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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 special

by 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)

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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.

by mtoledo 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.