This is true. Most people put the absolute minimum amount of effort in every aspect of their lives – often times even in things they actually care about. Once you realize this and pay attention to people you'll start to notice this everywhere. Some attention to detail and you instantly jump ahead – may be not to 95%, but considerably ahead. The rest tends to be practice, as you point out.
I think we'd rather see ourselves as lazy than incompetent. Even though objectively speaking, "lazy" is probably just as damaging a hit to your self image. Because admitting to yourself that you're a shit basketball player isn't necessarily going to dissuade you from learning piano, but feeling stuck certainly will.
In the article he's saying that a lot of people fail to improve because they're practicing wrong. Now that's probably a valid point, and it should have been his thesis. In fact, he probably considers it to be his thesis, but he muddied the waters by providing it with a debatable introduction and title.
Putting all the blame on the author is oversimplifying things. Yes the introduction and title could be made better, but that's not an excuse to interpret the post in a way the author obviously didn't intend it to be interpreted.
But the author is just one person. If that author learned to structure their work better they can singlehandedly improve the comprehension of across the entire mass of readers.
If you're communicating to the masses and they're not getting it, it's your fault. It may not be 100% true, but it's 100% useful to think of things that way.
Some authors are hard to understand, but the message they are trying to convey could be worth extracting.
As a reader it is preferable for you to be able to extract value out of opaque text. The author owes you nothing. And, presumably you are reading because you think there might be something of value underneath.
If you fail to capture that value (If there is any) that's your loss, not the author's.
Certainly, it would be best if the message were communicated in such a fashion that people would not misunderstand it to begin with. But if, and when things are poorly communicated, if you misunderstand the underlying message the person taking a loss is not the author, but you.
To think otherwise would be to focus too deeply on some sort of exposure, or monetary loss on the part of the author, rather than the failure to capture a nugget of wisdom that might be of utility to your life.
Obviously if this is your universe of participants, it makes it a lot easier to get to 95%.
If you define it as anyone who spends time in a canoe or kayak at least once per week, in comparison, that 95% level of ability goes way way up.
Completely not true.
Having absolute solid basics that you drill every single day (dribble with both hands or both feet, run your conditioning, shoot free throws, etc.) puts you in the 95th percentile until probably Division 1-A college level (at which point, yes, innate size and body type start to matter).
You have to have at least an average amount of athleticism for any sport.
After that, simply drilling the fundamentals over and over and over and over ad nauseam probably puts you into the 95th percentile. This also has the advantage that it improves your endurance and athleticism DRAMATICALLY.
There are regularly articles about middle school teams that are ferociously drilled on fundamentals beating significantly older and physically larger teams that don't have the fundamentals down cold.
Let me know if you disagree with any of these, or if you think the examples I'm choosing are not within the scope of your argument: -No matter how much you drill, you will never be a 95th percentile center in basketball if you're 5'8" or whatever the average male height is. -Slightly further down the innate vs. trainable spectrum, I have never seen an average athlete become even close to a 95th percentile sprinter, long jumper, football wide receiver, or soccer winger. Speed is too important for these, and speed is largely innate. -I have seen below-average athletes become 95th percentile power lifters, football linemen, archers, grapplers, climbers, long distance swimmers, etc. That's because these sports/positions depend on more trainable attributes like strength, flexibility, endurance, technique, and mental focus/resilience.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265197
- Slightly further down the innate vs. trainable spectrum, I have never seen an average athlete become even close to a 95th percentile sprinter, long jumper, football wide receiver, or soccer winger.
You're looking at this the wrong way. You're thinking about pro players. For most sports, if you're paid to play, you're probably in the top 1% or even 0.5%. Top 5% is much, much bigger and it's usually semi-pros and even amateurs. You can definitely be a half decent player in an amateur team for almost any sport, as long as you're not actually disabled. And even then, it depends on the disability.
95th percentile is probably not the best way to put it since there are tons of activities where nearly everyone is trying to actively get better such as competitive sports. Dan's thesis doesn't hold true for those activities and he knows that. That doesn't change the fact that there are a ton of activities out there where you can easily get better than most people by practicing.