Thursday, November 7, 2013

Specialization Is For Insects

It's a great a line from Heinlein. I don't know if he got it from someone else, but I got "Anyone Can Learn To Be A Polymath" from Vanderleun's sidebar.

There are several points to be gleaned from Robert Twigger's article, but this falls near the heart of the matter for me: 
Invention fights specialisation at every turn. Human nature and human progress are polymathic at root. And life itself is various — you need many skills to be able to live it. In traditional cultures, everyone can do a little of everything. Though one man might be the best hunter or archer or trapper, he doesn’t do only that.
By all means, read the whole thing.

A family friend and neighbor flew submariner hunters in the Cold War/Vietnam era.  He's a pretty smart man and had a high rank with SHAPE in Belgium when he was done flying.  My father completed the 8th grade.  One day, our friend, observing Dad at some task there on the farm, remarked with admiration, that Dad was "a man of many talents."  Of course, we thought that was funny.  It is just what you have to do.  Our friend has been retired for a number of years and running a livestock operation of his own.  I'm sure he is now a man of many talents himself. 

One of the nice things about the internet is that you can get information and instruction about how to do almost anything.  So, now and then, it's maybe a good idea to take a break from the funny cat videos, and learn how to forge a big knife from a lawnmower blade.  How about how to program in Python?  Brush up on geometry?  Somebody has to pick the slack for the Breaking Bad guy.

As Twigger's piece points out, the more varied our experience and knowledge, the more likely we are to come up with innovative solutions to problems.  Fiddling around with tractors and other equipment has probably made me a better software developer, and my experience with software has undoubtedly helped me solve some mechanical problems.  Don't be afraid to learn something new and totally useless.  You never know when it will come in handy. 

2 comments:

  1. Good post and good article. When I picked up the guitar at age 48 one of the hardest parts was getting over the total incompetence and flailing around of the first few months. Then I started to improve. It's a mental barrier. I kept telling myself that guys my age should be better than this. One has to get over the shame of suck.

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  2. I'm the same. I tried playing a guitar a little when I was 12 or 13. I couldn't grasp the concept and just figured I had no talent. Then a few years back I saw some old hippie explain chord structure on a video. I got my wife's guitar and worked my way through "Victory in Jesus". I don't practice enough to be good, but I can at least understand how I could be passable.

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