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Comment by sixo | Hacker News Reader

Getting especially good at one thing is very good for a person.

Specialization is for insects. A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. --Robert Heinlein

We shouldn't be hyper focused on becoming "especially good" at one thing but . Jack of all trades, master of none, makes you better able to see and apply relevant knowledge to different areas. It's good to know your own limits, but not good to to only focus on one area and ignore others.

The world economy and the mega-prosperity of the 20th century onwards depends solely on providing the means for individuals to become highly specialized in return for a livelihood comfortable in proportion to the utility of their specialization.

Of course it's good always to learn new things, but expecting everyone to be able to "plan an invasion, butcher a hog.. program a computer" is a rhetorical judgement on the potential of humans that ignores the realities of the modern world.

It's not that specialisation is bad, more that you can be specialised in an area but that doesn't mean you should not have a wider range of skills, that you are not expert at but you can do it without fucking things up entirely.

Fair point, but I have a counterpoint. The dunning krueger effect means most "widely specialized" people assume their competence is leagues higher than it actually is in fields they have marginal understanding of. This leads to people overestimating their abilities and fucking things up, when they really should rely on 0.1% experts. This of course isn't true for simple things like cooking, knot tying and email writing, but the more technical a task, the greater the threat of overestimated competence vs known incompetence.

On the other hand, we have so many programmers who are only good at programming and have no understanding (or interest) in the world beyond, meaning their algorithms and design patterns might be good, but their product is not, because they do not really understand the problems their users are facing and even if explained, cannot relate, therefore cannot really solve it.

There exists jobs for "pure programmers", but most programmers should have at least a basic understanding for the problem space they are solving. Bonus points if they really understand it and still listen to the full time experts of the field.

This quote actually defines an archetype for a fictional character.

The interesting part is that it says "specialization is for insects". Eusocial insects are amazingly successful from an evolutionary point of view, and their social structure is one of the only things in nature humans can't match. Being more like insects is actually progress.

Social insects have nothing on human social structures in either complexity or diversity. Social structures is what humans excel at.

It can be, but there's also a good amount of risk and opportunity cost that comes with that.

Maybe the thing you get especially good at turns out to be useless or low-paying (for a profession) or of limited fun, social potential, or replay value (for a game).

I would much rather become a generalist and learn a bunch of things, and then do some limited, "shallow specialization" when the need and opportunity arises. But I think you're still more likely on average to be successful/happy with a more generalist/breadth approach.

Well it's not zero sum. You can specialize in one thing but still dabble in others

GP invoked the modern saying "Jack of all trades, master of none." The original saying was "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." In other words, if the choice was between average knowledge of many things OR having an incredible knowledge of one thing sans much else, the former was likely preferable.

I tend to think that everything I know represents a thousand things I don't. In other words, there is only so much time in the day or so much space in my brain. If the choice isn't simply binary, as is implied by that original saying, I think it would be preferable to be a "jack of all trades, master of ONE."

Western societies, and probably others, seemed to have this ingrained for quite some time. So much so that people would adopt a name that reflected their mastery (or profession): "Smith", "Cooper", "Fletcher", etc. Obviously, most people through-out history lived in incredible scarcity and consequently had to be somewhat skilled in a variety of things simply to survive. Specialization was the exception for quite some time. It wasn't until technological advancement, widespread usage of labor-saving devices, and later the industrial revolution, that specialization by large numbers of people was feasible (due to the abundance of resources from the efficient production of goods).

Expertise has its place, but it is not everything.

Also expertise is not the only component to career success, and everything isn't about career success either.

Why do we teach our kids games? Is it so they become especially good at playing chess? or poker? or bridge? Are we hoping that they'll go pro? I think your comment misses my point. We prepare our kids for life. Not just for a job. And life involves all kinds of skills.

I didn't say "only ever doing one thing and doing it well is good for a person". Learning multiple games is also good; learning many things is also good, my (trite) point is that IMO there is a specific virtue in the pursuit of excellence: the stripping away of imperfections, the alterations to one's temperament required to reach excellence and then to demonstrate it, the self-knowledge of what it takes and that one has it and could demonstrate it again, pure self-esteem, etc.

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