95%-ile isn't that good (2020)
Being in the 95th percentile at a skill sounds impressive, but many commenters argue it’s often achievable with modest, deliberate practice—especially in activities where most participants don’t train seriously or seek feedback. They debate how much talent versus structured effort matters, how the reference group (casual participants vs. serious practitioners) radically changes what “95th percentile” means, and why the jump from high percentile to true elite is disproportionately hard. Along the way, people compare domains like video games, chess, sports, parenting, and software engineering, noting that incentives, emotional barriers to improvement, and the quality of feedback all strongly shape how far most individuals actually progress.
Meta discussion about reposts and HN norms
- Many comments complain that the submission is part of high-volume reposting of old “classics,” calling it spam or engagement farming.
- Others argue reposts are fine if they trigger good new discussion, and that obsessing over duplicates is pointless; users should email moderators instead of “@-ing” them or derailing threads.
- HN guidelines about avoiding meta complaints, accusations of abuse, and public mod-summoning are cited and debated; some think they fit this case, others think this behavior is novel and should be more explicitly addressed.
- Broader worries surface about HN drifting toward a “click farm” with gamified voting and Slashdot/Digg-style decline.
What “95th percentile” means
- Multiple commenters stress that percentiles are meaningless without specifying the reference set: all humans, anyone who ever tried, current participants, or serious practitioners.
- Chains of increasingly selective groups (e.g., “touched a basketball” → “plays weekly” → “competes” → “earns money” → “world elite”) illustrate how being 95th can range from trivial to world‑class.
Is 95th percentile easy or hard?
- Supporters of the article’s thesis say: most people don’t practice deliberately, seek feedback, or even try; modest, structured effort often suffices to beat the vast majority of casual participants.
- Skeptics counter that claims like “95th isn’t that hard” need evidence; in domains like weightlifting, endurance sports, chess, or highly competitive games, 95th among active, rated participants can take years of systematic work.
- There’s disagreement over how much raw talent vs. practice time matters; some say talent mainly affects speed of improvement, others say many people will never reach “quite competent” levels regardless.
Gap between good and elite
- Many anecdotes from games and sports emphasize that 95th–99th percentile participants still lose effortlessly to top 0.1% or pros, often without understanding why.
- Several people note that “competition really starts” around the 90th percentile; from there, improvements get exponentially harder.
Motivation, emotions, and priorities
- Reasons for not improving include: not caring about winning, fear of exposing one’s true limits, emotional difficulty admitting fixable mistakes, and preferring hobbies as low-effort decompression.
- Some argue that tying self‑worth to percentile ranks is unhealthy; with finite time, it’s rational to accept being “merely good” at many things (including parenting) and ignore leaderboards.
Learning, feedback, and training
- Deliberate practice plus feedback (coaches, strong peers, code review, open source, Q&A sites, sometimes LLMs) is seen as crucial for breaking plateaus.
- There’s debate over how useful podcasts/streams are: they can expose you to better ideas and strategies, but passive consumption without hands‑on practice often yields shallow, misapplied knowledge.