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Not only that. Hard work and early specialising is a recipe for depression. I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again.

by crocal 7y ago

agumonkey 7y ago
spreading yourself to thin is also a recipe for depression. my conclusion is to never go depth first (either specialist or generalist) unless you're feeling clear benefits right away. balancing
johnsimer 7y ago
Care to share any anecdotes?
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  In statistics / machine learning this is very common because in corporations, anything that can be used to control decision making or attribute credit tends to get locked down with politics. Even when machine learning solutions have unambiguous value propositions and direct paths to cost-effective implementations based on known techniques and resource requirements, the projects are subject to extreme risk of internal political shutdowns, arbitrary gatekeeper constraints on data limitations or limitations of what technique can be used so that specialists in technique X can build up longterm control of a profit stream (I’ve seen this a lot in investment firms) and eat up all the promotion opportunities by convincing leadership that their version of a research platform is the only allowable one, and more. The article “Who Cares About Forecast Accuracy,” by Robin Hanson is a good discussion of this. https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-cares-about-forecast-accuracy https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-car...
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Talk to 10 doctors. You'll likely find that the majority are depressed, abusing alcohol, abusing drugs, or all of the above.
  - adamnemecek 7y ago
    Doctors don't specialize early. In fact, they specialize late.
yyy888sss 7y ago
I think people are just very varied. Take a graph of happiness/success over time for a bunch of people and anecdotally it can take almost any shape. I know a bunch of people who had the same specialisation as children (music) and their lives have varied massively.

Not only that. Hard work and early specialising is a recipe for depression. I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again.

by crocal 7y ago

Not only that. Hard work and early specialising is a recipe for depression. I have seen this pattern repeat itself over and over again.

agumonkey 7y ago

spreading yourself to thin is also a recipe for depression. my conclusion is to never go depth first (either specialist or generalist) unless you're feeling clear benefits right away. balancing

johnsimer 7y ago

Care to share any anecdotes?

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
In statistics / machine learning this is very common because in corporations, anything that can be used to control decision making or attribute credit tends to get locked down with politics. Even when machine learning solutions have unambiguous value propositions and direct paths to cost-effective implementations based on known techniques and resource requirements, the projects are subject to extreme risk of internal political shutdowns, arbitrary gatekeeper constraints on data limitations or limitations of what technique can be used so that specialists in technique X can build up longterm control of a profit stream (I’ve seen this a lot in investment firms) and eat up all the promotion opportunities by convincing leadership that their version of a research platform is the only allowable one, and more. The article “Who Cares About Forecast Accuracy,” by Robin Hanson is a good discussion of this. https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-cares-about-forecast-accuracy https://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/13/robin-hanson/who-car...
Spooky23 7y ago
Talk to 10 doctors. You'll likely find that the majority are depressed, abusing alcohol, abusing drugs, or all of the above.
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  Doctors don't specialize early. In fact, they specialize late.

yyy888sss 7y ago

I think people are just very varied. Take a graph of happiness/success over time for a bunch of people and anecdotally it can take almost any shape. I know a bunch of people who had the same specialisation as children (music) and their lives have varied massively.