I like this article a lot. I’m glad to have a name for this, since I’ve definitely used this concept before. My usual argument that invokes this goes something like:
“Humans are terrible.”
“Terrible compared to what? We’re better than we’ve ever been in most ways. We’re only terrible compared to some idealised perfect version of humanity, but that doesn’t exist and never did. What matters is whether we’re headed in the right direction.”
I realise now that this is a zero-point issue—their zero point was where they thought humans should be on the issue at hand (e.g, racism) and my zero point was the historical data for how well we’ve done in the past.
The zero point may also help with imposter syndrome, as well as a thing I have not named, which I now temporarily dub the Competitor’s Paradox until an existing name is found.
The rule is—if you’re a serious participant in a competitive endeavor, you quickly narrow your focus to only compare yourself to people who take it at least as seriously as you do. You can be a 5.0 tennis player (Very strong amateur) but you’ll still get your ass kicked in open competition. You may be in the top 1% of tennis players*, but the 95-98% of players who you can clean off the court with ease never even get thought of when you ask yourself if you’re “good” or not. The players who can beat you easily? They’re good. This remains true no matter how high you go, until there’s nobody in the world who can beat you easily, which is like, 20 guys.
So it may help our 5.0 player to say something like “Well, am I good? Depends on what you consider the baseline. For a tournament competitor? No. But for a club player, absolutely.”
I like this article a lot. I’m glad to have a name for this, since I’ve definitely used this concept before. My usual argument that invokes this goes something like:
“Humans are terrible.”
“Terrible compared to what? We’re better than we’ve ever been in most ways. We’re only terrible compared to some idealised perfect version of humanity, but that doesn’t exist and never did. What matters is whether we’re headed in the right direction.”
I realise now that this is a zero-point issue—their zero point was where they thought humans should be on the issue at hand (e.g, racism) and my zero point was the historical data for how well we’ve done in the past.
The zero point may also help with imposter syndrome, as well as a thing I have not named, which I now temporarily dub the Competitor’s Paradox until an existing name is found.
The rule is—if you’re a serious participant in a competitive endeavor, you quickly narrow your focus to only compare yourself to people who take it at least as seriously as you do. You can be a 5.0 tennis player (Very strong amateur) but you’ll still get your ass kicked in open competition. You may be in the top 1% of tennis players*, but the 95-98% of players who you can clean off the court with ease never even get thought of when you ask yourself if you’re “good” or not. The players who can beat you easily? They’re good. This remains true no matter how high you go, until there’s nobody in the world who can beat you easily, which is like, 20 guys.
So it may help our 5.0 player to say something like “Well, am I good? Depends on what you consider the baseline. For a tournament competitor? No. But for a club player, absolutely.”
*I’m not sure if 5.0 is actually top 1% or not.