hyporational comments on Open thread, Oct. 27 - Nov. 2, 2014 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: MrMind 27 October 2014 08:58AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (400)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: hyporational 30 October 2014 06:01:47AM *  2 points [-]

why we don't have many extremely successful people as members of the community.

I'm not sure if the community has been around long enough for this to be a useful kind of a measurement. Success doesn't happen in an instant and there's a lot of turnover. People who are already successful don't have much pressure to join in.

Comment author: RowanE 30 October 2014 01:46:56PM 2 points [-]

Additionally, "extreme success" is usually defined in zero sum terms that make it definitionally extremely rare, in addition to the strong influence of chance in whether one achieves success in most fields. So a community as small as ours with "not many extremely successful people" may still be completely worthwhile and have a high rate of extreme success per capita compared to most groups.