Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)

But it is not useful here to think of skill and genetics as being on a continuum, it just produces confusion because these two orthogonal concepts have very similar terminologies, but its a mixed metaphor.

It's good to be a genetic generalist during times of instability specifically because you are incapable of changing your genes during the upheaval - and thus while you may not thrive in any circumstance the risk of extinction is also mitigated. If we had advanced genetic engineering, and could rapidly adopt different genes to suit the circumstances without having to wait for generations of random mutations, there would be no reason not to specialize genetically. While this is a pure hypothetical for genetics, it is reality for behavior - no matter how much you've invested into learning one skill, you can instantly switch to learning another, and you can choose exactly the skillset you want to curate. When a new field emerges, your experience in other, unrelated fields is irrelevant - the specialist is at no disadvantage compared to the generalist, and so they sacrifice nothing by specializing in a field.

In contrast to genetic evolution, which has very discrete goals (reproduce, survive, etc) and is agnostic about how these goals are achieved, skillsets can have a much wider range of objectives and the 'how' is integral. A finch might optimize for eating nuts or insects, or could remain a generalist to handle both, but is unlikely to come across a nut-insect hybrid where the generalist beak outperforms either the nut or the insect beak. But such interdisciplinary situations happen all the time - for example the roboticist with understanding of mechanics and software can do better than either a pure mechanical engineer or pure software engineer. The roboticist has a wider, shallower skillset, but that is only beneficial for tasks which happen to overlap - they won't have any easier time switching to say pharmaceutical development. It simply doesn't make sense to think of the roboticist as a generalist and the other engineers as specialists in the evolutionary sense.

Certainly any direct comparison of specific behavioral to genetic specializations is illogical. By what metric would you compare how well adapted a lion is to a big game hunter with a gun? How could you compare a dam-building construction crew to a family of beavers? Again, we might use similar words to describe what they are doing, but we are describing totally distinct concepts.

Can a general practitioner call himself a generalist?

How many subfields does a mechanical engineer need to be competent in before they can be labeled a generalist?

What about lawyers?

It depends on your definition of success.

In my mind generalists are more likely to do well with people (whether at selling, persuading or romancing), which can be advantageous - unless your definition of success is becoming an hermit.

A focus on a single topic/category/skillset. The Ford dealership has a bunch of mechanics who specialize in Ford vehicles, but I find that my preferred mechanic does a better job.

(In this case better job means: fixes it the first time, with no new problems after, and the work doesn't feel sloppy unlike the warranty repair I had to have done by the dealer. In the later case they just reattached 2 panels wrong, something a specialist should be able to do without problems)

For context, the main characters in that book are kinda immortal. A great book btw