Bell curves are everywhere because all distributions of any properties clump in some way at some level. The basics of any probability shows this. The result is you “seeing” bell curves everywhere. Aka clumps.
If sums of independent identically distributed random variables converge to a distribution, they converge to a Levy stable distribution [0]. Tails of the Levy stable distribution are power law, which makes them not Gaussian.
Yes but really what our brains do is use Gaussian Mixture model to cut up those distributions into more granular bell curves which we then call “normal”. Because we find what we are tuned to find.
Eg we find bell curves because we look for bell curves. And given infinite resolution we can find them at some granularity.
As I'm sure tsunamifury would agree, it is incredibly common for people to label "bell curves" by eyeball, regardless of whether they are normal curves. To most people, "clumping" in a one-dimensional spectrum is all they mean by the phrase "bell curve".
This completely misses the point, which is that the central limit theorem says that it isn't just any old clumping, it's always the normal distribution. tsunamifury dismissed this strong finding as "tautology" because clumping is obvious ... but that it's always precisely a bell curve is far from obvious. Again,
> your "aka" is incorrect --- there is all sorts of clumping that is not a normal distribution.
That it's "incredibly common for people to label "bell curves" by eyeball, regardless of whether they are normal curves" is not just not relevant, it's anti-relevant ... the central limit theorem says that the distribution of the means is always a bell curve--a normal distribution--not merely a "bell curve".
Anyway, this is covered in far more detail in other comments and material elsewhere, so this is my last contribution.
Wow aside from the fact that none of that support is in the article it still boils down to
Normal curves are everywhere normal curves are -- which are an observational tautology -- and a fundamental over our observation of "stuff". You're dismissive as if im some illiterate, but you'd be surprised at the contributions on math I've made to the world.
Yup. And in general more heavy-tailed bumps are in fact better models (assuming normality tends to lead to over-confidence). Really think the universality is strictly mathematical, and actually rare in nature.
There is affordable housing all over America. Get it through your head. It’s about nearness to the economic singularity that costs so much not the housing itself.
There isn't affordable housing in areas of opportunity. You can easily find cheap housing if you don't care about proximity to jobs or to good school districts.
And in reality shifted labor markets and supply chain was the issue and the FED in 22 raised interest rates to 'regress labor back to their natural position'.
Never forget: the FED did this more than any republican or democrat and their new stated position is to ensure not the enablement of the population but keeping the labor pool 'in their place.'
This, beyond everything else, changed america the most in recent history.
I don't know that higher interest rates are necessarily anti-labor. Low interest rates result in rapid asset inflation and labor usually owns fewer assets.
Yea the market will correct any time now from 2009.
Things will stay the way they are for as long as people want them to. The economy and money is fundamentally made up. It’s so funny when these types come out and start talking about made up fundamentals as if they are physics.
This essay was my bible at Google. It openly matched internal hierarchy and our own secret GDNA testing results illustrated it directly showing VP and above scored highly on the need to dominate over discover truth etc.
The problem was to my existential horror: i couldn’t use this knowledge to get anywhere beyond clueless. Because super large western organizations either purposefully hide information or are full of stupidity so much that they can’t share it.
I never could climb to any kind of safety —- until I realized that was the point. There is no safety. You only climb if you recognize death is inevitable, leaving those who want safety behind.
So now that I’m further up: Peter Turchins elite over production is my new nightmare
I resonate with your comment but completely reject the conclusion. Death is inevitable, who cares how high you climbed on a ladder you didn't define? Why is that meaningful?
Money is nice, dont get me wrong, but to value the climbing itself?
It's more like, good things happen to be harder while bad things are more often easy. So being able and eager to do hard things lets you actually choose (and then hopefully you choose the good stuff).
I see you’ve probably never spent time in a large, ossified bureaucracy.
There are plenty of things in the world that are hard only because they’ve been made difficult by people who either don’t want them done, don’t understand, or greatly benefit from their not being done, but would be a fantastic idea to do.
Such as get a new coffee maker for our office, but it would take two years, multiple committees, and an electrical study in order to do so. No i am not kidding
The safety, if that’s what you wish to attain, lies in living as frugally as you can while vesting your RSUs for as long as you can bear, and GTFO of the rat race.
This is a lie for smooth brains who think they’ve figured out the “hack” to the system.
Usually resulting in living as if you worked a menial job not having a family and essentially working hard to not achieve anything. Then mostly living the rest of your life consuming your own smugness.
"just build your furniture and suddenly you'll have millions in the bank"
Guy... come on, he was talking about smug money FIRE types not 'living a meaningful life'. in fact they are usually the types that have no friends because it's expensive.
As the essay points out, we losers have only two paths out of loserdom. The first is to leverage sociopathic tendencies, to scheme and maneuver and accrue power (probably as a minion to an actual sociopath, I don’t think transformation happens except at the early stage of a career). The second is to check out and coast, tacitly improving our position without actually striking a new bargain or finding any safety.
My own losing trap, which I think is common, is to try to periodically make sense of the organization and map a logical path forward for myself. This never works. My career progress in the organization has actually come about through sheer accident and/or lucky association.
Same mostly, you can increase your luck a small bit by the strategy you outline, but then you reach the limit of Elite Overproduction where your competence will work against your lucky pretty fast (Elites start to hate the competent and dont want them around since they make them look bad)
I spent a great deal of time trying to do this at allofus.ai with a team of ex-googlers with our goal being to help creators eventually 'own' their personas and drive and compete to use them to help end users.
We believed this was coming and that the best way to handle it was give the real person control over their persona to grow/edit/change and train it as they see fit.
I actually own the patent on building an expert persona based on the context of the prompt plus the real persons learned information manifold...
This is a tautology to the extreme.
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