Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?

Is there room for advice on what happens if you have this affliction in the programming language space?

I did the guru thing, and then went on a journey of polyglotism for the last 10 years. And hanging out on HN doesn’t help! Should I Rust? Or Zig? Or React? Or … the list just goes on … and FOMO kicks in.

But I find on the rare occasion when I check linked in, there’s lots of offers for one specific language or the other. Im not sure what the market for polyglots (or scanners as mentioned above) is anymore.

Sure I read a statistic that roughly half of "happy", long term marriages are, in fact, unhappy and unfulfilled. If true then about 20-25% of first time marriages do not have happy endings.

Exactly.

A scanner knows enough vocabulary to fool non-experts and thus is susceptible to developing DK. This definitely enforces DK as one of many factors.

I have met several such people. I have expertise in multiple narrow areas, and they couldn’t fool me.

This has, in turn, made me skeptic in all other areas where I do not have expertise. I always have my guards up when I hear someone talk about anything.

I feel that you can assign a separate IQ-like score to many different components of human intelligence. I score badly on book comprehension relative to other components.

I find it easier to concentrate for an hour or two on a video than a book. I'm probably slightly dyslexic or something. At university I made sure I never missed a lecture but hardly ever read a book. I did above averagely well.

This is a disadvantage though. I have friends who can read books in a couple of hours and absorb the content. I'd have to sit through more hours of video to get the same content, even watching the videos at 2x speed.

Wild speculation: being intellectual used to require being good at book comprehension. Maybe only 10% of the population are good at that. Maybe some of the remaining 90% are still clever. If so, video content could allow those book-comprehension-limited people to become intellectual. That'd be nice.

(i can relate), you sound younger than me, so here is my life-hack tutorial I wish I could send to myself:

welcome to the life of the autodidact, sounds like you are well on the path towards being a polymath in a plurality of subjects. without formal degrees in subject matters people will NOT take you seriously, so it's best if you can connect with other people who are credentialed - there are several ways to do this, best case see if you can get your name on a few papers in the field(s) you are interested in. there might be conferences, reddits, or discords on subject matters that interest you - look for those to network. you will need to continue feeding your curiosity or you will probably become depressed. having a wife and kids, try to always put them first to be a good father! (note: i wasn't, and that scar doesn't fade - so kids are the priority once you've got them and you'll probably need to wait until they're off to college before you really get any free time to pursue your own interests).

someday, it's possible (although semi-unlikely) perhaps you might find or discover something that nobody else has figured out or bothered to do yet - but don't try create and do anything that requires a seed capital because few will understand wtf you are talking about most of the time and with no degree nobody will take you seriously making fund-raising an exercise in futility unless you literally get a patent - if you can build/demonstrate a prototype/mvp then it might be a different tune -- if you can sell/license something you make in the field, then you can pay yourself to pursue your passions and that's "living your best life" (where I am now) but until then you're probably going to be living a lonely life of solitude with regard to your academic pursuits. cheers.