
Why brilliant people lose their touch - hhs
http://timharford.com/2019/06/why-brilliant-people-lose-their-touch/
======
ravenstine
Working a lot, especially on one thing, makes us stupid, I think.

Although I was emotionally immature until ~25 years old, I actually believe
that I was more intelligent and knowledgeable in my youth. Because I didn't
have to work for a living, I could spend more time meddling in various
subjects and activities. I never got particularly good at anything except
programming and native plant identification, but I had more opinions on
subjects with the absorbed knowledge to back up my thoughts.

These days, I have little time for anything else besides programming for a
Fortune 100 company and searching for other means of supplementary income. I
feel like my intelligence has been reduced to the next lowest standard
deviation; the most I seem to be able to understand about anything that
society deems important is at the periphery of the big picture. Good luck
getting me to remember all the names of the political crooks I used to know
like the back of my hand.

Worse yet, _I 'm not as good at my career_, either. I think I was a better
programmer when I was working for peanuts but doing equally complicated
things.

I'm not saying that I'm brilliant, by any stretch of the imagination, but I
think that people, brilliant or not, can "lose their touch" both because
people _simply change_ and because focusing on one thing for too long cuts
loose the neural pathways that we took for granted when we could afford to
make connections between all sorts of ideas at a time in our lives when _the
stakes were low_. If this isn't a form of actual brain damage, it certainly
seems like it to me.

And I'm not burned out, as far as I'm aware. I just _suck_ more than I used
to, and I do think that's the result of becoming a "subject idiot".

~~~
anbende
I can identify with the feeling. Thinking back on the period of my late teens
and early 20s, I had a lot of strong opinions on things. And I'd read about
them. I could call upon information on those topics. I could cite the source
where I read it.

In my mid-30s, I'm much less confident about just about everything. I still
have some medium to strong opinions, but I've been wrong enough times about
things I was _sure_ about that it's just hard to hold such strong views on
things having only read it in a book or two.

There are a couple of differences between your experience and mine though, I
think. The first is that I'm about to finish my PhD and have a great deal more
expertise than I did in my early 20s. So as my expertise has grown, my
certainty in many things, especially those outside my field has diminished.
This is largely because I realize just how much more depth most fields of
knowledge have and just how much is required to really hold an informed
opinion.

I also deal with a fair number of young people, college students in my
department and in other contexts. I recognize some of the same certainty and
optimism I used to have at their age, and I hear some of the same opinions I
used to hold on such things as vegetarianism, government systems, and economic
policy. I remember having those beliefs, and talking to these young adults,
it's striking just how little evidence their certainty rests on. It's worse
inside my field, where students come in with their "great idea" having done no
research and spent all of about 5 minutes really thinking through the
ramifications of their idea, but that same certainty and optimism is there.

I often wish I was as idealistic and energetic as I was 15 years ago. But I
wouldn't trade it for the naive surface-level thinking that went along with
it. I like seeing the depth in the world too much, even when it shows just how
shallow my thinking is in most areas, and even if it means that in most areas
of life I'm forced to constantly face my uncertainty and lack of expertise.

Anyway, I hope that was at least a little bit helpful.

~~~
sjg007
When you are younger your learning rate of change is higher but you also don’t
necessarily know what you don’t know. As you get older you start to appreciate
that things are more complicated than they first appear. In school everything
that you learn (besides learning how to learn) is already known. Mastery gives
you confidence to approach the unknown which is life outside of formal
education.

~~~
shostack
Mastery has been an incredible and incredibly humbling journey.

I'm not so bold as to propose I'm a master yet, but I've definitely hit a
patch of "these problems are plaguing the industry and lots of smarter people
have not managed to fully solve them yet."

What's been fascinating is I now have sufficient perspective to have thoughts
and hypothesis of how to approach solving them, but the experience to have a
sense of where I'll likely hit walls.

In the case of business it gets interesting because in many cases, if these
problems have been solved, there's vested interests in making sure nobody else
finds out how you did it, so these may actually be solved by some companies
already and I'll never know.

------
DoreenMichele
We rarely know exactly why a thing works. This is part of why successful
businesses are scared of change: They may break a thing they didn't know
mattered and have no means to figure out what went wrong.

There's a story of a sausage business that built a new factory further north
in town. A long time employee retired rather than make the longer commute.

After the move, their sausages lost some of their unique characteristics that
had made them so successful. They were baffled and didn't know what went
wrong.

One day, people were reminiscing about the good old days and began talking
about the guy that retired. It had been his job to move the sausages from one
area of the building to another.

With talking about it, they realized it had taken him like 30 minutes to do
this and they had inadvertently eliminated this stage in the more efficiently
designed new factory. They added a holding room or warming room and, voila,
their sausages resumed having the characteristics that made them so popular.

I also love stories about bands that break up and later get back together
after discovering that none of the individual musicians can capture the magic
the band had. Or even stories where one particular band member rocketed to
success and the others didn't.

I just love these examples of how changing conditions can cast light on who
the real talent was or where the real magic was. It often isn't what people
thought before the change.

~~~
Smaug123
For this sort of thing, I really enjoyed Scott Alexander's review of The
Secret Of Our Success ([https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-
secret...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret-of-
our-success/)), which contains lots of examples of how culture came to solve
problems. Manioc is the big example from that article: when manioc was taken
over to Africa as a cheap food, the corresponding culture was not taken with
it, with the result that millions of Africans started showing the symptoms of
cyanide poisoning twenty years later.

------
mntmoss
This is related to the general "is it luck or is it skill" question: At the
broadest scales, luck increasingly explains every factor of experience. But in
the everyday situation you can always point to factors of skill, until you get
down to the most raw performance indicators of speed, strength, reflexes,
etc.: then it becomes luck, unless you have a way of training those things,
improving them with nutrition, pharmaceuticals etc. And then it becomes skill
again, until you are limited by stuff inherent to a human body, and then it
could be luck that you have long swimmer arms or bodybuilder genetics. You can
then switch to considering mechanical assistance and developing original
inventions, and now you are considering mental performance. It goes on and on
like that.

The most practical thing I've found to do, in light of this problem, is to
focus on developing better feedback: success and failure signals for each
problem that you can use to summarize how you are doing. Then the skill/luck
question becomes less reliant on external comparison and more on inner growth
- hence more in control, more skill-driven.

But as a society our measures are mostly external. If someone succeeds, that's
all we see.

~~~
godelski
As to luck there's an old saying that I really like: the harder I work the
luckier I get.

How I interpret this it that working hard increases your skills. If you are
more skillful you are more able to take advantage of lucky situations you
have. We all have lucky situations, some more than others (we can even say
privilege plays a large role here). But here's the thing, if you don't have
the skills to take advantage of these situations then they are useless.

Let's make up an egregious example. Let's say you are working on battery
powered rockets that use AI. If you one day meet Elon Musk at your local
grocery store and somehow strike up a conversation then he's probably going to
be very interested in you and your background. He'll probably try to keep in
contact with you and maybe offer you a job. Now let's consider without the
skill. Well you met Elon Musk which is pretty cool, but you're probably not
going to get a job.

It isn't so much luck vs skill, but the combination of the two. I would be
willing to bet that there is not a single millionaire (yes, that low) that
can't chalk up a significant portion of their wealth to something that others
would consider luck. Such as family/friend's connections, stumbling into a
situation, taking jobs that lead to other jobs in the right way, etc (this is
why the specific wording of the previous sentence. Because most don't notice
these kinds of things and when looking from the inside we notice the skill
part and not the luck. Because we did in fact work hard, and you know... Human
psychology)

~~~
Consultant32452
I think it's a myth that a person can choose whether or not they're a hard
worker. It's most likely a matter of neurochemistry far beyond conscious
control.

~~~
godelski
This is entirely a defeatist mentality. I don't think there is any evidence to
show that neurochemistry causes determinism, which is essentially what you are
suggesting.

But let's assume it is true (which I don't think it is). Is it mentally
healthy to go around saying "well fuck it, I'm just this way because I was
born this way".

I do believe you can change yourself. Neurochemistry definitely plays a role
in your ability to (luck). But having this defeatist mentality means you'll
never attempt it. I would even argue that this comment should hint at some
evolutionary benefit of getting down trodden.

~~~
dasil003
Exactly. I choose to believe I can control my own behavior, and that belief
undeniably affects my actual behavior. Now some Determinist comes along and
says I didn't really make that choice, it was destiny. Well, okay, whatever
you say dude; but the fact that I believe it is still in play.

I don't see what the value in denying free will is. Fascinating sophomore
debate? Yes. Gonna help you survive and thrive on this planet? No.

~~~
Consultant32452
I feel like this is saying you're a Christian because religion is useful
regardless of whether it's true. That's cool man, I'm not here to yuck your
yum.

~~~
dasil003
Sure, but all analogies are flawed. Yours is not as offensive to me as you
might have hoped because I’m agnostic. But I can also flip it on its head:

The problem with religion comes when it’s used as a justification for horrible
acts—just like one might use the lack of free will to justify horrible acts.

~~~
Consultant32452
Sorry, I genuinely wasn't trying to offend you, though I can see why it came
off that way. I just meant to convey I'm not on some mission to convince
people of anything. If it's helpful or makes people feel good to believe in
free will, that's good enough for me. Even if I were 100% sure of there was no
robust free will, I wouldn't be interested in changing people's minds.

------
lkrubner
I've written about some of the brilliant people I know who suffered at least
one episode of burnout:

\-----------------------------

As I’ve gone through my 30s and 40s, I’ve been surprised at how many of my
friends have suffered some kind of burnout. In fact, between the ages of 15
and 45, I would say that everyone I know personally has had at least one bad
year. Back when I was in school, it seemed like some people were reliably
happy, and other people were reliably depressed. And yes, many of those
personality traits turned out to be consistent over several decades. But it
was a surprise to realize that even the happiest people could fall into a dark
spot. Some people are highly resilient, but no one is infinitely resilient.

Depression can end your career, end your marriage, and end your life. But long
before most people find themselves facing a serious depression, they typically
pass through an earlier stage, more mild and more subtle. What if we could all
catch ourselves at that earlier stage?

I’m talking about burnout. Perhaps we can think of it as the mildest form of
depression, or a mid-point between true mental health and outright depression.
How do we identify something so subtle? Specific anecdotes are useful, because
people need to be able to hear a story similar to what they are going through.

[http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/burnout-is-
universal-...](http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/burnout-is-universal-
but-the-right-kind-of-sleep-food-and-exercise-helps)

~~~
dbcurtis
I don't see it that way. I have been severely burned-out, and will never let
_that_ happen again. I have also been visited by the Black Dog. They are
different. Perhaps both present in some people, so maybe hard to tease apart.

The cure for burn out is to cut out any activities that do not bring personal
joy and satisfaction. (My burn-out was cured by a few months off pursuing my
hobbies. Yes, I was lucky to have that option.) The thing about depression is
that nothing brings joy or satisfaction. Burn-out and depression are
orthogonal. But IMO you must cure depression first, before trying to address
burn out, if both are present.

~~~
arcticbull
> The cure for burn out is to cut out any activities that do not bring
> personal joy and satisfaction.

That, and giving yourself a series of small tasks, each of which you can
complete easily. That feeling of satisfaction that you obtain by completing
these small tasks quickly turns into your emotional ability to complete bigger
and bigger tasks, and before you know it, you're back on the horse. It's
amazing how effective this is, it's been documented here before too. I'll see
if I can dig out where I first read this.

~~~
Raphmedia
I have an acquaintance who works from home.

He recently told me that every time he feels like he's losing his motivation
and starts to fall into negativity, he goes to the kitchen and does the
dishes.

He considers this time to be part of his work day.

By the time he has washed the dishes, the sense of accomplishment is back.

What I take from this anecdote is that the brain does not distinguish that
washing something is not part of building a web application. It is simply
content to have cleaned multiple objects and then have completed a complex
task.

~~~
klenwell
This is what I learned/intuited/assumed (?) to be the practical value of
raking the gravel in a zen garden. It's not the effect, it's the process.

I've also assumed that this was the moral of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance though I've never read it.

(I have my own rituals.)

[0] Not mentioned on the Wikipedia page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_rock_garden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_rock_garden)

------
amelius
A fourth reason could be psychological. Being expected to win can be a huge
burden. It's much easier to be the underdog.

------
slushy-chivalry
I always felt that people (brilliant or not, who am I to judge) lose their
touch because they stop learning and start making excuses. "I'm not young
anymore". "The world has changed". "Back in my days it was easier".

As far as burnout, I always felt like getting a few small wins was quite
beneficial for preventing it. For example, as a programmer, depending on a
level of burnout, I might:

\- Fix a small bug

\- Learn / setup up a new framework (shout-out to all JS frameworks out there
-- you help us prevent burnout!)

\- Do a self-contained project that you can release in a few days

\- _in severe cases_ Do some random shit completely not related to programming
until you miss it and naturally come back because it's fun again.

------
werber
I ended up meeting a lot of my idols who had lost their touch when I was young
and it never made sense in close quarters. But when I'd go out with them and
people would incessantly talk to them it finally made sense, they lost their
ability to observe the world and had no choice but to be observed. They
weren't able to grow

------
javajosh
I'm glad that others have mentioned regression toward the mean
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)
but this article also suffers from fundamental attribution error
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error).
Society identifies brilliant people by brilliant outcomes, but this is a
flawed implication: brilliant outcomes can happen to anyone, and brilliant
people might never have a brilliant outcome.

------
bobloblaw45
I think one possibility is if you're one of the gifted you tend to skyrocket
during the first half of your career.

But if everything came easy to you from the start you missed out on working
through tough problems. You didn't develop the tenacity to push through. So by
time you do start seeing the harder problems you start failing and the
failures hit you harder. Without the skill to keep pushing yourself through
failure you just kinda give up sooner.

------
RickSanchez2600
I was great at Visual BASIC 6.0 until Dotnet came out. I had years of
experience in VB 6.0 but nothing in C# or VB.Net. Technology passed me by, and
the same thing happened when I did COBOL and FORTRAN on an IBM 370 Mainframe.
I didn't lose my touch, technology passed me by.

So now I have to catch up with Python, C# and other languages. I've been sick
from the stress of a toxic environment at work and had to go on short term
disability and rest. I didn't become stupid or lose my touch or get soft in
the head. I can still program VB 6.0 just that nobody wants those skills
anymore.

------
ChrisCinelli
Personally when I am looking at something interesting that I want to learn
from, I always ask:

"What is the difference that make the difference?"

These are my general observations:

When you do not understand _what the important variables are_ , most often
than not, you end up clueless.

Humans are not good with too much complexity. When too many variables are
playing a role, it is usually not clear what dominates.

Being a generalist helps understanding. To figure out what is going on, a
generalist mindset helps because you can find clues from other domains.

Over generalization is the root of all evils. People usually dramatically fail
when they think the situation is the same of one they observed in the past but
it is in reality VERY different. This happens because they are looking at
variables they observed in the past situation that are similar. But they are
not seeing or underestimate other variables that dominate the new situation.

In general, even when you think you got it, it is useful to test a few times
(assuming you can) to find out, if you really got it right.

------
FabHK
An insightful book that touches on these issues in more depth is Robert H.
Frank's _Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy_.

Good argument for the estate tax, by the way.

[https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10663.html](https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10663.html)

------
baccheion
Hormonal decline due to accumulated stress/inflammation/cortisol/insulin.
Starts with DHEA at ~25. Others follow, as DHEA is a precursor.

Meditation, time, absence of urgency, replacement of contentment with a new
passion/spark, nootropics, nutrition, less stress, compatible environment,
etc..

------
SubiculumCode
I agree with the article about luck and context. The world changed, your
brand, product, or philosophy may be come less relevant or regarded over time,
or faces greater competition.

But part of the death of genius is certainly in rooted in the person. A number
of pitfalls in that direction to which we can relate. I think a major one is
believing in your own hype, decreasing your ability to reject bad ideas. Also
success can dim the the fire inside that had something to prove, and by caring
less, settle for less. Also, for certain types of genius, it may have depended
on peak working memory, and that declines with age. Last, I think knowledge of
the world dims certain types of genius. I think melodic genius is particularly
vulnerable to having heard and played too much music previously. Patterns get
built up in your mind, and when trying to write music, at least for me, not
only am I more likely to travel down the same worn melodic paths, but if I do
discover some interesting turn of melodic phrase, I am more likely to recall
some bit of music that I've heard, and go "ahh.. its one of these" and
suddenly its hard for it to take its own path, and you are comparing it to
what was written before....which kinda kills a moment of inspiration.

------
1PlayerOne
With some exceptions, there is no mystery about it at all, sooner or later
luck runs out and they simply regress toward the mean [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)

------
DyslexicAtheist
fascinating stuff:

> _Perhaps we do. Michael Blastland’s recent book, The Hidden Half, argues
> that much of the variation we see in the world around us is essentially
> mysterious. Mr Blastland’s opening example is the marmorkrebs, a kind of
> crayfish that reproduces parthenogenetically — that is, marmorkrebs lay eggs
> without mating and those eggs develop into clones of their mothers._

Blastland is a very passionate speaker too. RSA talk on the subject:

Risk, Chance and Choice - Michael Blastland and David Spiegelhalter:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INw0O5F-yWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INw0O5F-yWc)

------
scotty79
Regression to mean of a random walk.

~~~
FabHK
As mentioned in the article:

> More likely it is “regression to the mean”, or in simple terms, a return to
> business as usual.

~~~
scotty79
I haven't got to that point. It was obvious from the first paragraph.

------
paulcole
> There is even a legend that athletes who appear on the cover of Sports
> Illustrated are doomed to suffer the “SI jinx”. The rise to the top is
> followed by the fall from grace.

This phenomenon is pretty easily explained. People make the cover of SI when
they've peaked or just hit a major accomplishment. It's extremely unlikely
that they'll do anything but regress.

Additionally, until recently there were 50 SI covers per year. Once we're
aware of the "SI Jinx", we remember the ones where it comes true and ignore
the many, many, many issues where it doesn't.

~~~
mattmanser
If you'd have finished reading the article:

 _Few people make the cover of Sports Illustrated after a run of mediocre
luck. They appear after things have been going well, and if the good luck
fails to hold then it seems like the SI jinx. More likely it is “regression to
the mean”, or in simple terms, a return to business as usual._

~~~
paulcole
Not a big reader but thanks. And I believe you’re breaking the site
guidelines:

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
Bakary
Well the guidelines also say not to post shallow dismissals...

~~~
paulcole
Didn’t you just break that one too?

------
dlphn___xyz
burnout doesn't have to be negative - sometimes it can force you identify what
is really important and leave everything else behind

------
WheelsAtLarge
No, No, No... "Brilliant people" are defined by others by their work, the
period when they were born, how they let others know of their work (a form of
self-advertisement), hard work and random luck. Lose any of those and the
person loses his/her title of "brilliant." Look at Einstein vs Feynman they
both did brilliant work but Einstein is considered the smarter man. Einstein
made himself a celebrity. He did as much as he could to make sure that people
knew about him. Feynman did not. Einstein is considered a more brilliant man
but he was not. Einstein was born a the right time in history. Had he been
born 100 years earlier he would not have had the accumulated human knowledge
to do his work. He was a hard worker. Up to his last days, he worked to
advance his work. And ofcourse just random luck which you can't control.

~~~
m463
Hmmm.. interesting to compare the two. I am a big fan of both, but _like_
Feynman better as a nerd.

Wasn't Einstein 40 years older than Feynman? He did physics PLUS politics,
including the letter to Roosevelt about the bomb. Even at the challenger
investigation Feynman mostly stuck to science.

I think Einstein's ability to be interdependent made him a little more
brilliant in my eyes. (along with the ability to reflect light)

------
buboard
> We rarely appreciate just how much inconsistency there is in the judgments
> we and others make, argues Prof Kahneman. It can hardly be a surprise, then,
> if past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Past performance can often predict future success that's why geniuses often
are serial geniuses, sometimes in more fields than one. But we often forget
that before they became known as geniuses they passed through a string of
failures as is necessary. Im not sure if it's a problem with the geniuses
themselves, or a problem of perception from our side, as we become intolerant
to their failures.

~~~
dxbydt
“future success” does not have to be preceded by past “string of failures”.

Like, at all. That’s just classic gambler fallacy.

If you want an example of reverse gambler fallacy, see here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=20231181&goto=threads%...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=20231181&goto=threads%3Fid%3Dkamaal%2320231181)

There the author says “10k heads have shown up, so 10k tails are waiting to
show up”

which is equally rubbish.

There’s this weird thing where people on HN keep falling prey to Gambler’s
fallacy. Maybe it’s like a programmer’s blind spot ?

~~~
roywiggins
You could turn it around and say, assuming I eventually succeed, what's the
distribution of failures I'd have to endure? You might get lucky, but it's
definitely possible to quantify how long it would most probably take to
succeed.

If you have a bunch of people tossing dice and stopping when they roll a 1,
only ~1/6 will succeed immediately. Most people will take a few tries; a few
will take many tries; there's a nonzero chance you will wait forever without a
success.

That's not to say that a success gets more likely with time (the Gambler's
Fallacy) but on the whole, you'd expect most successes to have some prior
failures, unless the dice are rigged.

~~~
dxbydt
> it’s definitely possible to quantify how long it would most probably take to
> succeed

yes. if success means to roll a 1, and anything else is a failure, you will on
average roll the die 6 times before you succeed. E(x) = 1/p for a geometric
with p = 1/6\. your variance is q/p^2, so 30.

so then, my rational decision as an investor is to quit rolling the die after
17 rolls ( mu + 2 sd = 6 + 2*sqrt(30) = 17 ). I wouldn’t wait until heat death
of universe.

------
rdiddly
I guess I'm realizing I never approached this from a standpoint of expecting
top people to stay on top forever, so the inquiry seems a little misguided to
me. Even if you manage to dominate your field, in the very best case you're
going to grow old & die someday. That's the pessimistic, decay theory. Or
there's the optimistic, "progress" theory: If you believe humanity is on a
more-or-less continuous arc of steady progress, that means somebody better is
always coming along sooner or later to surpass your work.

------
ncmncm
Usually when people cite Dunning-Kruger, the results are explained by a
corollary of reversion to the mean. Incompetents think they're more average
than they are, prodigies think they're more average than they are, full stop.

If you look at the original measurements, they are mostly explainable on that
basis. The usual claim that incompetents think they know better than experts
doesn't show up in those results, and they don't report that.

That's not to say there aren't people who are really delusional -- Trump
exists -- but it's not a rule.

It's not reversion to the mean, exactly, because there's no time series
involved, but similar statistical laws operate.

If there's a real "effect", meriting a name, it's that incompetents are even
bad at identifying the average, and miss, often thinking they are above
average just because they don't really even understand what average means.

They cited this in their actual results.

------
thallukrish
Something similar I had written in 2011
[http://arbidobservations.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-we-
think-w...](http://arbidobservations.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-we-think-we-
become-increasingly.html)

------
cgh
If you enjoyed this article, I can recommend the author's book "Fifty
Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy" (mentioned at the end of the
article). The inventions are not what you might think and it was a pretty
enlightening read, at least for me.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Also the World Service 50 episode podcast of those inventions - all freely
available. I always thought it a bit odd they renamed it from "50 things" to
"50 inventions" for the US book release.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b1g3c/episodes/downloads)

------
thallukrish
something similar I had written in 2011.

[http://arbidobservations.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-we-
think-w...](http://arbidobservations.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-we-think-we-
become-increasingly.html)

------
rhacker
TLDR: Theres like 7 billion people. We have lottery winners both
(specifically) and in other areas in life.

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WJW
Unlike most lotteries, in life we also have lottery losers who have to pay
their ticket another 100x or so.

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firecall
I think I was born regressed to the mean. :-/

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hagreet
Regression to the mean.

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HyperTalk2
Gradual brain damage can strike at any time. You wouldn't even notice anything
other than feeling more sluggish and having foggier thoughts. Imagine how many
people don't even know they have sleep apnea that is slowly lowering their IQ.
Imagine how many people have an oral herpes infection that reached their brain
where it will now wage an endless battle to convert all of their neurons into
derelict HSV-1 replicators. There could even be an evolutionary advantage to a
brain automatically permanently entering a more dormant state after it senses
it has reached the top of the pyramid, assuming tribes were less likely to
self-destruct when members of the next generation had a fairer chance at
usurping the throne.

