Johnicholas comments on On Things that are Awesome - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 March 2009 03:24AM

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Comment author: Johnicholas 24 March 2009 02:54:52PM 9 points [-]

The best stuff, from the top end of the bell curve, will have lots of factors going for it:

  • very motivated author
  • author was in the right place at the right time
  • author is very talented
  • this is unusually good work for this author

The general effect is called "regression toward the mean" .

Comment author: alvarojabril 24 March 2009 09:40:20PM *  2 points [-]

Curiously, no one seems to agree on which are best, which suggests that people value very different aspects of his writing.

Shouldn't we then consider that the awesomeness mean to which authors (broadly) regress reflects less their talent/circumstances and more our own subjective experience?