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Your line of questioning goes against the intent of the critique. Which is: while perhaps (but not always) good for the institution and the societal whole, the

Your line of questioning goes against the intent of the critique. Which is: while perhaps (but not always) good for the institution and the societal whole, the gains from specialization are at the cost of individual wholeness. Questioning how shifting the focus from society to the individual would harm the larger whole seems to skirt around the discussion. Was the unidimensional valor given for Stagg’s meteorological accomplishments a worthy reward for a lifetime of hyper-specialization? And to the, in my opinion more important, flipside: how does the psyche heal when, perhaps for reasons entirely outside of an individuals’ control, the specialized-man fails the one task they spent a lifetime training for. What happens when you define a man by one function and in the critical moment they fail?

AmericanChopper 6y ago
This seems like a majorly contrived line of reasoning to me. A person does not spend their entire lives training to succeed at one particular task on one particular day. The career of a specialist will comprise decades worth of accomplishments and failures, both big and small. Such a career will also be only one portion of a persons life. If a person were to derive their entire reason for existing from their career, then they’re going to have a shallow and unfulfilling life. No matter whether they specialize or not, or whether they’re successful or not. The critique that specialists lack the broader contextual knowledge/skills required to apply their speciality also seems invalid to me. Such people are simply skilled ICs, who are instructed on how to apply their skills by others. A highly skilled programmer may not know what programs to write, or what problems they should try and solve. But that’s fine if they work with a skilled product manager who can tell them what to do. Why would it be necessary for all of the roles required to solve a problem to be performed by a single person? A world without specialists would simply be a world where nothing that requires specialist skills/knowledge can be accomplished. Aside from the obvious problems that would cause, I don’t see how that would actually solve any of the problems that are purportedly being attributed to specialization.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

This seems like a majorly contrived line of reasoning to me. A person does not spend their entire lives training to succeed at one particular task on one particular day. The career of a specialist will comprise decades worth of accomplishments and failures, both big and small. Such a career will also be only one portion of a persons life. If a person were to derive their entire reason for existing from their career, then they’re going to have a shallow and unfulfilling life. No matter whether they specialize or not, or whether they’re successful or not. The critique that specialists lack the broader contextual knowledge/skills required to apply their speciality also seems invalid to me. Such people are simply skilled ICs, who are instructed on how to apply their skills by others. A highly skilled programmer may not know what programs to write, or what problems they should try and solve. But that’s fine if they work with a skilled product manager who can tell them what to do. Why would it be necessary for all of the roles required to solve a problem to be performed by a single person? A world without specialists would simply be a world where nothing that requires specialist skills/knowledge can be accomplished. Aside from the obvious problems that would cause, I don’t see how that would actually solve any of the problems that are purportedly being attributed to specialization.