If it really has only finitely many utility levels, then for a sufficiently small epsilon and some even smaller delta, it will not care whether it ends up in Hell with probability epsilon or probability delta.

I removed the broken index.html, sorry. Now you can see the whole (messy) directory. The README is actually a list of commands with some comments, the source code consists of parse.py and convolution.py.

When I stated that the middle is roughly exponential, this was the graph that I was looking at:

d <- density(karma)

plot(log(d$y) ~ d$x)

I don't do this for a living, so I am not sure at all, but if I really really had to make this formal, I would probably use maximum likelihood to fit an exponential distribution on the relevant interval, and then Kolmogorov-Smirnoff. It's what shminux said, except there is probably no closed formula because the cutoffs complicate the thing. And at least one of the cutoffs is really necessary, because below 3 it is obviously not exponential.

I am afraid I don't understand your methodology. How is a rank versus value function supposed to look like for an exponentially distributed sample?

It is roughly exponential in the range between 3 and 60 karma.

You can find the raw data here.

Edit: I didn't spot gwern's more careful analysis. I am still digesting it. gwern, you should use the above link, it contains the below-10 quotes, too.

Fixed, thanks!

Top original authors by karma collected.

• 454 Russell
• 392 Chesterton
• 365 Pratchett
• 322 Feynman
• 214 Nietzsche
• 196 Friedman
• 190 Heinlein
• 190 Dennett
• 183 Sagan
• 172 Voltaire
• 169 Wilson
• 162 Friedrich
• 157 Egan
• 149 Darwin
• 144 Moldbug
• 138 Plato
• 137 Einstein
• 134 Dawkins
• 133 Buffett
• 129 Aristotle
• 127 Aaronson
• 125 Marcus
• 124 Kahneman
• 123 Mencken
• 123 Asimov
• 122 Orwell
• 119 SMBC
• 119 Johnson
• 117 Hitler
• 117 Descartes
• 113 Kaas
• 110 Taleb
• 109 Hume
• 108 Confucius
• 103 Godin
• 102 Keynes
• 99 Stephenson
• 98 Munroe

Top original authors by number of quotes. (Note that authors and mentions are not disambiguated.)

• Feynman 28
• Russell 26
• Pratchett 18
• Nietzsche 18
• Heinlein 18
• Einstein 15
• Dawkins 14
• Chesterton 12
• Wilson 11
• Johnson 11
• Asimov 11
• Taleb 10
• Dennett 10
• Darwin 10
• Voltaire 9
• Meier 9
• Hume 9
• Clark 9
• Buffett 9
• Neumann 8
• Thoreau 7
• Rochefoucauld 7
• Peirce 7
• Medawar 7
• Keynes 7
• Huxley 7
• Gould 7
• Dijkstra 7
• Aristotle 7
• Yudkowsky 6
• Plato 6
• Orwell 6
• Munroe 6
• Mencken 6
• Marx 6
• Marshall 6
• Lichtenberg 6
• Kant 6
• Jaynes 6
• Holmes 6
• Hitler 6
• Egan 6
• Drexler 6
• Descartes 6
• Carlyle 6
• Binmore 6

Top quote contributors by statistical significance level:

• 0.00003 (20.14 in 29): Alejandro1
• 0.00005 (19.31 in 32): GabrielDuquette
• 0.00014 (28.11 in 9): Oscar_Cunningham
• 0.00020 (25.45 in 11): peter_hurford
• 0.00119 (47.50 in 2): Delta
• 0.00127 (18.55 in 22): Yvain
• 0.00136 (17.06 in 31): Jayson_Virissimo
• 0.00219 (62.00 in 1): Solvent
• 0.00394 (18.00 in 19): Tesseract
• 0.00544 (22.25 in 8): Maniakes
• 0.00620 (56.00 in 1): RomeoStevens
• 0.00777 (30.00 in 3): benelliott
• 0.00882 (35.00 in 2): michaelkeenan
• 0.00936 (24.40 in 5): Ezekiel
• 0.01276 (45.00 in 1): Mycroft65536
• 0.01296 (33.00 in 2): summerstay
• 0.01563 (15.91 in 22): James_Miller
• 0.01713 (43.00 in 1): alexzagal
• 0.01713 (43.00 in 1): Liron
• 0.01968 (41.00 in 1): Andy_McKenzie
• 0.02114 (40.00 in 1): bentarm
• 0.02350 (13.61 in 54): Rain
• 0.02414 (29.50 in 2): gRR
• 0.02435 (19.57 in 7): fortyeridania
• 0.02727 (19.29 in 7): Unnamed
• 0.02733 (15.63 in 19): DSimon
• 0.02850 (15.88 in 17): Nominull
• 0.02851 (15.72 in 18): Stabilizer
• 0.03630 (18.00 in 8): wallowinmaya
• 0.03746 (19.17 in 6): Mark_Eichenlaub
• 0.03938 (13.24 in 54): MichaelGR
• 0.04005 (23.00 in 3): cata
• 0.04005 (23.00 in 3): tingram
• 0.04309 (22.67 in 3): Oligopsony
• 0.04394 (14.76 in 21): Grognor
• 0.04752 (17.86 in 7): VKS
• 0.04766 (25.00 in 2): Automaton
• 0.04922 (19.20 in 5): Lightwave
• 0.05288 (16.09 in 11): J_Taylor
• 0.05729 (21.33 in 3): Miller