Sweet sweet ADHD.
Hobbies, sure. But specialization comes with tools and learning that generalists don’t have, couldn’t possibly afford, and would be a ridiculous amount of things to store and knowledge to remember. E.g. I don’t want to do my own dentistry and I’d prefer an expert for that. Dentistry in the US requires a whole medical degree, specialized tools, etc. I also don’t own the equipment nor have the knowledge to find and drill a well if I want to be “self sufficient”.
You don’t have to be an expert, and that can be very freeing, but we do need them and becoming an expert has opportunity costs. That doesn’t mean experts are shallow or becoming a generalist is deep or morally better nor does it mean generalists are in any way insufficient.
It’s true you create more value for your work/hobby if you specialize, it’s more true than you can just enjoy life if you don’t spend most of it being socially dominated into a job you hate doing in an oppressive environment you hate being in. You get so much more value of yourself just living, or at least making wise trade-offs.
Favorite meme of the day.
My firm provides services that require our key employees to have great depth in certain things (specialization). A lot of firms do that. What makes us the leading provider in our field is that along with depth, our key personnel also have breadth.
Never believe anyone that tells you that you should only focus on one thing. Be great at some things. Be good at many things.
I’ve read the SVN book from cover to cover and understand what can go wrong during a merge and how to solve it. But I never tell anyone, because I hate it more than anything.
I’ve read the Postgres Manual from cover to cover, and now understand SQL, but I still hate it for its weird inconsistencies. I wish ALPHA had an implementation.
I’m sorry
Is this loss?
Haha what a load of shit. Generalists are useful on a day-to-day basis, while specialists advance civilization. They’re both useful in their own way, cause I can’t do anything with a rocket scientist if I wanna change my spark plugs and my man has no idea how cars work, but to claim one is better and the other is garbage? You think humanity is ever inventing the telephone if it’s only your average ass around? Fuck outta here.
Bell was initially strong in science and music theory. The reason he was able to actually end up with the first practical telephone, was that he then also learned electronics. You really need both to develop a ttelephone.
Bell then did a lot of public shows to promote the telephone. It was certainly usefull that Bell worked as a teacher earlier.
That is actually extremely common for big leaps forward. A lot of those just combine knowledge from different domains in a new way.