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General Discussion

A place to talk about whatever you want

38.1k Topics 345.3k Posts
  • Mildly interesting

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    jon-nycJ
    Windfall comes from the old English custom of tenants on estates having the right to gather wood blown down by the wind.
  • I have a question about Fort Stewart

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  • Fuck coding

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    HoraceH
    Team sport ability is so loaded on physical abilities such as strength and size and speed, along with natural abilities such as processing speed in certain visual and spatial aspects, it may stand to reason that the best of the best reach heights of ability in those sports that purely cognitive fields do not support. ———————— Absolutely — and you’re zeroing in on something fundamental about the limits of human variance in different domains. In team sports, the ceiling of performance is shaped by rare confluences of physical and cognitive gifts that are largely immutable and distributed sparsely across the population. In contrast, in purely cognitive fields, the ceiling may be more flexible, contextual, or socially constructed. Let’s break it down: ⸻ Team Sports: Physical Exceptionalism + Cognitive Real-Time Processing Elite athletes — especially in team sports like football, soccer, or basketball — are typically outliers on multiple dimensions simultaneously: • Raw physical traits: size, speed, strength, endurance. • Motor coordination: fine-tuned neuromuscular control. • Cognitive traits: split-second processing of rapidly changing spatial information, anticipation, tactical memory, and situational awareness. You don’t just need one gift — you need a genetically stacked deck plus years of focused training plus resilience to injuries plus an ability to perform under pressure. This creates a rarity at the apex. For example, LeBron James isn’t just big and fast — he processes plays and movement in real-time like a grandmaster plays chess. Variance is deep, and the filtering system is harsh. ⸻ 🧠 Cognitive Fields: High Variance, But Milder Extremes Now look at fields like AI engineering, mathematics, or theoretical physics. Here: • The variance in raw cognitive talent (say, working memory, abstraction, insight) is real, but harder to measure, and the environment plays a bigger role. • Cumulative knowledge and tool access matter more than reflexes or power. • You can be elite at 50 or 70, not just at 24. This means: • The peak performance window is wider. • The barriers to entry are more dependent on education, culture, and access, not just nature. • The difference between a top 0.1% and top 0.01% mind might manifest more in luck, timing, or social navigation than raw skill alone. And crucially: training can make a massive difference, which is less true once you’re genetically capped in vertical leap or sprint speed. ⸻ 🧮 Sports as Harder Ceilings “It may stand to reason that the best of the best reach heights of ability in those sports that purely cognitive fields do not support.” Yes — because physical gifts stack with cognitive ones, and because physics imposes clearer ceilings. A 7-foot man who can jump 40 inches and think like a point guard? That’s a unicorn. A chess grandmaster or a machine learning researcher? Statistically less unicorn-ish. Put another way: sports funnel a larger base toward a narrower apex, where only those with compounded rare traits remain. In cognitive fields, the funnel is less steep, and horizontal divergence (niche expertise, specialization, network leverage) often matters more than vertical peak. ⸻ Implications for AI and the Current Talent Bubble This also loops back to your earlier point: • Some top AI engineers are undoubtedly gifted. • But they’re not unicorns in the LeBron sense — they’re early, lucky, and well-placed. • As access to tools, compute, and education expands, many more people will reach similar levels of output. The “half-life of specialness” in cognitive markets is real — because the barriers are cultural and temporal, not anatomical. ⸻ Let me know if you want to explore this from an evolutionary, educational, or talent-scouting angle — there’s rich territory in how societies filter and reward different forms of human excellence.
  • FFS

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    MikM
    How did we ever live without AI
  • German Trains - Now Only 56% Run On Time

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    jon-nycJ
    By the way in the US that character is called “Sir Topham Hatt” for anyone confused about who The Fat Controller (the original name) is.
  • My first girlfriend just died…

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    jon-nycJ
    With many a stiff sock in the hamper testifying to their love.
  • Beyond the antivaxx stuff MAHA is either banal or fake

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    jon-nycJ
    https://x.com/jonlemire/status/1952903704933241044?s=46
  • Small earthquake just now

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    Tom-KT
    Why aren't you dead already?
  • AI CapEx

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    jon-nycJ
    Yeah I often copy paste my prompt into grok too.
  • Danes don't like big t*ts

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    HoraceH
    Museums are very educational. This one taught me about the importance of markets. Go to any of the hundreds of hotels or restaurants here, and everybody treats you nice. Go to the one place you can go to see some original Da Vincis, and the customer facing personnel are reminiscent of the DMV.
  • Those magnificent men in their flying machines

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    jon-nycJ
    Should be fun to watch.
  • I, for one…

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    LuFins DadL
    https://x.com/grok/status/1952445538449928645
  • Vinfast coming on or flaming out?

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    AxtremusA
    Test drove a Vinfast SUV in early 2023. It drove just fine. Nothing particularly noteworthy except maybe the very large, portrait oriented touch screen with in the middle of the console.
  • Remember ‘FEMA Camps?’

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  • 111 years ago today

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  • The Dark or Inappropriate Humor Thread

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    jon-nycJ
    [image: 1754284419095-c228ad33-02be-4435-910c-a6defe86db8c.jpeg]
  • FFS

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    89th8
    Story with pics of the drain and surrounding area. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/baltimore/news/13-year-old-boy-died-storm-drain-flash-floods-mount-airy/
  • Huge frigging turtle

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    jon-nycJ
    Poor guy.
  • Old Tattoos … like, really, really old tattoos

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  • Shogun

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    HoraceH
    He’s always repeating his own lines as you watch with him. Pretty annoying. 2/10, would not watch with Richard Chamberlain again.