His "0.8 is enough" idea is close to an observation I made a few years ago, that the Dunning-Kreuger effect seems to reflect an ideal breakpoint for social stra

His "0.8 is enough" idea is close to an observation I made a few years ago, that the Dunning-Kreuger effect seems to reflect an ideal breakpoint for social stratification. People low on the curve drift towards evaluating themselves at ~0.75 (round to Knuth's 0.8), and those above that marker drift towards it as well. So when we are actually around the 80th percentile of anything, we're in the sweet spot everyone else's self-image trends towards. It makes sense too - we're very social beings, and being an outlier is inherently isolating. To Knuth's example - if he were 100% happy all the time, that could actually cause more social integration issues than being mostly happy (80%). For example, "Congrats on the funeral, it looks awesome!" Typically, good enough is perfect.