Being at or above the 75th-percentile mark corresponds to 2 bits of information. About 32.7 bits of information are required to specify a single person out of a population of 7 billion; even if we truncate that to 32 bits, you’d need to be in the top 25% at 16 different things to be considered “best in the world” in that one particular chunk of skill-space (assuming that the skills you choose aren’t correlated). And then you have to consider the problem density in that chunk—how likely is it, realistically speaking, that there are major problems that (a) require the intersection of 16 different domains, but (b) require only a mediocre grasp of all 16 of those domains?
High g-factor can get you to the top 25% or even top 10% of the population in an awful lot areas all by itself. If only 5% of the population has ever formally studied and practiced chess strategy, then 95th percentile g-factor may be enough to hit 90th percentile of chess skill without any formal study at all (though the exact numbers depend on correlation of g-factor with formal study). Problem is, g-factor only counts once; we don’t want to double-count it by saying e.g. “assume top 10% in physics and philosophy are independent”.
Specialist expertise is mostly strongly anticorrelated. Most people pick one specialized career path, and even the people who “generalize” don’t usually tackle more than 2 or 3 areas at a deep level—our lives are not that long.
Put those two together, and it means that above-average-but-below-expert skill levels mostly won’t compound, but expert skill levels in multiple fields can yield a lot more bits than the independence calculation suggests—e.g. if almost nobody studies both topology and anthropology.
I do think the “how many bits does this get me?” approach is a useful way to think about it, but I’m not yet sure what set of assumptions is reasonable for quantification.
how likely is it, realistically speaking, that there are major problems that (a) require the intersection of 16 different domains, but (b) require only a mediocre grasp of all 16 of those domains?
Politics. Corporate CEO. Talk show host. All potentially interpretable as an ability to BS successfully to people who don’t know sh*t from shinola
Don’t trust any numbers Scott Adams gives. They are just directional. And they include self-perception. So someone who is actually 95th percentile may feel like he is just 75th.
Also he talks a lot about creating a stack of multiple skills. And stack doesn’t mean just having the skills but combining them in a productive way. Like robertskmiles: Being a YouTuber and being interested in AI Safety doesn’t automatically make you an AI Safety YouTuber. You have to do some actual work for that. And it doesn’t hurt to e.g. know enough economics to do A/B tests.
Is this much different from Scott Adams’ advice https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html
of
?
I doubt that top 25% is usually sufficient to be best-in-the-world, which is what you need to circumvent GEM.
Being at or above the 75th-percentile mark corresponds to 2 bits of information. About 32.7 bits of information are required to specify a single person out of a population of 7 billion; even if we truncate that to 32 bits, you’d need to be in the top 25% at 16 different things to be considered “best in the world” in that one particular chunk of skill-space (assuming that the skills you choose aren’t correlated). And then you have to consider the problem density in that chunk—how likely is it, realistically speaking, that there are major problems that (a) require the intersection of 16 different domains, but (b) require only a mediocre grasp of all 16 of those domains?
Two gotchas to bear in mind there:
High g-factor can get you to the top 25% or even top 10% of the population in an awful lot areas all by itself. If only 5% of the population has ever formally studied and practiced chess strategy, then 95th percentile g-factor may be enough to hit 90th percentile of chess skill without any formal study at all (though the exact numbers depend on correlation of g-factor with formal study). Problem is, g-factor only counts once; we don’t want to double-count it by saying e.g. “assume top 10% in physics and philosophy are independent”.
Specialist expertise is mostly strongly anticorrelated. Most people pick one specialized career path, and even the people who “generalize” don’t usually tackle more than 2 or 3 areas at a deep level—our lives are not that long.
Put those two together, and it means that above-average-but-below-expert skill levels mostly won’t compound, but expert skill levels in multiple fields can yield a lot more bits than the independence calculation suggests—e.g. if almost nobody studies both topology and anthropology.
I do think the “how many bits does this get me?” approach is a useful way to think about it, but I’m not yet sure what set of assumptions is reasonable for quantification.
Politics. Corporate CEO. Talk show host. All potentially interpretable as an ability to BS successfully to people who don’t know sh*t from shinola
Don’t trust any numbers Scott Adams gives. They are just directional. And they include self-perception. So someone who is actually 95th percentile may feel like he is just 75th.
Also he talks a lot about creating a stack of multiple skills. And stack doesn’t mean just having the skills but combining them in a productive way. Like robertskmiles: Being a YouTuber and being interested in AI Safety doesn’t automatically make you an AI Safety YouTuber. You have to do some actual work for that. And it doesn’t hurt to e.g. know enough economics to do A/B tests.
More like 1%. People forget how large the gap between 1% and best in the world is.