

The Generalist's Dilemma - J3L2404
http://hippiesque.com/blog/2009/07/the-generalists-dilemma/

======
btilly
A random observation. Many significant advancements came when someone who knew
about one thing learned about a second and realized that the first applied to
the second.

Generalists are more likely to do that than specialists. And in my experience
they are more fun to hang out with.

However it is true that nobody can be good at everything. Therefore one of the
most important skills there are IMO is realizing who is better than you at
what. In fact I consider people who can keep track of the skills of people
around them to be valuable in their own right. But my experience is that
people who gain this ability inevitably learn something about a lot of
different things. Therefore people with this key ability tend to be
generalists!

Therefore I value specialists, but prefer a good generalist more.
_Particularly_ in a small organization where people get varied
responsibilities.

Disclaimer: I am a generalist and hence am quite biased. (In case that wasn't
obvious.)

~~~
marilyn
_Many significant advancements came when someone who knew about one thing
learned about a second and realized that the first applied to the second._

This is the premise to the book "The Medici Effect" by Frans Johansson, which
states that innovation is found in the intersections between disciplines. It's
a good read.

------
cloudmike
Avoid the extremes. Don't do one thing, don't do hundreds of things. Find a
distribution that makes you happy.

Go for depth. Go for breadth. Just don't be shallow and narrow.

Scour the earth for things you love, then plumb their depths entirely.

~~~
pgbovine
_Go for depth. Go for breadth._

agreed! what's to prevent you from going into depth in 1 (or maybe 2-3)
things, and then going for breadth on a dozen more, getting decently at good
at them as hobbies but not becoming world-class? seems like a good balance.
1-2 things in which you're an expert, and 6-8 more in which you're a
proficient hobbyist

------
mtoledo
Everytime I see a 'generalist' vs 'specialist' post like this, I think its
wrong to compare generalists who are very good in a lot of different areas to
specialists that are very good in just one of them.

Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields
with a specialist whom is very good on a field.

Or, in your case, like you said (being an accomplished practitioner of many
different fields), comparing that to being like Marie Curie or Einstein, to
quote your examples. That is, if you took all the time and effort from being a
writer, orchestra musician, etc, and put it into a single field.

Even if you can say your life's been very fulfilling (and you're probably
right), its a hard argument for the generalist to say he's better than the
specialist in the specialists' field.

As for 'you can't be good at everything', that really means 'you wont be as
good as you can be at something if you keep learning everything'. But putting
in lots of work on everything obviously make you good on everything.

But even mozart, being very talented a musician in a young age, had to choose
(at age 4?) the violin or the piano (he chose the later)

~~~
yungchin
"Ideally, you'd have to compare generalists who are mediocre in lots of fields
with a specialist whom is very good on a field."

Isn't the whole point of the essay to suggest that generalists need not be
mediocre at all? It's not obvious that the energy spread over several
activities would be as efficiently spent on one specialist activity - if you
do (without proof) assume that that's feasible, then that's actually begging
the question...

~~~
JoachimSchipper
No, the above argument leaves room for diminishing returns - it only assumes
that spending more time learning foo is more efficient at learning foo than
spending more time learning bar is _at learning foo_.

Suppose Alice and Bob have similar levels of talent. Alice spent 10000 hours
learning the piano. Bob spent 2000 hours learning the piano, 2000 learning the
violin, 2000 learning percussion, 2000 learning to sing and 2000 writing a
novel. The above argues that Alice will be better at playing the piano than
Bob. Probably not five times better (assuming that could be defined in a
sensible fashion) - there are diminishing returns - but still better.

------
wallflower
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache
for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk
looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being
alive...

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer, "The Invitation"

------
hugh_
I reckon that the best way to become a generalist is a two-step process:

1\. Become a specialist

2\. Become a generalist

This has two advantages. Firstly, you'll be useful and employable in your
youth, since a specialist with a few years' experience is a valuable asset,
but a half-baked generalist is pretty useless. Secondly, and more importantly,
you'll know what it's like to _really_ understand a subject, which should help
you in your quest to partially understand all the others.

~~~
btilly
If you are the kind of person who will accomplish step 1, you are probably not
the kind of person who will be inclined to take step 2.

------
dasil003
But what's the dilemma?

~~~
etherael
Believing that the nature of knowledge is dogmatic; that there exists no
pattern behind anything and that anything that is knowable must be memorised
by rote and stored wholesale in the mind, rather than guiding principles
abstracted from diverse experience refined and applied in multiple contexts.

I humbly submit that this single idea is the root of so much of the mental
incompetence in the world today. It encourages the spread of religion and it's
comparison with real science, it discourages attempting to comprehend and
apply deep unifying principles between all things and a breadth of thought
that comes far easier when one isn't afraid of exposing their preconceived
ideas and views to the light of critical enquiry.

Last but not least, it encourages the emergence of a political class that at
best exists purely to coordinate and rule the "underclass" specialists, and at
worst offers no independent value themselves.

~~~
foldr
Some of that sounds a little dogmatic in itself. It's an interesting
historical fact that the idea of there being a deep underlying unity in nature
was originally a religious one. In a time before there were any examples of
really successful science, the idea that the universe might actually be
comprehensible to us on a deep level seemed pretty loopy unless you believed
that it was deliberately constructed to be intelligible. After all, the
universe isn't all that comprehensible to any other form of life on earth --
why should we be so special if we are not in fact special? So in a sense, the
idea that science is possible has its roots in a particular sort of religious
belief.

Anyway, that is not intended as an argument in favor of religious belief
today. But it's worth asking whether any rational justification could have
been given in the 13th century for a belief in the deep underlying unity of
the universe, _before_ we had available the fruits of the research based on
that assumption. I think it would have been far more sensible in those days to
believe that the universe is just a complicated place with a lot of different
kinds of stuff in it, and a lot of different kinds of principle governing what
happens to that stuff.

Interestingly, this sort of pluralistic conception of reality is coming back
into fashion in some circles, under the heading of the "dappled universe".
Nancy Cartwright's work on these topics is really interesting. (FTR: She is
trained as a physicist and has no religious agenda.) It's actually shocking
how little reason there is to believe in a single set of underlying natural
laws when you consider these issues with an open mind.

 _edit_ : There's a good (somewhat critical) review of one of Cartwright's
book's here [doc]:
[http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20revi...](http://personal.lse.ac.uk/CARTWRIG/PDF%20various/Book%20reviews%20and%20book%20symposiums/Dappled%20world%20review%20by%20H%20Kincaid%202003.doc)

~~~
hugh_
_It's actually shocking how little reason there is to believe in a single set
of underlying natural laws when you consider these issues with an open mind._

What's the alternative to a single set of natural laws?

Perhaps one set of natural laws that applies around here, and a slightly
different set that applies in Andromeda, but only on Tuesdays? But surely the
two sets, plus the Andromeda/Tuesdays restriction, put together form one
slightly more complicated set of physical laws?

Perhaps an infinite set of subtly different natural laws which apply at
different points in space and time? But that's still just one very large set
of laws, right?

~~~
foldr
>What's the alternative to a single set of natural laws?

I take the point that however many natural laws there are, there is a set
containing all of them. However, you did delete the important adjective
"underlying" when asking your question. Isn't it pretty clear what it would
mean for there to be no single set of underlying natural laws? It would mean,
for example, that laws of chemistry would not necessarily be reducible to laws
of physics, laws of psychology would not necessarily be reducible to laws of
biology, etc. etc. You may think that this is wrong, but it's a perfectly
intelligible idea.

Cartwright argues that there is no "ultimate", universal set of laws to which
all other true laws inevitably reduce. From her point of view, laws are
relatively local and specific. She goes through a lot of physical phenomena,
particularly involving lasers, and shows that although physicists are able to
make very precise predictions, they virtually never make these predictions
merely by special-casing general principles. Her argument (which I don't have
the space or expertise to summarize here) is that there is consequently no
reason to think that the general principles are really _true_ , even though
they are fantastically interesting and useful.

Also, you seem to be tacitly assuming that all natural laws are necessarily
going to be laws of physics, but that is one of the questions at issue. E.g.,
are we right to assume that all the laws of chemistry are "in principle"
reducible to physics, even though we can never hope to make such a reduction
in practice? Perhaps that is just a kind of unjustified faith in the unity of
reality.

Anyway, I am sort of on the fence on these issues, but I found her arguments
unexpectedly persuasive. It really is surprising how non-stupid the idea of a
pluralistic reality is when you look at these questions in detail.

~~~
hugh_
_E.g., are we right to assume that all the laws of chemistry are "in
principle" reducible to physics, even though we can never hope to make such a
reduction in practice?_

Actually, making that reduction in practice is pretty much what I do for a
living.

~~~
foldr
Yes, I'm not suggesting that there's a complete disconnect between physics and
chemistry, but we're a long way from having a complete understanding of how
all chemical reactions work at the physical level. That is, an actual proof
that all known laws of chemistry are mathematical consequences of the laws of
physics (without making too many fudges, simplifying approximations, etc.
etc.)

This is not in any way intended as a criticism of physicists or chemists, in
case it comes across like that. They're both incredibly successful at what
they do.

Just googling around, this paper gives quite a nice overview of what sensible
scepticism about the possibility of reduction looks like:
<http://www.springerlink.com/content/v05g613468p6xk17/>

------
robryan
This comes up a lot for me with programming, so many different languages,
platforms and APIs are flying past us here on HN as well as languages that
have been around for a long time.

So many times I see a cool new API and say that would be great to have a play
around with if I had the time.

~~~
puffythefish
I do the same, but then realize: by doing this, I'm specializing into
programming.

