I do almost all of these. What now?
This post is stolen valor. We just ended a 20-year war against some of the most horrible people in the world in 2021. Anyone over age 20 who claims to long for righteous combat who didn't enlist during the Global War on Terrorism (or make a serious attempt and have it denied for reasons fully beyond their control) is a liar. As is almost anyone who makes this claim now and hasn't signed up to be a mercenary in Ukraine (special exception for someone who needs a valid US security clearance and would put it at risk by joining a foreign army). Policy should not cater to their fake preferences.
5% of world pop or GDP means China, India, and the US are the only countries used for the calculation in 12. Which seems questionable.
Also, 11-13 and maybe even 6 and 14 are lagging indicators that seem quite unhelpful in making before-the-fact predictions
The interesting measure would be absolute returns, not risk-adjusted.
Szilard got his key insight precisely by being pissed at Rutherford's hubris. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/leo-szilard-a-traffic-light-and-a-slice-of-nuclear-history/
Choosing the wrong reference class?
A version of this type of situation seems to cover a lot of career decisions made by sufficiently talented people. If you're a young Mark Zuckerberg, should you drop out of Harvard? Dropping out of college is a bad idea, on average. It's not quite as clear cut as OP suggested because you can't reliably replicate what Bill Gates did, but there may be strong indicators that startup founders, or some more specific subclass like startup founders experiencing x% monthly growth in recurring users, and not the average college dropout, is the reference class you should look out. And maybe an experienced startup or VC person could point one to an even better reference class that wouldn't occur to me.
Haha. I didn't really know what was a reasonable amount to save when I started because I had just gotten my first real job and really had no idea how expensive a lifestyle I might want in the future. But I knew I didn't want to be poor ever again. So I set a fairly arbitrary goal, spent a few more years living on the poverty-level income I had had before getting a good job so that I could save while it still had lots and lots of time to grow, and now it's done.
And from a stress/flexibility standpoint I think it was the right decision. I probably don't have to think about saving ever again, except for fun, so if I want to take a job that is funner but pays less, I have absolute freedom to do that.
And it turns out even having money I can live pretty cheap. There were only a few material things I hated about being poor. The constant stress over money was the real problem most of the time. I don't enjoy cooking and the food was boring when I couldn't afford restaurants, so I eat more takeout. And walking 5 miles bc the bus doesn't go where you want kinda sucks, so I take more cabs/ubers/lyfts.
I am far away from retirement so not at 30x yet. But assuming 7% real returns, my projected nest egg is about 108x my current living expenses around the age I want to retire. If something goes wrong before then I can always put more in. Compounding is fucking magic if you start it in your early 20s.
I do almost all of these. What now?