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"You know what they call people who graduated bottom of their class in medical school? Doctors." Most people are clustered somewhere near the middle of the nor
by gary_0 5y ago
"You know what they call people who graduated bottom of their class in medical school? Doctors."
Most people are clustered somewhere near the middle of the normal distribution in terms of the testable attributes supposedly required for highly specialized work. Most jobs that are just jobs (as opposed to Nobel laureates, astronauts, etc) have enough people in their number that they can't only contain truly exceptional outliers.
In other words, the only people who are outright excluded for such specialized jobs are negative outliers, who often have identifiable genetic/developmental problems or injuries. Everyone else at least has a shot, like you say.
- graecea 5y agoAbilities are not normally distributed but power law distributed (a tiny elite of skilled people and a fat tail that represents the unskilled mass). This is one of the shortcomings of IQ (which is coerced into a normal distribution) and its purported ability to 'predict' real-life abilities.
- gary_0 5y agoI'm not talking about acquired skill, I'm talking about inherent ability, which is normally distributed due to genetics, evolution, and metabolic limitations. (To argue otherwise leads us on the slippery slope towards eugenics.)