4 ms·

I've been on the fence about generalists vs specialists debate for a while now. Although people love to bring up examples of outstanding geniuses like da Vinci,

by demaga 2y ago

I've been on the fence about generalists vs specialists debate for a while now. Although people love to bring up examples of outstanding geniuses like da Vinci, it seems society as a whole moves towards specialists. Natural selection shows that cooperating specialists do better. So I'm not so sure how useful are these efforts to educate new generations of polymaths.

alganet 2y ago
The text seems to put effort into differentiating between what a generalist is and what a polymath is: > Polymaths don’t simply know a lot, they understand what fields have in common. According to the text, the polymath focuses on the intersection of fields. This is more specific than a generalist, that could know a lot of fields but have no particular experience in what is their connection. I don't know if I agree with the text definition of what a polymath is. It is, however, what they meant.
- demaga 2y ago
  I see. So their definition might be even closer to specialists than generalists.
  - alganet 2y ago
    Generalist versus specialist is a false dichotomy. The text has little to do with it, it tries to distance itself from portraying these roles as stereotypical.
sideshowb 2y ago
Hard to publish interdisciplinary stuff in scientific journals when it's usually shot down by disciplinary specialists who don't get it
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Lots of crap too as well as stuff that is hard to characterize. I like this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou who basically plays the same game as Derrida. Except Derrida plays it very sloppily even if you might blame yourself for not understanding it because he is analyzing a difficult text in German in French and now you're reading a bad translation in English. Badiou on the other hand will mash up Marxism with difficult problems in math such as the Continuum Hypothesis. Unlike Derrida there's no doubt that he really understands the math and he did the hard work with the precision of continental analytic philosophy. He irritates many of the people who are irritated by Derrida for the same reasons except at the level of details Badiou is impeccable which would all the more infuriating if somebody tries to engage with it in order to refute it. (Funny I found Badiou's concept of singulation to be very relevant to ontology in computing, particularly the distinction between individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)) and categories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language) in Wikipedia, particularly given that something can be an individual and a category at the same time... Which twists systems like OWL into knots.)
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    "Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force."
    - michaelhoney 2y ago
      a not-unreasonable point of view. Remember “communism” and “Stalinism” are not the same thing
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        Also Badiou was doing his best work before the Soviet Union fell. For all of Stalin's crimes it's not so clear Russia was going to survive the 50 years 1917 in retrospect and it developed from a economically and politically backward country with a few culturally advanced spots [1][2] to an economic, technological and political rival to the US. People in "non-aligned" countries like India and Egypt could only wish they could develop that quickly. Academically, Marx was ahead of his time even if his prophecy that capitalism would be smashed by "the tendency for the rate of profit to decline" and the labor theory of value turned out to be bunk. He was popular in the 20th centuries and even David Bell chair of the social sciences department of Harvard and as ardent a supporter of the status quo as there ever was claimed to be Marxist. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism [3] https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20th-Anniversary/dp/0465014992 https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20...
deleted 2y ago
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by demaga 2y ago

alganet 2y ago

The text seems to put effort into differentiating between what a generalist is and what a polymath is: > Polymaths don’t simply know a lot, they understand what fields have in common. According to the text, the polymath focuses on the intersection of fields. This is more specific than a generalist, that could know a lot of fields but have no particular experience in what is their connection. I don't know if I agree with the text definition of what a polymath is. It is, however, what they meant.

demaga 2y ago
I see. So their definition might be even closer to specialists than generalists.
- alganet 2y ago
  Generalist versus specialist is a false dichotomy. The text has little to do with it, it tries to distance itself from portraying these roles as stereotypical.

sideshowb 2y ago

Hard to publish interdisciplinary stuff in scientific journals when it's usually shot down by disciplinary specialists who don't get it

PaulHoule 2y ago
Lots of crap too as well as stuff that is hard to characterize. I like this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou who basically plays the same game as Derrida. Except Derrida plays it very sloppily even if you might blame yourself for not understanding it because he is analyzing a difficult text in German in French and now you're reading a bad translation in English. Badiou on the other hand will mash up Marxism with difficult problems in math such as the Continuum Hypothesis. Unlike Derrida there's no doubt that he really understands the math and he did the hard work with the precision of continental analytic philosophy. He irritates many of the people who are irritated by Derrida for the same reasons except at the level of details Badiou is impeccable which would all the more infuriating if somebody tries to engage with it in order to refute it. (Funny I found Badiou's concept of singulation to be very relevant to ontology in computing, particularly the distinction between individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)) and categories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language) in Wikipedia, particularly given that something can be an individual and a category at the same time... Which twists systems like OWL into knots.)
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  "Badiou has been involved in a number of political organisations, and regularly comments on political events. Badiou argues for a return of communism as a political force."
  - michaelhoney 2y ago
    a not-unreasonable point of view. Remember “communism” and “Stalinism” are not the same thing
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Also Badiou was doing his best work before the Soviet Union fell. For all of Stalin's crimes it's not so clear Russia was going to survive the 50 years 1917 in retrospect and it developed from a economically and politically backward country with a few culturally advanced spots [1][2] to an economic, technological and political rival to the US. People in "non-aligned" countries like India and Egypt could only wish they could develop that quickly. Academically, Marx was ahead of his time even if his prophecy that capitalism would be smashed by "the tendency for the rate of profit to decline" and the labor theory of value turned out to be bunk. He was popular in the 20th centuries and even David Bell chair of the social sciences department of Harvard and as ardent a supporter of the status quo as there ever was claimed to be Marxist. [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Tsiolkovsky [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Futurism [3] https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20th-Anniversary/dp/0465014992 https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Contradictions-Capitalism-20...

deleted 2y ago

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