[sytelus]

For two independent committees, 6% of papers were acceptable without disagreement, 25% were rejectable while the rest were coin flips. This means when your paper gets accepted or rejected, luck is playing huge part. This is not because judges are actually flipping coin but vast majority of people don't seem strikingly good or bad. So for a repeated trial outcome may not be same. Also, the asymmetry here is striking. Definitely bad papers dominates in number by 4X than definitely good papers.

These are really great observations with deep implications. This same patterns might get applied in other aspects of life such as interviewing candidates or selection of mate or buying a shirt. In all these cases, we might have similar distribution at work.

I have often wondered why is it so hard to have less mediocrity in world? Why is not every book, t-shirt or smartphone is just great? One obvious reason is that lot of times people create something out of obligation such as demand from job instead of out of urge to create. So subsequent question is that if it was possible that no one has to have any obligation to create, can above distribution turn its head over hill? For example, in that scenario would we have, say, 70% great papers, 5% mediocre and rest coin toss?

[dalke]

"Why is not every book, t-shirt or smartphone is just great?"

Different people have different ideas of what "great" means. Not everyone thinks the Harry Potter series are great books, while many do. We see that in movies where a movie does poorly at the box office while the critics.

The definition of greatness changes over time, so "It's a Wonderful Life", now considered one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made, had only mediocre revenue when it came out.

Greatness is sometimes situational, so "Dan Brown ... is the undisputed king of airplane books — the not-too-heavy, not-too-long potboilers perfect for a long layover." If you don't fly, then perhaps there's no time when Brown's works might appeal.

Travel has its own category of "good enough." Visiting Germany once I bought a book from the limited English selection not because it was great, but because it was something to read on the long train ride.

A lot of people watch sports, but surely it can't be that all sports games are great, so greatness can't be the only reason for keeping someone's interest.

Since it's hard to predict greatness, people will test out ideas to see if there's a response. Sometimes this can lead to feedback and improvements. Sometimes this testing is through writing clubs. Sometimes (as with smartphone apps) this is with the market itself.

[Houshalter]

It's simpler than that. We focus on the differences between things, not the similarities. If all movies were equally good, we would then grow to focus on the tiny differences between them and start to judge them based on those.