I’ve noticed a few times how surprisingly easy it is to be in the upper echelon of some narrow area with a relatively small amount of expenditure (for an upper middle class American professional). This is easy to see in various entertainment hobbies- an American professional adult who puts, say, 10% of his salary into Legos will have a massive collection by the standards of most people who own Legos. Similarly, putting 10% of a professional’s salary into buying gadgets means that you would be buying a new one or two every month.
I recently came across an article on political donations and saw the same effect- to be in the top .01% of American political donors, it only takes about $11k an election cycle (more in presidential years, less in legislative only years). Again, at 10% of income, that only takes an income of ~$55k a year (since the cycles occur every two years), which is comparable to the median American salary (and lower than the starting salaries for most of my friends who graduated with STEM bachelor’s degrees).
It’s not clear to me what percentage of people do this. It’s the sort of thing that you could only do for a few narrow niches, since buying a ton of Legos impedes your ability to buy a bunch of gadgets, and it seems like most people go for broad niches instead of narrow niches. If you spend 10% of your income on clothes, say, then if most people spend 10% of their income on clothes you need to be in the top 1% of income-earners to be in the top 1% of clothes-buyers.
I know a handful of people in the LW sphere give a startlingly high percentage of their income to MIRI and are near the top of MIRI supporters. They probably also end up in the top percentile of charitable givers, but I don’t have numbers on hand for that.
I’m curious if this is a worthwhile pattern to emulate. I currently do this for art collection in a narrow subfield, and noticed the benefits of being at the top percentage of expenditure mostly by accident, but don’t have a good sense of how those benefits compare to marginal value comparisons between different potential hobbies. (Actually, now that I think about this, this might just be a special case of the general “specialization pays off” heuristic, where it may be better to have one extreme hobby than dabble in twenty things, but this may not be obvious when moving from twenty hobbies to nineteen hobbies.)
Some random points that came to my mind. The Pareto principle: 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the expenditure. So if we take the figure 10,000h to mastery, 2,000h will already lead to ridiculous effects, compared to the average Joe. The tighter the niche you choose is, the less competition there will be, so sheer probability dictates that you are more likely to be in a higher percentile of the distribution.
Overall, it seems to be better to be extremely invested in one niche and take a low interest in a couple of others for social purposes at least than to dabble moderately in a lot of them. What are the ‘benefits’ you alude to?
Finally, people spending a little bit on a lot of hobbies my be a symptom of an S-shaped response curve to money spent. The first few dollars increase pleasure a lot. Then you are just throwing money at it without obviousy return, so you forego the opportunity cost and get your high elsewhere. But should you for any reason get over this hypothetical plateu you reach again an interval of high return, maybe even higher than in the beginning and spend your money there.
Mostly access to exceptional people / opportunities, and admiration / social status. For example, become a major donor to a wildlife rescue center, and you get invited to play with the tigers. I would be surprised if major MIRI donors that live in the Bay area don’t get invited to dinner parties / similar social events with MIRI people.
For the status question, I think it’s better to be high status in a narrow niche than medium status in many niches. It’s not clear to me how the costs compare, though.
Activity in many niches could credibly signal high status in some circles by making available many insights with short inferential distance to the general public (outside any of your niches). Allowing one to seem very experienced/intelligent.
Moreover, the benefits to being medium status in several hobby groups and the associated large number of otherwise unrelated social connections may be greater than readily apparent.
Agreed. It seems like there are several general-purpose hobby groups that seem to be particularly adept at serving this role, of which churches are the most obvious example.
I’ve noticed a few times how surprisingly easy it is to be in the upper echelon of some narrow area with a relatively small amount of expenditure (for an upper middle class American professional). This is easy to see in various entertainment hobbies- an American professional adult who puts, say, 10% of his salary into Legos will have a massive collection by the standards of most people who own Legos. Similarly, putting 10% of a professional’s salary into buying gadgets means that you would be buying a new one or two every month.
I recently came across an article on political donations and saw the same effect- to be in the top .01% of American political donors, it only takes about $11k an election cycle (more in presidential years, less in legislative only years). Again, at 10% of income, that only takes an income of ~$55k a year (since the cycles occur every two years), which is comparable to the median American salary (and lower than the starting salaries for most of my friends who graduated with STEM bachelor’s degrees).
It’s not clear to me what percentage of people do this. It’s the sort of thing that you could only do for a few narrow niches, since buying a ton of Legos impedes your ability to buy a bunch of gadgets, and it seems like most people go for broad niches instead of narrow niches. If you spend 10% of your income on clothes, say, then if most people spend 10% of their income on clothes you need to be in the top 1% of income-earners to be in the top 1% of clothes-buyers.
I know a handful of people in the LW sphere give a startlingly high percentage of their income to MIRI and are near the top of MIRI supporters. They probably also end up in the top percentile of charitable givers, but I don’t have numbers on hand for that.
I’m curious if this is a worthwhile pattern to emulate. I currently do this for art collection in a narrow subfield, and noticed the benefits of being at the top percentage of expenditure mostly by accident, but don’t have a good sense of how those benefits compare to marginal value comparisons between different potential hobbies. (Actually, now that I think about this, this might just be a special case of the general “specialization pays off” heuristic, where it may be better to have one extreme hobby than dabble in twenty things, but this may not be obvious when moving from twenty hobbies to nineteen hobbies.)
Some random points that came to my mind. The Pareto principle: 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the expenditure. So if we take the figure 10,000h to mastery, 2,000h will already lead to ridiculous effects, compared to the average Joe. The tighter the niche you choose is, the less competition there will be, so sheer probability dictates that you are more likely to be in a higher percentile of the distribution.
Overall, it seems to be better to be extremely invested in one niche and take a low interest in a couple of others for social purposes at least than to dabble moderately in a lot of them. What are the ‘benefits’ you alude to?
Finally, people spending a little bit on a lot of hobbies my be a symptom of an S-shaped response curve to money spent. The first few dollars increase pleasure a lot. Then you are just throwing money at it without obviousy return, so you forego the opportunity cost and get your high elsewhere. But should you for any reason get over this hypothetical plateu you reach again an interval of high return, maybe even higher than in the beginning and spend your money there.
Mostly access to exceptional people / opportunities, and admiration / social status. For example, become a major donor to a wildlife rescue center, and you get invited to play with the tigers. I would be surprised if major MIRI donors that live in the Bay area don’t get invited to dinner parties / similar social events with MIRI people.
For the status question, I think it’s better to be high status in a narrow niche than medium status in many niches. It’s not clear to me how the costs compare, though.
Activity in many niches could credibly signal high status in some circles by making available many insights with short inferential distance to the general public (outside any of your niches). Allowing one to seem very experienced/intelligent.
Moreover, the benefits to being medium status in several hobby groups and the associated large number of otherwise unrelated social connections may be greater than readily apparent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network#Structural_holes
Agreed. It seems like there are several general-purpose hobby groups that seem to be particularly adept at serving this role, of which churches are the most obvious example.