Bell Curves

No, not the racist bullshit artist’s book.

One thing I realized a few years ago is that for human attributes, bell curves are everywhere. The standard examples are things like height and weight, but why not, say, strength, or patience, or organizational skills, or empathy? Some people have more, some people have less, and there’s no particular reason to treat them as much different from (say) physical strength; something that we possess in different quantities, and something that we can improve within bounds, but that improvement itself takes work, and the bounds are real.

“Work” generalizes similarly. We can get tired of walking, of lifting, of thinking, of maintaining a pleasant attitude, and so on.

Another corollary is not knowing which parts of my own personal experience are typical and which are not.  If I’m in the middle of the curve for some particular relevant thing, typical, if I am off to one end or the other, not so typical.