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Most of us cannot be those "greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet." For many of us, it's more fulfilling to be good at one thing than mediocre at

Most of us cannot be those "greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet." For many of us, it's more fulfilling to be good at one thing than mediocre at dozens.

wslh 2y ago
I think the core point of being "mediocre at dozens" is that you could connect dots that the experts can't, so at the macro level you can have advantages while the averages turns to specialization.
- monktastic1 2y ago
  I suppose there's levels of mediocre. For the vast majority of us, the level of mediocre we could accomplish across many fields may not enable us to do much connecting at all. But I realize this is all very vague and depends on individual traits. I just don't think that what OP points out is "extremely depressing."
  - haswell 2y ago
    I think the key is balance. The people I’ve worked with who are the most effective and successful are really good at one or a short list of things, but have their hands in many other things. And often they’re really good at the one thing because they have their hands in many things. Cultivating a breadth of knowledge often isn’t just being mediocre in a bunch of subjects, but about broadening one’s awareness to potential connections and opportunities. If you can’t go deep on anything, that shallow knowledge may not get you very far. But if you can go deep on X subject with enough surface level knowledge of a variety of potentially related topics, you’ll be able to accomplish far more interesting things than someone with equivalent but exclusive knowledge of X.
- RajT88 2y ago
  I have been a deep specialist in my career. Currently I am a generalist. My bosses task me with being the 'dot connector' for a bunch of specialists. Seems to work out well.
- paretoer 2y ago
  Many people are just interested in expert credentialism and expert theatrical performance for an audience though. If you really want to know a subject well beyond theater, you obviously would have to know many adjacent subjects and many seemingly unrelated subjects since "subjects" in this context are just imaginary divisions within human knowledge. If your interest is credentialism though then the unrelated subjects are just a complete waste of time and most likely the adjacent subjects are just a distraction from memorizing your lines for the theatrical "subject matter expert" performance. It is really a question of the best way to pretend to be a great mind when you are average and that is to specialize to a degree that minimizes the amount of people who know what you are talking about on the subject of interest. We have built an entire class of society on this method.

Most of us cannot be those "greatest minds that have thus far graced this planet." For many of us, it's more fulfilling to be good at one thing than mediocre at dozens.

wslh 2y ago

I think the core point of being "mediocre at dozens" is that you could connect dots that the experts can't, so at the macro level you can have advantages while the averages turns to specialization.

monktastic1 2y ago
I suppose there's levels of mediocre. For the vast majority of us, the level of mediocre we could accomplish across many fields may not enable us to do much connecting at all. But I realize this is all very vague and depends on individual traits. I just don't think that what OP points out is "extremely depressing."
- haswell 2y ago
  I think the key is balance. The people I’ve worked with who are the most effective and successful are really good at one or a short list of things, but have their hands in many other things. And often they’re really good at the one thing because they have their hands in many things. Cultivating a breadth of knowledge often isn’t just being mediocre in a bunch of subjects, but about broadening one’s awareness to potential connections and opportunities. If you can’t go deep on anything, that shallow knowledge may not get you very far. But if you can go deep on X subject with enough surface level knowledge of a variety of potentially related topics, you’ll be able to accomplish far more interesting things than someone with equivalent but exclusive knowledge of X.
RajT88 2y ago
I have been a deep specialist in my career. Currently I am a generalist. My bosses task me with being the 'dot connector' for a bunch of specialists. Seems to work out well.
paretoer 2y ago
Many people are just interested in expert credentialism and expert theatrical performance for an audience though. If you really want to know a subject well beyond theater, you obviously would have to know many adjacent subjects and many seemingly unrelated subjects since "subjects" in this context are just imaginary divisions within human knowledge. If your interest is credentialism though then the unrelated subjects are just a complete waste of time and most likely the adjacent subjects are just a distraction from memorizing your lines for the theatrical "subject matter expert" performance. It is really a question of the best way to pretend to be a great mind when you are average and that is to specialize to a degree that minimizes the amount of people who know what you are talking about on the subject of interest. We have built an entire class of society on this method.