Xingxin on Bug The “Mediocristan” and “Extremistan” are 2 terms I learn from the book Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Taleb. The following blog post is how I interpret them.
Mediocristan
A process dominated by the mediocre, with few extreme successes or failures (say, income for a dentist). No single observation can meaningfully affect the aggregate.
Extremistan
A process where the total can be conceivably impacted by a single observation (say, income for a writer). Also called “fat-tailed.” Includes the fractal, or power-law, family of distributions.
In Mediocristan, everything hovers around the mean, and extremes are rare and usually irrelevant. While in Extremistan, a single data point can outweigh the rest. I put everything in a chart for a better comparison.
| Mediocristan | Extremistan | |
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Gaussian distribution | Power law distribution |
| Intuition | Individual contributions are averaged into the whole ( law of large numbers) | Individual contributions can be amplified |
| Example 1 | In concrete compression strength tests, 99% of 1000 trials fall within ±5% of the average - very safe | Picasso’s works account for 20% of a major auction house’s total sales, while the remaining 99% of works account for just 80%. Picasso is a beast. |
| Example 2 | Daily website traffic follows a Gaussian distribution; you can plan server capacity using variance | A city’s data storage system being destroyed is an extreme low-probability event, but once it happens, you’re done for. So you need to consider geo-redundant storage. |
| Example 3 | In a traditional gallery, artist income follows a normal distribution — mostly middle-class, with few extremely rich or poor | In the NFT art market, the top 1% of works take 90% of the trading volume, while the rest fight over scraps. |
💡Tip to live in Mediocristan
Use optimization. If concrete strength tests follow a Gaussian distribution, then adding a bit of redundancy on top is enough (to reduce waste). But if you respond using Extremistan logic, you’ll end up with an overly reinforced floor slab that’s incredibly expensive.
💡Tip to live in Extremistan
Survive first(antifragile). In the NFT art market, the chance of overnight success is vanishingly small. If you go all in on creating for that world, you’re likely to crash and burn. What you should do is spend 85% of your energy on traditional galleries to earn a stable living, and gamble the remaining 15% hoping for a breakout hit(barbell strategy).