4 ms·

The Generalist's Dilemma

72 points by J3L2404 17y ago

dasil003 17y ago
But what's the dilemma?
- etherael 17y ago
  Believing that the nature of knowledge is dogmatic; that there exists no pattern behind anything and that anything that is knowable must be memorised by rote and stored wholesale in the mind, rather than guiding principles abstracted from diverse experience refined and applied in multiple contexts. I humbly submit that this single idea is the root of so much of the mental incompetence in the world today. It encourages the spread of religion and it's comparison with real science, it discourages attempting to comprehend and apply deep unifying principles between all things and a breadth of thought that comes far easier when one isn't afraid of exposing their preconceived ideas and views to the light of critical enquiry. Last but not least, it encourages the emergence of a political class that at best exists purely to coordinate and rule the "underclass" specialists, and at worst offers no independent value themselves.
  - jquery 17y ago
    That's not a dilemma for generalists, that's a critique of specialization.
    - etherael 17y ago
      Except that it's far more common for people to believe it and thus ask silly questions that attempt to ascertain the degree to which one has drilled themselves in said rote memorisation. Like a google interview I had a few years ago where they asked me what the number of blocks in an ext2 filesystem for a specific distribution of Linux was at the time. The irony of being asked this by a company who actually would've featured prominently in my answer (ie, just google it) was not lost on me, and it disabused me of the notion that I'd actually like to work there after all.
      - jquery 17y ago
        Specialization is not equivalent to rote memorization. But rote memorization is a bedrock foundation for almost any specialty, because it is the very language of that specialty. The more fluent you are in a given language, the more easily you can write beautiful prose with it.
        etherael 17y ago
        They often go together, as you illustrate well with your comment, I agree that rote memorisation can be a bedrock foundation for any specialty, however it is not necessarily the only foundation. And the thread of my argument here is that it is not as good a foundation as a complete understanding of many topics in an interwoven fashion. An attempt at an analogy; I assume you're familiar with jQuery as that's your nickname so I'll use that. One could memorise every single API method and syntactical quirk of the framework and be rightfully considered a specialist, but this does not innately suggest that they understand the absolute multitude of concepts that are likely to be bought together in a project making use of this specialty, or how the fabric of a jQuery object might be incorporated into a larger project using a full polyglot of development languages and spanning JRuby, Java, Groovy, Scheme, Scala etc. Knowing the underlying concepts that unite them gives a person the ability to solve problems in any one specific area potentially better than someone who had simply memorised all the API documentation for the jQuery framework. Going through the rote memorisation of all these disparate things you're likely to eventually notice the patterns and ideas that they share, but in my opinion this is a backward way of doing things. Starting with patterns and ideas and fleshing out the specifics with reference documentation on a case by case basis has always been my preferred approach, it's much easier to find a base pattern and go through it's iterations than it is to simply memorise all the potential iterations of a given pattern. How easy is it to memorise a table of results on several thousand experiments demonstrating F=ma compared to simply applying F=ma several thousand times? Even more so with something that moves as fast as development; when the framework changes and your memorised documentation needs to be updated, it is much easier to understand the change from the perspective of cause and effect rather than just "here's how it was including all edge cases and implications, and here's how it is now, including all edge cases and implications."
  - foldr 17y ago
    Some of that sounds a little dogmatic in itself. It's an interesting historical fact that the idea of there being a deep underlying unity in nature was originally a religious one. In a time before there were any examples of really successful science, the idea that the universe might actually be comprehensible to us on a deep level seemed pretty loopy unless you believed that it was deliberately constructed to be intelligible. After all, the universe isn't all that comprehensible to any other form of life on earth -- why should we be so special if we are not in fact special? So in a sense, the idea that science is possible has its roots in a particular sort of religious belief. Anyway, that is not intended as an argument in favor of religious belief today. But it's worth asking whether any rational justification could have been given in the 13th century for a belief in the deep underlying unity of the universe, before we had available the fruits of the research based on that assumption. I think it would have been far more sensible in those days to believe that the universe is just a complicated place with a lot of different kinds of stuff in it, and a lot of different kinds of principle governing what happens to that stuff. Interestingly, this sort of pluralistic conception of reality is coming back into fashion in some circles, under the heading of the "dappled universe". Nancy Cartwright's work on these topics is really interesting. (FTR: She is trained as a physicist and has no religious agenda.) It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind. edit: There's a good (somewhat critical) review of one of Cartwright's book's here [doc]: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20reviews%20and%20book%20symposiums/Dappled%20world%20review%20by%20H%20Kincaid%202003.doc http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20revi...
    - hugh_ 17y ago
      It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind. What's the alternative to a single set of natural laws? Perhaps one set of natural laws that applies around here, and a slightly different set that applies in Andromeda, but only on Tuesdays? But surely the two sets, plus the Andromeda/Tuesdays restriction, put together form one slightly more complicated set of physical laws? Perhaps an infinite set of subtly different natural laws which apply at different points in space and time? But that's still just one very large set of laws, right?
mtoledo 17y ago
Everytime I see a 'generalist' vs 'specialist' post like this, I think its wrong to compare generalists who are very good in a lot of different areas to specialists that are very good in just one of them. Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields with a specialist whom is very good on a field. Or, in your case, like you said (being an accomplished practitioner of many different fields), comparing that to being like Marie Curie or Einstein, to quote your examples. That is, if you took all the time and effort from being a writer, orchestra musician, etc, and put it into a single field. Even if you can say your life's been very fulfilling (and you're probably right), its a hard argument for the generalist to say he's better than the specialist in the specialists' field. As for 'you can't be good at everything', that really means 'you wont be as good as you can be at something if you keep learning everything'. But putting in lots of work on everything obviously make you good on everything. But even mozart, being very talented a musician in a young age, had to choose (at age 4?) the violin or the piano (he chose the later)
- deleted 17y ago
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- yungchin 17y ago
  "Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields with a specialist whom is very good on a field." Isn't the whole point of the essay to suggest that generalists need not be mediocre at all? It's not obvious that the energy spread over several activities would be as efficiently spent on one specialist activity - if you do (without proof) assume that that's feasible, then that's actually begging the question...
  - JoachimSchipper 17y ago
    No, the above argument leaves room for diminishing returns - it only assumes that spending more time learning foo is more efficient at learning foo than spending more time learning bar is at learning foo. Suppose Alice and Bob have similar levels of talent. Alice spent 10000 hours learning the piano. Bob spent 2000 hours learning the piano, 2000 learning the violin, 2000 learning percussion, 2000 learning to sing and 2000 writing a novel. The above argues that Alice will be better at playing the piano than Bob. Probably not five times better (assuming that could be defined in a sensible fashion) - there are diminishing returns - but still better.
robryan 17y ago
This comes up a lot for me with programming, so many different languages, platforms and APIs are flying past us here on HN as well as languages that have been around for a long time. So many times I see a cool new API and say that would be great to have a play around with if I had the time.
- puffythefish 17y ago
  I do the same, but then realize: by doing this, I'm specializing into programming.
btilly 17y ago
A random observation. Many significant advancements came when someone who knew about one thing learned about a second and realized that the first applied to the second. Generalists are more likely to do that than specialists. And in my experience they are more fun to hang out with. However it is true that nobody can be good at everything. Therefore one of the most important skills there are IMO is realizing who is better than you at what. In fact I consider people who can keep track of the skills of people around them to be valuable in their own right. But my experience is that people who gain this ability inevitably learn something about a lot of different things. Therefore people with this key ability tend to be generalists! Therefore I value specialists, but prefer a good generalist more. Particularly in a small organization where people get varied responsibilities. Disclaimer: I am a generalist and hence am quite biased. (In case that wasn't obvious.)
- marilyn 17y ago
  Many significant advancements came when someone who knew about one thing learned about a second and realized that the first applied to the second. This is the premise to the book "The Medici Effect" by Frans Johansson, which states that innovation is found in the intersections between disciplines. It's a good read.
cloudmike 17y ago
Avoid the extremes. Don't do one thing, don't do hundreds of things. Find a distribution that makes you happy. Go for depth. Go for breadth. Just don't be shallow and narrow. Scour the earth for things you love, then plumb their depths entirely.
- pgbovine 17y ago
  Go for depth. Go for breadth. agreed! what's to prevent you from going into depth in 1 (or maybe 2-3) things, and then going for breadth on a dozen more, getting decently at good at them as hobbies but not becoming world-class? seems like a good balance. 1-2 things in which you're an expert, and 6-8 more in which you're a proficient hobbyist
- marilyn 17y ago
  Scour the earth for things you love, then plumb their depths entirely. Beautifully articulated!
deleted 17y ago
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- deleted 17y ago
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- deleted 17y ago
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  - rntz 17y ago
    "... the blogger greatly overestimates his or her skills in other areas." The author never claims to be great at everything; merely to be good at many things. Your point is not ridiculous, but it is mostly irrelevant. To be fair, I don't think you deserved the downvote, but I can see why it might be given.
    - jquery 17y ago
      I don't think my point was irrelevant. I think the author was arguing one can be as good as a specialist in many areas. If the author was merely arguing that one can be good at many things, then he/she was burning down a strawman, because no one who says "Jack of all trades, Master of none" is saying that a Jack is no good. Anyway I deleted my post because I felt it was detracting from the discussion above.
wallflower 17y ago
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive... -Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Invitation"
hugh_ 17y ago
I reckon that the best way to become a generalist is a two-step process: 1. Become a specialist 2. Become a generalist This has two advantages. Firstly, you'll be useful and employable in your youth, since a specialist with a few years' experience is a valuable asset, but a half-baked generalist is pretty useless. Secondly, and more importantly, you'll know what it's like to really understand a subject, which should help you in your quest to partially understand all the others.
- btilly 17y ago
  If you are the kind of person who will accomplish step 1, you are probably not the kind of person who will be inclined to take step 2.

72 points by J3L2404 17y ago

dasil003 17y ago

But what's the dilemma?

etherael 17y ago
Believing that the nature of knowledge is dogmatic; that there exists no pattern behind anything and that anything that is knowable must be memorised by rote and stored wholesale in the mind, rather than guiding principles abstracted from diverse experience refined and applied in multiple contexts. I humbly submit that this single idea is the root of so much of the mental incompetence in the world today. It encourages the spread of religion and it's comparison with real science, it discourages attempting to comprehend and apply deep unifying principles between all things and a breadth of thought that comes far easier when one isn't afraid of exposing their preconceived ideas and views to the light of critical enquiry. Last but not least, it encourages the emergence of a political class that at best exists purely to coordinate and rule the "underclass" specialists, and at worst offers no independent value themselves.
- jquery 17y ago
  That's not a dilemma for generalists, that's a critique of specialization.
  - etherael 17y ago
    Except that it's far more common for people to believe it and thus ask silly questions that attempt to ascertain the degree to which one has drilled themselves in said rote memorisation. Like a google interview I had a few years ago where they asked me what the number of blocks in an ext2 filesystem for a specific distribution of Linux was at the time. The irony of being asked this by a company who actually would've featured prominently in my answer (ie, just google it) was not lost on me, and it disabused me of the notion that I'd actually like to work there after all.
    - jquery 17y ago
      Specialization is not equivalent to rote memorization. But rote memorization is a bedrock foundation for almost any specialty, because it is the very language of that specialty. The more fluent you are in a given language, the more easily you can write beautiful prose with it.
      - etherael 17y ago
        They often go together, as you illustrate well with your comment, I agree that rote memorisation can be a bedrock foundation for any specialty, however it is not necessarily the only foundation. And the thread of my argument here is that it is not as good a foundation as a complete understanding of many topics in an interwoven fashion. An attempt at an analogy; I assume you're familiar with jQuery as that's your nickname so I'll use that. One could memorise every single API method and syntactical quirk of the framework and be rightfully considered a specialist, but this does not innately suggest that they understand the absolute multitude of concepts that are likely to be bought together in a project making use of this specialty, or how the fabric of a jQuery object might be incorporated into a larger project using a full polyglot of development languages and spanning JRuby, Java, Groovy, Scheme, Scala etc. Knowing the underlying concepts that unite them gives a person the ability to solve problems in any one specific area potentially better than someone who had simply memorised all the API documentation for the jQuery framework. Going through the rote memorisation of all these disparate things you're likely to eventually notice the patterns and ideas that they share, but in my opinion this is a backward way of doing things. Starting with patterns and ideas and fleshing out the specifics with reference documentation on a case by case basis has always been my preferred approach, it's much easier to find a base pattern and go through it's iterations than it is to simply memorise all the potential iterations of a given pattern. How easy is it to memorise a table of results on several thousand experiments demonstrating F=ma compared to simply applying F=ma several thousand times? Even more so with something that moves as fast as development; when the framework changes and your memorised documentation needs to be updated, it is much easier to understand the change from the perspective of cause and effect rather than just "here's how it was including all edge cases and implications, and here's how it is now, including all edge cases and implications."
- foldr 17y ago
  Some of that sounds a little dogmatic in itself. It's an interesting historical fact that the idea of there being a deep underlying unity in nature was originally a religious one. In a time before there were any examples of really successful science, the idea that the universe might actually be comprehensible to us on a deep level seemed pretty loopy unless you believed that it was deliberately constructed to be intelligible. After all, the universe isn't all that comprehensible to any other form of life on earth -- why should we be so special if we are not in fact special? So in a sense, the idea that science is possible has its roots in a particular sort of religious belief. Anyway, that is not intended as an argument in favor of religious belief today. But it's worth asking whether any rational justification could have been given in the 13th century for a belief in the deep underlying unity of the universe, before we had available the fruits of the research based on that assumption. I think it would have been far more sensible in those days to believe that the universe is just a complicated place with a lot of different kinds of stuff in it, and a lot of different kinds of principle governing what happens to that stuff. Interestingly, this sort of pluralistic conception of reality is coming back into fashion in some circles, under the heading of the "dappled universe". Nancy Cartwright's work on these topics is really interesting. (FTR: She is trained as a physicist and has no religious agenda.) It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind. edit: There's a good (somewhat critical) review of one of Cartwright's book's here [doc]: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20reviews%20and%20book%20symposiums/Dappled%20world%20review%20by%20H%20Kincaid%202003.doc http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20revi...
  - hugh_ 17y ago
    It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind. What's the alternative to a single set of natural laws? Perhaps one set of natural laws that applies around here, and a slightly different set that applies in Andromeda, but only on Tuesdays? But surely the two sets, plus the Andromeda/Tuesdays restriction, put together form one slightly more complicated set of physical laws? Perhaps an infinite set of subtly different natural laws which apply at different points in space and time? But that's still just one very large set of laws, right?

mtoledo 17y ago

Everytime I see a 'generalist' vs 'specialist' post like this, I think its wrong to compare generalists who are very good in a lot of different areas to specialists that are very good in just one of them. Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields with a specialist whom is very good on a field. Or, in your case, like you said (being an accomplished practitioner of many different fields), comparing that to being like Marie Curie or Einstein, to quote your examples. That is, if you took all the time and effort from being a writer, orchestra musician, etc, and put it into a single field. Even if you can say your life's been very fulfilling (and you're probably right), its a hard argument for the generalist to say he's better than the specialist in the specialists' field. As for 'you can't be good at everything', that really means 'you wont be as good as you can be at something if you keep learning everything'. But putting in lots of work on everything obviously make you good on everything. But even mozart, being very talented a musician in a young age, had to choose (at age 4?) the violin or the piano (he chose the later)

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
yungchin 17y ago
"Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields with a specialist whom is very good on a field." Isn't the whole point of the essay to suggest that generalists need not be mediocre at all? It's not obvious that the energy spread over several activities would be as efficiently spent on one specialist activity - if you do (without proof) assume that that's feasible, then that's actually begging the question...
- JoachimSchipper 17y ago
  No, the above argument leaves room for diminishing returns - it only assumes that spending more time learning foo is more efficient at learning foo than spending more time learning bar is at learning foo. Suppose Alice and Bob have similar levels of talent. Alice spent 10000 hours learning the piano. Bob spent 2000 hours learning the piano, 2000 learning the violin, 2000 learning percussion, 2000 learning to sing and 2000 writing a novel. The above argues that Alice will be better at playing the piano than Bob. Probably not five times better (assuming that could be defined in a sensible fashion) - there are diminishing returns - but still better.

robryan 17y ago

This comes up a lot for me with programming, so many different languages, platforms and APIs are flying past us here on HN as well as languages that have been around for a long time. So many times I see a cool new API and say that would be great to have a play around with if I had the time.

puffythefish 17y ago
I do the same, but then realize: by doing this, I'm specializing into programming.

btilly 17y ago

A random observation. Many significant advancements came when someone who knew about one thing learned about a second and realized that the first applied to the second. Generalists are more likely to do that than specialists. And in my experience they are more fun to hang out with. However it is true that nobody can be good at everything. Therefore one of the most important skills there are IMO is realizing who is better than you at what. In fact I consider people who can keep track of the skills of people around them to be valuable in their own right. But my experience is that people who gain this ability inevitably learn something about a lot of different things. Therefore people with this key ability tend to be generalists! Therefore I value specialists, but prefer a good generalist more. Particularly in a small organization where people get varied responsibilities. Disclaimer: I am a generalist and hence am quite biased. (In case that wasn't obvious.)

marilyn 17y ago
Many significant advancements came when someone who knew about one thing learned about a second and realized that the first applied to the second. This is the premise to the book "The Medici Effect" by Frans Johansson, which states that innovation is found in the intersections between disciplines. It's a good read.

cloudmike 17y ago

Avoid the extremes. Don't do one thing, don't do hundreds of things. Find a distribution that makes you happy. Go for depth. Go for breadth. Just don't be shallow and narrow. Scour the earth for things you love, then plumb their depths entirely.

pgbovine 17y ago
Go for depth. Go for breadth. agreed! what's to prevent you from going into depth in 1 (or maybe 2-3) things, and then going for breadth on a dozen more, getting decently at good at them as hobbies but not becoming world-class? seems like a good balance. 1-2 things in which you're an expert, and 6-8 more in which you're a proficient hobbyist
marilyn 17y ago
Scour the earth for things you love, then plumb their depths entirely. Beautifully articulated!

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

deleted 17y ago
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deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- rntz 17y ago
  "... the blogger greatly overestimates his or her skills in other areas." The author never claims to be great at everything; merely to be good at many things. Your point is not ridiculous, but it is mostly irrelevant. To be fair, I don't think you deserved the downvote, but I can see why it might be given.
  - jquery 17y ago
    I don't think my point was irrelevant. I think the author was arguing one can be as good as a specialist in many areas. If the author was merely arguing that one can be good at many things, then he/she was burning down a strawman, because no one who says "Jack of all trades, Master of none" is saying that a Jack is no good. Anyway I deleted my post because I felt it was detracting from the discussion above.

wallflower 17y ago

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive... -Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Invitation"

hugh_ 17y ago

I reckon that the best way to become a generalist is a two-step process: 1. Become a specialist 2. Become a generalist This has two advantages. Firstly, you'll be useful and employable in your youth, since a specialist with a few years' experience is a valuable asset, but a half-baked generalist is pretty useless. Secondly, and more importantly, you'll know what it's like to really understand a subject, which should help you in your quest to partially understand all the others.

btilly 17y ago
If you are the kind of person who will accomplish step 1, you are probably not the kind of person who will be inclined to take step 2.