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It is actually pretty remarkable, you’d think given the automatic reputation advantage that a chess grandmaster gets as a serious deep thinker, at least one wou
by bee_rider 2y ago
It is actually pretty remarkable, you’d think given the automatic reputation advantage that a chess grandmaster gets as a serious deep thinker, at least one would have managed to work that into a political career.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoPolitics is all about soft skills; being really good at anything hard pretty much makes you unemployable there, because you'll come across as a weird nerd.
- Spivak 2y agoThis is the D&D / video game fallacy — that being really good at hard things means you had forgo points in other skills. It should be encouraging and liberating that this isn't true and you can be smart (in multiple fields), athletic, artistic, charismatic, a social butterfly, and everything in between.
- xanderlewis 2y agoDefinitely true, but sinking large amounts of time into learning very technical things in huge detail can often involve long periods in isolation during which one’s social skills are likely to atrophy. Also, for some, being a ‘social butterfly’ is perfectly possible (with some effort) but is boring. This tends to be true the more into ‘hard things’ you are. Chatting to people about banality isn’t hard, so it isn’t interesting.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoIt is fundamentally true, though, because you "level up" those skills through concentrated effort, which requires focus and time, both of which are finite resources. It may feel you can improve on all without sacrificing something, but that just means you're operating far from Pareto frontier - i.e. you're not particularly good at anything.
- lelanthran 2y ago> It is fundamentally true, though, because you "level up" those skills through concentrated effort, which requires focus and time, both of which are finite resources. I dunno. My experience is that it's true for some fields, such as videogames/sports. What I've found is that people who have true expertise in a field (excluding videogames/sports) are generally competent in a number of other fields. The characteristics required to become an expert oil painter or an expert in applied mathematics (for example) are focus, concentration and the ability to recognise new patterns as patterns, and then apply them! IOW, someone who is an actual master in a certain field should easily become at least competent in other things that they try.
- xanderlewis 2y agoKasparov might have had a chance — if Russia wasn’t the way it is.
- bee_rider 2y agoTrue! He’s like the exception that makes the rule, and through coincidence, ended up not even really an exception.
- tsimionescu 2y agoGary Kasparov was actually involved in Russian politics, maybe he would have had some small chance of a career if Putin hadn't quickly quashed him.