..My late entry into politics..or not!
Mediocristan is “the province dominated by the mediocre, with few extreme successes or failures. No single observation can meaningfully affect the aggregate. The bell curve is grounded in Mediocristan.” For example, concrete physical realities with limited ranges, like human height or weight, express Mediocristan. If you sample a thousand human beings, plotting their heights, you’ll get a result that looks very much like a bell curve, with most people clustered within a close range, and few that are markedly shorter or taller than that range. Within that sample, the presence of a few little people or basketball players won’t significantly affect the average, the median or the whole.
Extremistan is “the province where the total can be conceivably impacted by a single observation.” For example, there is no intrinsic limitation on income. Randomly choose a thousand humans from the poorest nation to the richest: if Bill Gates is included in the mix, he will significantly throw off the average, the median, and the whole. His presence creates a complexity very different from the regularity of Mediocristan.
It seems we treat far too much of our reality as if it were Mediocristan when in fact much of it often behaves like Extremistan, where there are occasional “black swans” (the name for the unexpected event) among the white. So, for example, out of the many thousands of books, films and recordings released each year, a small number will account for the largest part of sales, and it is not possible to predict with certainty which of the many works released will find black swan-style success (or failure). Indeed, in any endeavor susceptible to notable, unpredictable exceptions, no amount of examining the past will enable us to foretell the future.
Have a great evening my friends!
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic.