to turn up to the gym regularly and put in the hours, but there’s no real skill or practice involved. It’s not like tennis/judo/your_sport where you actually have to focus to get good.

I guess saying a “bit” is dismissive. I had periods of regular training. Periods of no lifting. Running was a big part of my life. I have never been a very dedicated lifter. Did some 12 week cycles here and there. Probably took me a decade to hit those numbers. Someone with more focus could get there quickly. It was hard work here and there but nothing anyone would look at and say wow, I can’t do that. My T is a avg too, I have had it tested many times. Just solidly middle of the pack.

> claims a 352 lb bench is ~95th percentile for a 180 lb male

Surely you mean 353lb dead lift.

That's kind of the point: people online will say that's the 95 %ile level[0], and either they're taking the piss or they're self-selecting into a group that actually tries, so it's the 95 %ile of the 95%ile, or the 99.75 %ile. Meanwhile your average gymgoer that sometimes wanders into the free weight room thinks putting the big plates on the bar (i.e. 135) is a lot. There's obviously no way 1 in 20 dudes at the gym have a ~350 bench.

[0] https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/bench-press

And not to distract from the point (which you made well), but weight lifting in general is tricky to compare since you generally want to take body weight into account. Benching 225 lbs is a different prospect for a 125 lbs individual vs. a 250 lbs individual.

This thread is truly bizarre.

A 352 pound bench at 180 pounds is bordering on being an elite lift. I would wager that it's unattainable for most guys, even if they worked at it and did everything right (in terms of training, nutrition, etc). Success in athletics/strength-based activities is, in large part, determined by genetics.

I'm sure there are domains where being in the 95th percentile just takes "some work." If we're using video games to make this point though, then I'm at a loss for words.

Sorry I was originally quoting a deadlift number. There’s a typo in the post.

It doesn’t matter how high the skill ceiling is, just how much effort the average player puts into the game. In Starcraft 2 to be top 4% player essentially means to be the worst player in masters league. But the gap in skill between a bad masters player and a grandmaster player (or even larger, a pro player) is enormous. I know that when I played I was able to climb to near the top of diamond without even using map hot keys, and still being (compared to high masters players) really quite mediocre at macro. It doesn’t really matter how high the skill ceiling is when you can approach the 95th percentile while not even utilizing all the functionality the game gives you.

That doesn't mean it isn't very difficult or in some ways impressive, just that to get into the top few percentage points is even more impressive. It's not like you're going to watch a few hours of game play and suddenly be able to jump to that level.

> if you were in the 95th percentile of Starcraft players, that would truly be something, since the skill ceiling is MILES high.

If you made it near the top of diamond in Starcraft 2, that's probably top 5%, and that's still _miles_ away from where the pro players are. I made it near the top of diamond at some point after it came out and I was terrible at SC2.

It probably depends on your objective. 352 lb is about the cutoff before you become a competitive weight lifter. Most people probably don't want to do that. Same thing happens in gaming, 95th percentile is probably about where you get to the point of "learned how to play the game up to the competitive level".

The majority of my hobbies are non-competitive. If I get to one day be a 95th percentile hiker, I will be ecstatically happy. However I'd be willing to bet that for my (narrow) niche of software - I am well into the three 9s by virtue that while most backend engineers will have touched what I work on, they haven't done it for 10 years in a demanding environment.

I see what you're saying, but my point is that even for non-competitive pursuits in the physical world many can involve deep levels of skill that take years to develop. Cooking is another great example, almost anyone can make dinner for themselves but making a really delightful meal for guests requires a lot of skills that take a lot of time to develop. You can go quite deep there, and while hard to measure become better than 95% of home cooks would be impressive.

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