Comments on: The Best At What They Do

By: Weekend Reads | The Big Picture

Weekend Reads | The Big Picture — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:13:11 +0000

[...] Squirrel, and America’s Job Hunt Rabbit Hole (Penn Gazette) • The Best At What They Do (Cheap Talk) • Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science (The [...]

By: Which sport has the most talented athletes? | Sports News & Blogs

Which sport has the most talented athletes? | Sports News & Blogs — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:46:24 +0000

[...] at hockey, or MLB players are at baseball, or any other players are at their respective sports. Ely countered: nonsense. He argued that because you have to be tall to succeed in basketball, the pool of people [...]

By: Last Week’s News: [Expletives Not Deleted] « Patos Papa

Last Week’s News: [Expletives Not Deleted] « Patos Papa — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:32:01 +0000

[...] characteristic, players with a high endowment on that dimension have a head start.” via The Best At What They Do « Cheap Talk. Click through if you are a fan of the [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 04:02:04 +0000

Runners in the most glamorous competitions (100 m dash, marathons) should be here. Those competitions draw from an enormous pool of possible talent, and provide relatively lucrative and prestige rewards to attract the best runners.

By: jeff

jeff — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:32:48 +0000

Some accounting must be made for the range of achievement possible in an activity. Tic tac toe players are certainly the best at what they do but that’s only because their is a low upper bound on what they can do. They have achieved 100% of what’s possible while basketball players still have a lot of room for improvement.

Singers are better at what they do than piano players for all of the various reasons discussed above. Everyone can sing, the incentives to be a singer are stronger, etc.

Still piano players are more impressive than singers just like basketball players are more impressive than their colleagues in the tictactoe world.

By: Rob Smith

Rob Smith — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 22:06:23 +0000

And what about China?!

By: aimbonics (@aimbonics)

aimbonics (@aimbonics) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:19:54 +0000

1. Boxer
2. NFL Cornerback
3. Magician

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:25:33 +0000

Of the major professional sports, it is hard to argue against baseball players. The skills required in baseball are incredible and very, very difficult. Only a tiny percent of the population meetts the minimum requirements for just physical skills, and the of that subset you must select for intelligence as well. The best baseball players are very fast runners; have incredible eyesight; godlike coordination, reaction time, and reflexes; high deree of strength and flexibility; high iq; ability to focus on details under stress; leadership skills; very high degree of physical endurance; very quick healing and recovery (162 games in 180 days).

Baseball is an incredibly difficult sport that relies on a huge number of skills. There is a reason baseball has a minor league system that can take 3,4,5 or more years for even the very best of the best players to graduate through. The difference between even the highest of the highest of the highest amateur and pro leagues around the world cannot compare to the MLB. Maybe the Cuban leagues, but even that is a stretch. I don’t know of any other sport like that.

By: Foo

Foo — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:25:51 +0000

Chess is not a sport.

But if we’re including competitions of the mind, then there’s an easy best-of-all-sports here: Marion Tinsley was utterly dominant throughout his career in competitive checkers for 45 years right up until he died, at the age of 68. He only lost seven games in his entire career, and never lost a championship. He was so far ahead of the second-place players that they were lost in the noise. I cannot think of any other player, in any other competition in the history of sport or competitive games, remotely as dominant as Tinsley was.

By: imacd

imacd — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:55:10 +0000

“Tried going skating with my wife last night and I could barely stand up let alone skate. I’m assuming it must be a huge barrier to playing the sport well. Atleast I’d think when compared to other sports where everyone can atleast perform the most basis functions like walking or running.”

It takes a lot of dedication and a diverse array of skills to become a good hockey player. Are nuclear scientists shitty at their jobs because they’re drawn from such a select, elite subset of the population? You must have the total package to be a competitive pro in hockey. The worst goon in the NHL, with the fewest points, could SCHOOL any rec league.