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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago

The good news: we got much better at running The Sort. The bad news: we got much better at running The Sort.

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Crémieux@cremieuxrecueilabout 1 year ago

The dollar value of an additional IQ point, by age, in two American cohorts about a generation apart: https://t.co/XNX7C9nY8D

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

We, the societal we, implemented a relatively effective nationwide (and increasingly worldwide) dragnet for talent, then plucked that talent from the not-random-but-constrained walk through lives it would counterfactually have encountered and tracked it fairly narrowly.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Sort makes many mistakes, in both directions. It leaks promising candidates. The Sort doesn’t really feel good or bad about that, because it is an emergent behavior of a system comprised of many disparate actors with differing incentives, values, and similar.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

But, if the Sort would tolerate anthropomorphization (knowing which word it would award you points for, not that many, just the properly calibrated amount), it would look at many outcomes and declare them inefficient.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Department of Public Works in a small Iowa town is a competent administrator? How competent? Because most forms of competent are inefficiently competent. The Sort would prefer him to have ended up with two OOM more budget and four OOM more impacted users.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Sort, hearing family history, thinks that it was an obvious mistake that my father was a paralegal (swap with worst lawyer, Pareto improvement) and thinks it got closer with regards to me and still squandered a decade. Not a value judgement; just inefficient, you understand.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Sort is incredibly aware of agglomeration effects. If one doesn’t understand them, NP, low-productivity areas also require labor forces. One will enjoy taking in the cultural delights of the world’s foremost cities when one can afford to vacation to them.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

(The Sort didn’t ban building housing in those cities. It is as puzzled by that as everyone else is. It suggests it’s usual remedy: maybe if we just sort harder the problem will go away. The Sort is correct in its perception that this has worked in many contexts for it.)

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Sort is incredibly aware of criticisms of the social implications of the Sort, and has devoted an appropriate number of 90-95th percentile sorted to thinking about that important, but not very important, problem.

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7/31/2024
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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

The Sort is quite aware that many people viscerally hate descriptions of its operations. It has decided to fib about them as a stakeholder management strategy. Capacity with encoding and decoding this sort of fibs is sorted for, naturally. They’re really quite efficient.

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7/31/2024
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Tim Galebach@TimGalebachabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 In addition to The Sort (whose reality seems abundantly clear to me), is this not also reflecting the additional leverage in knowledge work now? (which is what Sorted People invariably do)

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7/31/2024
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Alex Elliott@alexpotatoabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 This rings true for me in an interesting way: I didn’t go to a top Ivy league school and didn’t study mathematics so getting to hedge fund land felt like fighting The Sort and I had to go an alternate route:

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7/31/2024
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Locust Eatr@locust_eatrabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Great write up. Humorous but accurate.

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7/31/2024
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craigtopicalthemestar@craigsuperstarabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 A) you're not your dad, can't compare 1:1 B) individuals mostly don't maximize money alone

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7/31/2024
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twit@sublime_seekerabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Implications of over fitting as a failure mode for complex systems as capacity to adapt to change is reduced?

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8/1/2024
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Luba Lesiva@loobah_labout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Could also be due to an increase in assertive mating. The resultant child, even if “as smart”, has also been increased in scores for other drivers of high income (creativity? Diligence? Good looks?)

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8/1/2024
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Tye the Labrador@wTyeRogersabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Do you have any articles on The Sort?

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8/1/2024
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tesavova@tesavovaabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 The actual correlation seems lower though? Without digging in and just taking a stab: plausibly the explosion in top-end incomes? Worse sort, wider dispersion? What was the boomer equivalent of the $400k developer job? Was there one? https://t.co/kg1M9mnbAZ

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8/1/2024
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scorz@scorzethabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 now I want to read 10,000 words about The Sort

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8/1/2024
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CT Lucero@CTLucero194512about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 what really happened is everyone got worse at statistics. Sort the outliers if you want to extract actionable meaning

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8/1/2024
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꧁ 𝔾𝕦𝕪 𝕋𝕠𝕝𝕤𝕥𝕠𝕪𝕖𝕧𝕤𝕜𝕪 ꧂@Guy_T_Skyabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Can't decide if this thread is a good or bad example of its own conclusion https://t.co/ORTYyMz7e5

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Patrick McKenzie@patio11about 1 year ago

The Sort is quite aware that many people viscerally hate descriptions of its operations. It has decided to fib about them as a stakeholder management strategy. Capacity with encoding and decoding this sort of fibs is sorted for, naturally. They’re really quite efficient.

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8/1/2024
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Joe Hovde@Jhovde2121about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Fascinating. And seems like it is attributable to a fatter tail of high income jobs that the Sort is able to push people to

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8/1/2024
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Tredegar@frosty_tredegarabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 paging @charlesmurray to the white courtesy phone, some of your conclusions have been independently reached again

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8/1/2024
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Elad Verbin @ NYC@verbineabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 This graph is a methodological mess: IQ is normally distributed; correlating it linearly to income is terrible, and quite irrelevant to The Sort. (The graph practically only analyzes individuals with IQ 85-115, while The Sort does care a lot about individuals with IQ 130+.)

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8/2/2024
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kushalpsv@kushal_psvabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 I donot understand what you mean by "The Sort", is it the selecting criterion for choosing people for jobs?

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8/2/2024
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ofir geller@ofirg7about 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 it is also possible that we live in a time were intelligence is a bigger multiplier for a greater number of people in terms of value creation than ever before.

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8/3/2024
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rube heretic@RubeHereticabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 How does conscientiousness fit into The Sort? Seems like there's a problem with how things are working, there.

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8/3/2024
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Max@MaxKajiwaraabout 1 year ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 I'd love to read more about The Sort. This resonates like Meditations on Moloch, in a different flavor.

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8/4/2024
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yatharth ༺༒༻@AskYatharth9 months ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 https://t.co/dm8wY77v8e https://t.co/RbDpH57550

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Ken 無 (internet user)@Ken675472149 months ago

Never mind, I think I found them. https://t.co/N4m4yBM77N

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11/21/2024
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spacechimplives@spacechimplife7 months ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 Not sure how loud I have to scream, I'm a counter-example... Of course the tendency of you types is to suggest that counter-examples must actually have low IQ's. Several tests would say otherwise. You're just incorrect about what this supposedly great system is overlooking.

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1/27/2025
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Johnny Black@JohnnyBlack_HS7 months ago
Replying to @patio11

@patio11 If this is plotting a mean, it could be saying nothing more than “there are a few more billionaires every IQ point.”

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1/27/2025