If I am of average ability then the things I see people say and do should, on average, be within my capabilities. But most of the things I see people say and do are far beyond my capabilities. Therefore I am below average.
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September 17, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Anonymous
“But most of the things I see people say and do are far beyond my capabilities. Therefore I am below average.”
That’s dependent upon the sample of people you observe being representative of society.
September 17, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Paul
Yeah, I agree with Anonymous here. I think there’s good reason to think that that the first sentence is true. If people like to see and show off their extraordinary talents but hide their failures, you could be well above-average and still be unable to accomplish the majority of the things you see.
I also am not sure what you mean by the second sentence and it seems to me that you may be equivocating a bit. I cannot, for example, cook a good souffle, repair a transmission (without a reference book) or make espresso. If you say that the things that you see are not within your capabilities in the sense that you could NEVER do them no matter how hard you tried, then ignoring the selection bias in the first sentence you have identified that you are below-average. But I think that most people would agree to the fact that they cannot do most of the things that they see other people do but they would have been able to do them if they had gotten the same training and put in the same amount of effort. Perhaps you had the first meaning in mind, but it seems like equivocation since most people would have a very hard time estimating how capable they would be in fields outside their own specialty.
September 17, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Paul
Oh, a mistake in my earlier comment – you presumably don’t have to put in the same amount of effort and training, you would just have to put in the same amount of effort/training or less than the average amount of effort and training that any random person would have to put in. Presumably people who have to put in less effort would probably specialize, so you could still be above-average even if you would need to put in more effort to do or learn a given thing than any person who self-selects into the class of people who currently have learned and do that thing. …If that makes sense.
September 18, 2009 at 12:45 am
M
Wouldn’t this be like income/wealth?
The average is higher than what most people actually have.