* Anyone who is worse than me is a scrub
* Anyone who is better than me has no life
> Even more so if you're 95% on more than one things (imaging meeting someone that's 95% programmer, conversationalist, cook, guitar player, marathon runner, business owner, ... He would automatically be hella more impressive than the huge majority of people you meet)...
Being in the top 5% for more than 1 thing is trivially easy. Top 5% is just 1 in 20 people who have attempted. Most people have tried cooking at least once. Most people have ran at least once in their life (Hell, just completing a marathon would put you in the top 5% of of people who run). The pool of people who have attempted programming by now is pretty massive (and it's a pretty big conversation about how many do not succeed).
Being in the top 5% of just these is really not difficult. It only seems difficult if you only compare people trying to be in the top percentile and not every person who has ever participated.
On the other hand, your handle is "xbox, no life".
The whole OP premise is:
"Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things. Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people (for many activities, just doing it at all makes you 99%-ile or above across all people). I'm also not referring to 95%-ile among people who practice regularly. The "one weird trick" is that, for a lot of activities, being something like 10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or 99%-ile among people who participate."
It might not be impressive if you have a monomania on the specific subject, but it is very impressive when you also have a life, and this is just one thing you do...
Even more so if you're 95% on more than one things (imaging meeting someone that's 95% programmer, conversationalist, cook, guitar player, marathon runner, business owner, ... He would automatically be hella more impressive than the huge majority of people you meet)...