Another observation - if you took the top 100 wealthy guys and put them in a room, the 100th wealthiest guy is so way off from the top guy that these two can realistically neither relate nor compete. But to the outside worlds they are both 'top 100'. No other set of 100 except the top set has this problem.
A parallel is to elite universities - if you look at the students taking Math 101 in MIT, the bottom half of the class, no matter what they do, has no chance in hell of competing with the top half. This is not true in an almost other Universities. If you put in the work, you have a realistic chance of topping the class. Not being able to compete in your own class is big psychological burden (no matter how good you are, nationally). I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in one of this books. I experienced this first hand.
Yes, it's very odd. Professional sports like that too, i guess -- the worst NBA player is WAY worse than lebron james; even though they're both top 1000 in the world
i have found that being near the top of your local distribution, even if it is not the top of the global distribution, is psychologically easier (even though it's sort of lame and does not make you improve nearly so much)
This post reminds of an interesting observation around the sparsity at extreme ends.
In 2005, when I took the all India engineering entrance, I was ranked an incredible 51 out of 500,000 students who took the exam. This is not to brag, because I myself never even dreamed that I would get a rank so great, but I later realised why I got it. The exam was all multiple choices and I had a developed a knack of making educated guesses and it is likely that almost all my guesses were right on that day. But then I started to think greedily that if had gotten a few more right, would I have made it to the top 10 (!). I eventually met another guy whose rank was 40 or so and I found out that his score was almost 20 more than me. To put that in context, 20 marks would make a difference of at least 50000 ranks if you were close to median. But at my rank, it would change only 10 ranks. I also later found out that the difference in scores between ranks 1 and 2 again was more than 20. Rank 2 guy might think he was so close, but in reality even if he had a particularly great day, it is likely that he still would have been the same rank. Very few people realise this. Its like looking at the sky and thinking that the clouds must be touching the moon.
Your post brought to mind the idea of a scientific community. The more complex an idea or the more advanced the development of a theory, the smaller the number of persons able to understand it fully, to communicate with each other, and to contribute to its development and further knowledge in the field. Most new ideas coming from those outside that scientific community are simply wrong. And yet (a big 'and yet') a new idea, a paradigm change, is likely to come from outside of that circle. A rare event.
That is an interesting parallel! And it is heartening that it seems like lots of scientific progress comes from outside that circle. It reminds me of Richard Feynman who seemed to bounce between disciplines, did you ever read his stuff?
I enjoyed his 'Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman', 'What do you care what other people think?', and 'Six easy pieces' plus a few of the 'Introductory Lectures'.--all read after I retired from medicine. However, years ago calculus came in the second year of engineering, and I switched to medicine after my first year of engineering. And so my lack of calculus interfered with my understanding most of those lectures. I gave up and gave the set of lectures to Rachel.
Agree with Mary this is an excellent post! The only thing I would add is that there are many “worlds” that offer pretty good opportunities to feel powerful and influential, albeit within their individual zones. For example, I live in a little town that calls itself the mushroom capital of the world. There are a handful of people who run the big companies. They have a big say in legislation affecting the industry, adoption of new technology, trade policy that might bring in foreign competition. They all know each other. But it’s not an impossible club to join. The whole club is probably only a few hundred or a couple thousand people. A young person can get to know the top people and have a reasonable chance of becoming useful enough to join the top few. In another example, I worked for a company that specialized in computational pharmacology. There were only a couple of thousand practitioners. There were only five or six major graduate schools offering relevant degrees to new people. There were approximately 10 competitor companies providing computational pharmacology as a service. You see my point. With a focused plan of attack it would be easy in a couple of years to at least meet all the key people. Joining their circle would take longer, and would depend on a certain amount of luck and successful innovation, but not an impossible task. Of course you’re right this isn’t running the world, but it does offer the opportunity to gain the appreciation and respect of your professional colleagues. Just my two cents.
Ha! The Kennett mushroom industry would be interesting to study. These are good examples.
In the sense of ability to break into these places, that's encouraging and i do think there are lots of opportunities to do that in america. But that's probably something legislation needs to focus on to make sure it stays that way -- something like an estate tax for example could keep the playing field a bit more level
Excellent post! I always kind of assumed wealth was spread out like a bell curve, probably because I was thinking about how there are more middle-class people than super-rich or super-poor people.
But yes, this makes total sense to me. If you have money, you can invest it and make even more money, then invest that, and so on. Then as you move up the wealth ladder, the world gets smaller. I think it's also because we humans tend to form social circles with people who are 'similar' to us. It makes sense that people in these groups have a lot in common and share the same perspectives. They understand each other, so they kind of form that “circle” :)
Another observation - if you took the top 100 wealthy guys and put them in a room, the 100th wealthiest guy is so way off from the top guy that these two can realistically neither relate nor compete. But to the outside worlds they are both 'top 100'. No other set of 100 except the top set has this problem.
A parallel is to elite universities - if you look at the students taking Math 101 in MIT, the bottom half of the class, no matter what they do, has no chance in hell of competing with the top half. This is not true in an almost other Universities. If you put in the work, you have a realistic chance of topping the class. Not being able to compete in your own class is big psychological burden (no matter how good you are, nationally). I think Malcolm Gladwell talks about this in one of this books. I experienced this first hand.
Yes, it's very odd. Professional sports like that too, i guess -- the worst NBA player is WAY worse than lebron james; even though they're both top 1000 in the world
i have found that being near the top of your local distribution, even if it is not the top of the global distribution, is psychologically easier (even though it's sort of lame and does not make you improve nearly so much)
This post reminds of an interesting observation around the sparsity at extreme ends.
In 2005, when I took the all India engineering entrance, I was ranked an incredible 51 out of 500,000 students who took the exam. This is not to brag, because I myself never even dreamed that I would get a rank so great, but I later realised why I got it. The exam was all multiple choices and I had a developed a knack of making educated guesses and it is likely that almost all my guesses were right on that day. But then I started to think greedily that if had gotten a few more right, would I have made it to the top 10 (!). I eventually met another guy whose rank was 40 or so and I found out that his score was almost 20 more than me. To put that in context, 20 marks would make a difference of at least 50000 ranks if you were close to median. But at my rank, it would change only 10 ranks. I also later found out that the difference in scores between ranks 1 and 2 again was more than 20. Rank 2 guy might think he was so close, but in reality even if he had a particularly great day, it is likely that he still would have been the same rank. Very few people realise this. Its like looking at the sky and thinking that the clouds must be touching the moon.
"Its like looking at the sky and thinking that the clouds must be touching the moon."
i love that comparison. And then the sun is 1000x or whatever further than the moon, and the next star is 1000x further than that
I agree, that is very counterintuitive
Your post brought to mind the idea of a scientific community. The more complex an idea or the more advanced the development of a theory, the smaller the number of persons able to understand it fully, to communicate with each other, and to contribute to its development and further knowledge in the field. Most new ideas coming from those outside that scientific community are simply wrong. And yet (a big 'and yet') a new idea, a paradigm change, is likely to come from outside of that circle. A rare event.
That is an interesting parallel! And it is heartening that it seems like lots of scientific progress comes from outside that circle. It reminds me of Richard Feynman who seemed to bounce between disciplines, did you ever read his stuff?
I enjoyed his 'Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman', 'What do you care what other people think?', and 'Six easy pieces' plus a few of the 'Introductory Lectures'.--all read after I retired from medicine. However, years ago calculus came in the second year of engineering, and I switched to medicine after my first year of engineering. And so my lack of calculus interfered with my understanding most of those lectures. I gave up and gave the set of lectures to Rachel.
The “Six Easy Pieces” was a treasure. There are a couple of his lectures on YouTube but my calculus deficiencies limit my appreciation.
Agree with Mary this is an excellent post! The only thing I would add is that there are many “worlds” that offer pretty good opportunities to feel powerful and influential, albeit within their individual zones. For example, I live in a little town that calls itself the mushroom capital of the world. There are a handful of people who run the big companies. They have a big say in legislation affecting the industry, adoption of new technology, trade policy that might bring in foreign competition. They all know each other. But it’s not an impossible club to join. The whole club is probably only a few hundred or a couple thousand people. A young person can get to know the top people and have a reasonable chance of becoming useful enough to join the top few. In another example, I worked for a company that specialized in computational pharmacology. There were only a couple of thousand practitioners. There were only five or six major graduate schools offering relevant degrees to new people. There were approximately 10 competitor companies providing computational pharmacology as a service. You see my point. With a focused plan of attack it would be easy in a couple of years to at least meet all the key people. Joining their circle would take longer, and would depend on a certain amount of luck and successful innovation, but not an impossible task. Of course you’re right this isn’t running the world, but it does offer the opportunity to gain the appreciation and respect of your professional colleagues. Just my two cents.
Ha! The Kennett mushroom industry would be interesting to study. These are good examples.
In the sense of ability to break into these places, that's encouraging and i do think there are lots of opportunities to do that in america. But that's probably something legislation needs to focus on to make sure it stays that way -- something like an estate tax for example could keep the playing field a bit more level
Excellent post! I always kind of assumed wealth was spread out like a bell curve, probably because I was thinking about how there are more middle-class people than super-rich or super-poor people.
But yes, this makes total sense to me. If you have money, you can invest it and make even more money, then invest that, and so on. Then as you move up the wealth ladder, the world gets smaller. I think it's also because we humans tend to form social circles with people who are 'similar' to us. It makes sense that people in these groups have a lot in common and share the same perspectives. They understand each other, so they kind of form that “circle” :)
Thank you! Totally agree. And yes, as you get to extreme levels, there are only a few people who understand your level of wealth or power