Mediocristan and Extremistan
In this article I report you a famous topic discuss in the book black swan, if you are interested in what I have read check this link.
Is important distinguish the difference between mediocristan and extremistan because we are in the extremistan, therefore we are exposed to the black swan.
There are sizes scalable and unsaleable, to understand what I mean let’s do this mental experiment.
Example in mediocristan
Think to group 1000 people, and measure their weight, now we are in mediocristan because is impossible that one case upset the average weight.
Think of grouping 1000 people in a stadium, your aim is to measure their average weight, in this case the weight is not a scalable quantity, because a very different case (example: 230 kg) will never upset the average, therefore it is not a scalable quantity.
Example in extremistan
Now let’s take in case a scalable quantity like money. in this case if we had to measure their assets, you don’t have the certain to face of a black swan.
Let’s consider the last example, in mediocristan is impossible than a person with his weight can turn over the average, but with money is different.
One person could potentially have infinite money, and that would upset our average.
For this is important understand that you are in extremistan, because you have to consider the improbably event, the black swan. Because he can upset your result.
To better understand I leave you a table with many examples between mediocristan and extremistan.
| MEDIOCRISTAN | EXTREMISTAN |
| not scalable | scalable |
| kind of mild randomness | unbridled randomness |
| the most typical member is mediocre | there is no typical member |
| the winners receive a small piece of the pie | the winners receive almost the entire cake |
| the winners receive almost the entire cake | common in the modern environment |
| inaccessible to the black swan | culnerable to the black swan |
| subject to gravity | the data is not subject to physical limits |
| usually matches as physical quantities | usually matches as numbers |
| utopian equality | the winners takes all |
| the total is not determined by a single variation | the total is determined by a few extreme events |
| if you observe for a while you understand how things are | needs much time to understand how things are |
| tyranny of the collective | tyranny of the accidental |
| history crawls | history jumps |