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Actually, I find having a superficial knowledge of a lot of topics pretty useful as well. It opens perspectives, and opportunities. And there is not enough time

Actually, I find having a superficial knowledge of a lot of topics pretty useful as well. It opens perspectives, and opportunities. And there is not enough time in a day to read everything, listen to everything, watch everything, practice everything. Shortcuts are fine. But as you say, "It's easy to feel smart". That's the real problem: you don't know what you don't know, and you should not get cocky.

lm28469 8y ago
> It opens perspectives, and opportunities. I completely agree on that, but as you said, there is just so many things to read / watch / learn, and it's so easily reachable that we often end up with "choice paralysis". I don't have a crystallised opinion on the subject but instinctively I'd argue that picking a few topics and getting a good in depth knowledge of them is more valuable than splitting your attention span on so many things that in 10 years from now you won't really have anything to show. Personally I see that as any other kind of distractions, it's easy to hop on from topics to topics, learn the absolute minimum about it, get our quick fix of dopamine making us feel good about "learning something" while you haven't actually learned anything valuable and will most likely forget about it in the next days or weeks. Not saying that we should avoid that at all cost, but it's nice to be aware of it. Edit: seems like I could end all my posts by a quote from Seneca. "Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read. "But," you reply, "I wish to dip first into one book and then into another." I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...

lm28469 8y ago

> It opens perspectives, and opportunities. I completely agree on that, but as you said, there is just so many things to read / watch / learn, and it's so easily reachable that we often end up with "choice paralysis". I don't have a crystallised opinion on the subject but instinctively I'd argue that picking a few topics and getting a good in depth knowledge of them is more valuable than splitting your attention span on so many things that in 10 years from now you won't really have anything to show. Personally I see that as any other kind of distractions, it's easy to hop on from topics to topics, learn the absolute minimum about it, get our quick fix of dopamine making us feel good about "learning something" while you haven't actually learned anything valuable and will most likely forget about it in the next days or weeks. Not saying that we should avoid that at all cost, but it's nice to be aware of it. Edit: seems like I could end all my posts by a quote from Seneca. "Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read. "But," you reply, "I wish to dip first into one book and then into another." I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish. So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Letter_2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...