We Are in Need of Renaissance People

We do need people to be excited about life again.

> America is increasingly becoming a bifurcated, two-tiered society of a specialized government-corporate-media-political-credentialed class of degreed overseers and managers who attempt to micromanage an increasingly less well-educated, dependent underclass.

Fact: people are better educated today. It's more common to have a university degree than half a century ago (yet unlike decades ago, not to have it count for much).

Speaking of which, being Renaissance is a nice hobby, but it doesn't pay. That's why most people specialize.

Some people like specializing. Spheres of human activity and interest are like fractals. When you specialize and zoom in, you see rich details. Look how diverse computing is.

If you are in computing, to an outsider you seem like a "computer specialist", but within that sphere, you could be a generalist with diverse areas of interest.

Probably the best way to explain that to people might be by analogy to doctors. Imagine someone being a brain surgeon also interested in the heart, kidneys and urinary tract, nose-throat-ears, ... that's a Renaissance Doc.

Some people have one hobby different from their job, maybe two. They specialize off duty, so to speak. They pursue that hobby or two and are good at then, and don't want to take on more at the expense of neglecting what they are good at.

> America is increasingly becoming a bifurcated, two-tiered society of a specialized government-corporate-media-political-credentialed class of degreed overseers and managers who attempt to micromanage an increasingly less well-educated, dependent underclass.

This Musk adulation really takes away from the article. Musk took over Twitter so that he could control tweets that were critical of him, and amplify his own tweets. He knew he would lose billions of dollars in doing so by devaluing the platform, but it was worth it in his eyes.

We are, but we have incentives against it. Your career as a self-educated generalist is going to be significantly worse than as a credentialed specialist. You're going to get weeded out by HR drones for good positions and the positions that you do get an interview for, they're going to try and put you in a box like a specialist and make you a cog in a machine, so you won't get to even use your full skillset.

Isn’t a Renaissance man someone skilled in multiple fields and pretty much a generalist at anything to throw at him?

> Imagine someone being a brain surgeon also interested in the heart, kidneys and urinary tract, nose-throat-ears, ... that's a Renaissance Doc.

Do you mean that such a Renaissance doc this is not a good thing? I think this is exactly the sort of doctors we need.

Right now, my father has diabetes t2, high bp, a slightly enlarged prostrate gland, a series of UTIs, hernia, skin rashes and probably a few other things. He's fairly rigorous in researching & learning about his conditions. But no doc he consults takes an overall picture of his health. You have nephrologist, urologist, cardiologist and so on. They tend to miss things among themselves until he reminds them.

Yes medicine has advanced greatly but a renaissance doc would be transformative for people like him.