I could be one of the dumbest in my field and still meet the criteria here. I am considered at the top of my filed in primitive archery bow building from natural materials. I have had an impact on modern composite bow building also.
As a child I would have qualified in geography and memorizing every country’s vital statistics, populations, religions, exports, imports, natural materials etc. It was my equivalent to baseball cards.
In my younger years I was considered one of the top guys to start puppies in the bird dog field trial community. I had developed a simple and unique system that was very repeatable but for some reason a lot of men struggled with it. I actually have a feeling the system was arond a long time before me but was so simple it was never recognized as a system.
From my job, the official economic statistics of the United States with respect to international trade and investment. I should be working on it right now, rather than typing this. Relatedly, programming in specialized statistical languages.
Outside of that, a knowledge of the history and culture of northern Ghana.
General knowledge subjects that I know pretty well, probably better than 99 percent of the population - astronomy, history (ancient Rome, Italy, Britain, history of science), linguistics.
Weird thing. Just based on unevenness.
I am pretty sure that there are things that I know more about than 99.99% of world population, but I would be hard pressed to say I have “expertise” in anything. When it comes to thinking of it as expertise it’s relative to a subset, I think.
And almost certainly 99.99% … more … of the population knows about something much more than I do.
I was wondering if this “club” is not as exclusive as it seems at first impression. I suspect there are quite a number of activities that fewer than .1% of the world’s population do or know about at any decent level.
-For example, playing most instruments other than piano and violin. I play upright bass. I wonder if more than .1% of people in the world have any level of skill on upright. Or oboe, bassoon, not to mention more obscure instruments.
-I used to keep planted aquaria. Again, I wonder how common that is?
-2 of my nieces are currently competing in the Underwater Hockey World Championships. I’ve never played myself, but from discussions with them, their husbands, and their parents, I bet I know more about that activity than .1% of people.
-Also, probably twists the OP, but each of us is expert in our own preferences, experiences, our own home and yard, etc.
So, 20.5 yrs after my previous response, I’m thinking most of us are more “expert” in more areas than we might have thought.
Perfect example of a high level of expertise that surely puts you in the top 0.1% of all people. There are surely less than 8 million people who have ever played an upright bass.
The world is full of activities that have less than 8 million participants. A random fact that I stumbled across in a Dope thread, it turns out there have only been 20,422 people who ever played in MLB. Many more in minor leagues and amateur leagues I’m sure. There is still some possibility when I was a young man that I could hit a baseball for distance better than 8 million other people, even if at least that many had tried to do it. It’s a slim chance, but I’m pretty sure after the top 7 million we’re just talking about kids, and I’m pretty sure I was better than the top 1 million kids too.
Interesting thread. With the exception of the posters from the last few day, I think I recognized 2 posters that are still active.
I wonder how many just quit, and how many are dead?
This interests me. I know a man who can do simultaneous interpretation in both directions. He grew up in the US in a French Canadian family and is utterly bilingual. But that doesn’t automatically mean he can do simultaneous interpretation. But I was the English speaker in a demo he gave. I spoke English to the other person; he spoke French to me and our interpreter kept up the interpretation in real time.
His actual career is as a mathematician, although he mentioned that he worked his way through college as an interpreter. He mentioned two things that illustrated how automatic it was. First, he hadn’t the foggiest idea what either of us had said. And second, he mentioned that if, say, I had thrown in a French phrase, he would have put it into English.
Most amazing thing I have ever witnessed.
I just thought you’d like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin’ I can do it.
I’m not in the top 0.1% of knowing anything. My pool of knowledge is vast but shallow.
And you are the only one in the world who knows that, the world expert on how you have no subject of expertise …
I found that article of yours that I read was fascinating.
Mind you, i got the book from the library, so you probably didn’t get any royalties from me…
Paprika’s principal professional prowess? Perhaps positioning pathetic prose permutations. Penning pompous philosophy, problematic paragraphs, poor poetry. Producing perfectly plausible polysyllabes precluding positive purpose, participating processes probably progressively pestering precocious people.
There are a few things I probably do better at, or know more about than 99.9% of Canadians. Most people are only good at three things, and this has never described me well. Of course I am worse than average at several things too.
Any particular specialty of choice (ie. topology, knot stuff, Birch-and-Swinnerton-Dyer)?
For me, my expertise might be:
Taiwan’s military/defense-against-a-Chinese-attack;
how thermonuclear weapons work (not as much as some Dopers here, but the OP was asking about 99.9% of the general population and I’m pretty sure not one out of a thousand general folks knows the details of the Teller-Ulam design)
Dallas Cowboys history
I have perfect pitch, although I’m skeptical of the sources that say it’s a 1-in-10,000 ability. I believe it’s way more common than that.
Hey, that’s pretty good! I wonder, though, if that kind of thing is easier with the letter p, because I did something like that—not nearly as good as yours–on the birthday of a friend whose name starts with p.
If you are interested, I am glad to expand on the subject bilaterally or in a new thread, just PM me or check some threads where I have written about my experiences. Just for the record: interpretation is not an automatic activity, it requires training and high concentration. It is true that we ususally do not remember what we interpreted, but that is because 1. we use mainly the short term memory while working, 2. what people say is just way more boring and irrelevant than they think, and 3. to mantain plausible denyability in case we are tortured to reveal the secrets of the organisations we work for (that is a joke - just in case).
And yes, being bilingual is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for this job. It may help (I am, Spanish-German), but it may also be a hindrance (some people are perfectionists, if they speak a language too well they will be in constant doubt about which term to use. That will never do in real time work. Those will be better translators than interpreters.).
I am a tour guide as well. You quickly learn that people aren’t all that interested in yet another church or yet another painting, but they will latch onto the stories like the ‘model in the painting, who killed herself, because the artist married her sister instead’.
History is just one thing after another. Stories, trivia, fun, ‘you-wont-believe-this’ facts are more enjoyable.
Thanks! Canada does have a public lending right program, where authors get a small payment based on the number of public and university libraries that have the book. But it doesn’t drill down as deeply as articles in a collection.
Surprisingly, successful sonorous sentences, seemingly situational, seldom supplant simple sweat. Suppose somebody selects surrogate starting symbols, speculating specific sigils stimulate setbacks. Shyte. Such sophistry! Substantial shortcomings seldom stop sophisticated sociolinguistic specialists selecting scientifically. Sayings stay smooth, stream soothingly, skillfully sound syballine (so some seriously suggest, somehow surmise).
Started out in homological algebra and gradually drifted over to category theory, topos theory and the like.