Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#121

Post by undersuit » Mon, Nov 19, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

friedman23 wrote: post #85

crispinb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite happy to admit (it's kind of self-evident) that criticism is easier than building. It's a known known now that our economy does end in catastrophe - the collapse of ecosystems (on which all life, ours included, depend) is happening apace, is entirely well-documented, and barely starts to be addressed by shifts to renewables. That's mostly limited to power generation, and in any case climate collapse is only…

> Knowing, as we do, that an ever-expanding economy leads to global collapse what?

Our world economy can't keep growing. Resources must be extracted and consumed to facilitate the movement of wealth. We must eventually stop, even the gray goo replicators run out of resources once they convert the planet to themselves.

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#122

Post by Aperson4321 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 1:50 AM UTC

ohiovr wrote: post #36

It takes 50,000 hours of productive practice to master a trade or study. Who has the time to accomplish three of these?

Some people learn fast, very very fast, and they might get so fascinated by something that they have no choice but to try to learn certain things. It can feel like suffocating not to try to learn that amazing looking something, and it can be so much fun when the learning is so fast. So for some people its less about time and more about accidentally learning multiple subjects.

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#123

Post by kartickv » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:00 AM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #120

kartickv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your experience with companies that could make use of your other skill? If you understand accounting, and you're applying to a company that makes photography apps, that won't be given much value.

Obviously if your skills aren't relevant, they aren't going to be used. IMHO, this is mostly due to the nature of the industry I am in (software). Hiring engineers is difficult, and only done when there are specific needs to fill - particularly at small companies, that can't afford to think too far ahead, or afield.

I was asking if you've found your other skills ignored even when you could explain to the company how they're relevant for them. For example, if you can do accounting, and you're applying to work at a company like Tally that makes accounting software, and you explain to them how your accounting skills are an added reason to hire you, have they, in your experience, still ignored those skills?

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#124

Post by WalterSear » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 3:18 AM UTC

kartickv wrote: post #123

WalterSear wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously if your skills aren't relevant, they aren't going to be used. IMHO, this is mostly due to the nature of the industry I am in (software). Hiring engineers is difficult, and only done when there are specific needs to fill - particularly at small companies, that can't afford to think too far ahead, or afield.

I was asking if you've found your other skills ignored even when you could explain to the company how they're relevant for them. For example, if you can do accounting, and you're applying to work at a company like Tally that makes accounting software, and you explain to them how your accounting skills are an added reason to hire you, have they, in your experience, still ignored those skills?

Yes.

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#125

Post by linkregister » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 4:55 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #87

linkregister wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas, were the same folks making these comments?

In that case, the question is, why those two groups of people never interact and never discuss with each other? You would expect a discussion or fights between these groups once in while.

Yes, and one might find them in the "comments" section of a technology news aggregator.

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#126

Post by sultanofswing » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:26 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #69

sultanofswing wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usage of Feynman's official IQ score as some sort of 'proof' of anything is often overused. I don't have the exact citation but it is fairly well documented that he scored well on other very challenging tests that correlate strongly with IQ (not to mention his actual career accomplishments). Needless to say, people bandying around his score on this one test as evidence that he was 'bright but not in a high IQ' way is…

I like how when Richard Feynman's IQ test score doesn't conform to some narrative, HN is in contortions with excuses why the test doesn't matter, but when we come around to the topic of white IQ supremacy, suddenly HN is armed to the teeth with factoids about how g-loaded and circumstantially neutral the mainstream IQ tests are.

This seems like a reach, especially considering I don't personally believe the latter point you're making about IQ tests being neutral.

I'm not an expert on psychometrics, I think all I'm trying to point out is that Feynman performed highly on other tests that likely correlate highly with IQ, so I believe it more likely that there is some confounding factor at play other than this being representative of his actual IQ.

Or maybe that his IQ averaging here doesn't tell us much about which domains he scored highest in (some posit that he may have scored very poorly in a verbal section vs. mathematical etc.).

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#127

Post by touristtam » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 11:03 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #112

tzekid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in a team is not only about skill, but about work-culture. If they have dismissed you because you have a broad range of interests, then that place wasn't right for you anyways.

There are very, very few places where a broad range of professional skills is considered an asset for a developer. Most places want cogs. If you're too broad or have too many teeth, you're not going to fit in with the other cogs. But you may be pitching at the wrong level. Developer jobs may not be the right niche for someone with a broad spectrum of skills. (By which I mean genuinely broad multidisciplinary professi…

Or analysis/statistics field?

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#128

Post by qwerty456127 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #82

Nasrudith wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I think being a generalist is ironically is effectively the same niche as yet another specialization. It sounds nonsensical and contradictory at first glance but makes some sense. If you are able to do everything equally well you will likely be out-competed in any given field by specialists (barring say a generally applicable approach flat out being better like an engineer designing tools which can outperf…

Quite right, an area where you also see this is consulting.

Consulting is not an "area". You are supposed to specialize in some area and accumulate specialized expertize in it first before you can become a consultant anybody would be interested to consult to. Isn't this so?

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#129

Post by crispinb » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 8:59 PM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #121

friedman23 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Knowing, as we do, that an ever-expanding economy leads to global collapse what?

Our world economy can't keep growing. Resources must be extracted and consumed to facilitate the movement of wealth. We must eventually stop, even the gray goo replicators run out of resources once they convert the planet to themselves.

I agree your conclusion is undeniable, but I don't think conceptualising endless growth as mere 'resource' consumption quite captures the danger & tragedy of the physical processes involved.

'Economic'(1) growth, in real physical terms (forget the fake virtual world of the economist), is the transfer of matter and energy from our world's self-sustaining complex systems to crude, temporary, early-stage technological ones. It is the transfer of entropy to the complex evolved systems on which we depend, causing their dynamically stable states, developed over millenia, to break down. These living systems are dying, everywhere on the planet. Our extremely fragile global civilisation will not last long as crises of our home's destruction start to roll in.

Look at the convulsions caused in Europe by the feeblest of mini-crises in 2015. Far more is to come, and the consequences will be expanding waves of ever more intense wars and collapses of what passes for cooperation between nations.

We've allowed the propaganda of endless economic growth, fictionally severed from physics, chemistry, and biology, to be broadcast without challenge by corporate capitalists for too long to pull back now. People believe in it. It is religion (and by far the most dangerous fundamentalism in history). I think it's a done deal now.

(1) scare quotes intended here because the 'economy' is a Platonic fiction cooked up by fluffy-minded business folks & economists to make it seem like money floats, untethered, beyond physical reality. But it doesn't. Reality is coming back to bite them, and, unfortunately, all of us (where "us" includes the more-than-human world)

Re: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists

#130

Post by madhadron » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 3:48 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #65

madhadron wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you have Francis Crick on that list. Franklin being on the same list as the others is also pretty weird.

You don't think that Franklin was a polymath? That's a pretty jarring take, can you expand on it?

The list in the parent comment was "legendary geniuses." Crick was certainly not that. He did a physics degree then did a bunch of half-assed work in biology. He stole some data, confounded the idea of gene and open reading frame so thoroughly that we're still trying to undo the damage decades later, and summarized a lot of early molecular biology results in an oversimplified way (the "central dogma") that we're still trying to teach people the real nuances of. On the whole he and Watson were probably a net negative for science.

As for polymath, he certainly wasn't that. I've done physics, biology, statistics, software engineering, violinist, composer, dance historian, learned a bunch of languages, and written a novel. I'm a pretty pedestrian level polymath, and Crick was nowhere near me.