5 ms·
I find that exposure to a broad range of concepts expands cognitive breadth and the set of things one can quickly comprehend exponentially, even in /complete/ a
by Llamamoe 5y ago
I find that exposure to a broad range of concepts expands cognitive breadth and the set of things one can quickly comprehend exponentially, even in /complete/ absence of expertise or competence.
Single-field people tend to be hilariously bad at diffuse reasoning relative to what you'd expect from a person that competent.
- ZephyrBlu 5y agoOk, but if you want to operationalize "cognitive breadth" and being able to "quickly comprehend" you need to actually be good at something. No one is going to pat you on the head for learning the basics of a field 10x faster than someone else because the basics have very little value by themselves. I say all of this as someone who is very curious and likes learning about new things.
- sdenton4 5y agoA really important step is getting really good at /something/. Once you've done that, it's much easier to hit a similar level of competence in new areas a bit faster. A big part of being good at something is really mastering the fundamentals. I tend to think it's possible to turn 'master the fundamentals' into a kind of transferable skill. Another big part of mastery is pattern recognition, which develops from sheer experience. To some extent, learning to recognize important types of patterns is also a transferable skill.
- iostream24 5y agoNo, they won’t pat you on the head, but they may pay you for skillfully managing something that takes cross-trained skills that others, equally competent in the chosen field, lack. A luthier that can play guitar will make a better guitar, most likely.