I really like this! Thanks for writing it. In particular I like this as a description of curiosity:
Ideas moved through my head as freely as the wind. I shuffled through subjects the way some people move through rooms. Everything felt connected. I didn’t understand why I was supposed to stay in one place.
I think there’s a common script where people:
1. Follow their many interests 2. Notice they’re falling behind specialists in legible achievement 3. Try to specialize (now permanently behind the specialists) 4. Are legibly mediocre
Hello! Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I don’t come here often, so it makes me really happy to see someone reading or liking my writing.
I started writing this because I noticed a pattern: many famous polymaths and scientists often found answers outside their primary field. Isaac Newton, for example, is known not just for math and physics, but for observing simple things in nature like apples, falling leaves, and the motion of celestial bodies. In a way, they were all polymaths.
But the modern world isn’t really designed to let polymaths thrive. When a child is a multipotentialite or excels in multiple things, parents often push them toward a “safe” option like engineering or medicine. Even later in life, we’re told to pick a single major if we want to pursue higher studies. There’s very little space for polymaths to exist.
Back in the day, scientists were also philosophers. They used science to explain life and our place in the world. Now, scientists are primarily experimenters: they use science to advance their specific field and apply it in practical ways. Neither approach is bad.
When you think like the old scientists, you see that everything is connected and you work across a huge canvas. When you think like modern specialists, you can change the world with targeted, incremental improvements. The problem is that we don’t have room for modern polymaths to flourish.
As a result, many opportunities to connect ideas across different fields are wasted. And these polymaths often don’t realize how smart they are. As you said, they try to follow specialists and end up living a mediocre life.
“The modern world isn’t really designed to let polymaths thrive” means something, but society is not necessarily designed at all. Reality arbitrates what works and what doesn’t, even if locally it feels like someone’s in charge. The success rate of curiosity is related to whether the low-hanging fruit has been picked, the symmetries have been noticed, and the ideas have been spread. This doesn’t have much to do with anyone’s design.
My experience as a generalist has been searching around in the dark, against the local economic gradient, deriving things for myself, then finding my “new” ideas written up over and over in the history books. Humbling! There’s no guarantee that process will yield huge economic returns before you die. What if parents know this, and want something else for their kids? Or at least want their kids to be able to step off the treadmill to the upper middle class after they know what they’re giving up?
Think about what matters, try to solve problems, get better, repeat. It feels like work, because it is. One guaranteed benefit—the process of figuring things out for yourself means you’re quicker at solving all the little puzzles that pop up in your life. That has enormous value. If you’re willing to bet you’ve found an improvement in the world, send it.
FYI—Scanning what I wrote, it looks pessimistic, but what I really am pointing at is that it helps if you love the game.
Hey there! Thank you again. I love how you think. I was actually working on human potential myself. I’m not necessarily working on Generalist vs Specialist; I’m more into learning processes right now. But your words intrigue me. If you want, we could have a call and talk more about this. I can share more about what I’m currently working on as well. I believe it might be of interest to you.
I just wanted to mention, I consider myself to be somewhat of a generalist myself. For ideation, what works for me is that, instead of directly chasing ideas, I find that it is better to chase topics.
For example, let’s say I’m interested in designing a new form of transportation. And the idea I have is something circular that can roll freely. I want to attach this to a structure that can be moved through chain connections. Now, if you read closely, you’re gonna realize that this is a bicycle. It was invented years ago. So, I pick out a bottle neck here. For example, I know that bicycles need a lot of physical- work in order to move. So, how do we fix that? We add motors to move it. So now we have a bike. Now, how can we lift a few people? We turn it into a car. This is what’s most commonly used as transportation today. Now, what’s a bottleneck here? It causes a lot of air pollution. So, what has already been done for this? A popular idea right now is to use carbon filters. Now what is an amazing carbon filter? It’s commercial DACs. They’re proven, they work at great scale, they’re amazing. But you can’t really fit that on a car, right? So, what I would do, is pick this as my topic. Now I’m gonna study DACs and how they’re made and what’s been done to make them smaller or more efficient and so on. And then if I can get a tangible carbon filter device then I see what it’d look cost wise, if it makes sense to put it on a car, see how I can tailor it for cars etc. Untill I reach a hypothesis. Then I work to make it credible and proven. Then from there I do something slightly similar and then a bit more towards transportation and I keep doing that till I can apply everything togather and create a new form of transportation.
Just so you know, I’ve never worked with transportation, I was saying these things from the top of my head. It is just an example. Maybe what I said wouldn’t work, maybe it has already been done or maybe it doesn’t even make sense factually. I just used this as an example. The main thing is that the thinking process worked for me, and I just wanted to share that with you cause I feel like you could be an amazing inventor.
Loving the game definately helps, I totally agree with you. But I also believe that the society is kind of designed. This is why it’s so much clearer a path to follow standard education, get a undergrad degree, a masters, a PHD and become a specialist. Than to prove yourself as a generalist. As a generalist, you can figure things out yourself easier, sure. But you also have so much more to figure out.
I really like this! Thanks for writing it. In particular I like this as a description of curiosity:
Ideas moved through my head as freely as the wind. I shuffled through subjects the way some people move through rooms. Everything felt connected. I didn’t understand why I was supposed to stay in one place.
I think there’s a common script where people:
1. Follow their many interests
2. Notice they’re falling behind specialists in legible achievement
3. Try to specialize (now permanently behind the specialists)
4. Are legibly mediocre
Hello! Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I don’t come here often, so it makes me really happy to see someone reading or liking my writing.
I started writing this because I noticed a pattern: many famous polymaths and scientists often found answers outside their primary field. Isaac Newton, for example, is known not just for math and physics, but for observing simple things in nature like apples, falling leaves, and the motion of celestial bodies. In a way, they were all polymaths.
But the modern world isn’t really designed to let polymaths thrive. When a child is a multipotentialite or excels in multiple things, parents often push them toward a “safe” option like engineering or medicine. Even later in life, we’re told to pick a single major if we want to pursue higher studies. There’s very little space for polymaths to exist.
Back in the day, scientists were also philosophers. They used science to explain life and our place in the world. Now, scientists are primarily experimenters: they use science to advance their specific field and apply it in practical ways. Neither approach is bad.
When you think like the old scientists, you see that everything is connected and you work across a huge canvas. When you think like modern specialists, you can change the world with targeted, incremental improvements. The problem is that we don’t have room for modern polymaths to flourish.
As a result, many opportunities to connect ideas across different fields are wasted. And these polymaths often don’t realize how smart they are. As you said, they try to follow specialists and end up living a mediocre life.
“The modern world isn’t really designed to let polymaths thrive” means something, but society is not necessarily designed at all. Reality arbitrates what works and what doesn’t, even if locally it feels like someone’s in charge. The success rate of curiosity is related to whether the low-hanging fruit has been picked, the symmetries have been noticed, and the ideas have been spread. This doesn’t have much to do with anyone’s design.
My experience as a generalist has been searching around in the dark, against the local economic gradient, deriving things for myself, then finding my “new” ideas written up over and over in the history books. Humbling! There’s no guarantee that process will yield huge economic returns before you die. What if parents know this, and want something else for their kids? Or at least want their kids to be able to step off the treadmill to the upper middle class after they know what they’re giving up?
Think about what matters, try to solve problems, get better, repeat. It feels like work, because it is. One guaranteed benefit—the process of figuring things out for yourself means you’re quicker at solving all the little puzzles that pop up in your life. That has enormous value. If you’re willing to bet you’ve found an improvement in the world, send it.
FYI—Scanning what I wrote, it looks pessimistic, but what I really am pointing at is that it helps if you love the game.
Hey there! Thank you again. I love how you think. I was actually working on human potential myself. I’m not necessarily working on Generalist vs Specialist; I’m more into learning processes right now. But your words intrigue me. If you want, we could have a call and talk more about this. I can share more about what I’m currently working on as well. I believe it might be of interest to you.
I just wanted to mention, I consider myself to be somewhat of a generalist myself. For ideation, what works for me is that, instead of directly chasing ideas, I find that it is better to chase topics.
For example, let’s say I’m interested in designing a new form of transportation. And the idea I have is something circular that can roll freely. I want to attach this to a structure that can be moved through chain connections. Now, if you read closely, you’re gonna realize that this is a bicycle. It was invented years ago. So, I pick out a bottle neck here. For example, I know that bicycles need a lot of physical- work in order to move. So, how do we fix that? We add motors to move it. So now we have a bike. Now, how can we lift a few people? We turn it into a car. This is what’s most commonly used as transportation today. Now, what’s a bottleneck here? It causes a lot of air pollution. So, what has already been done for this? A popular idea right now is to use carbon filters. Now what is an amazing carbon filter? It’s commercial DACs. They’re proven, they work at great scale, they’re amazing. But you can’t really fit that on a car, right? So, what I would do, is pick this as my topic. Now I’m gonna study DACs and how they’re made and what’s been done to make them smaller or more efficient and so on. And then if I can get a tangible carbon filter device then I see what it’d look cost wise, if it makes sense to put it on a car, see how I can tailor it for cars etc. Untill I reach a hypothesis. Then I work to make it credible and proven. Then from there I do something slightly similar and then a bit more towards transportation and I keep doing that till I can apply everything togather and create a new form of transportation.
Just so you know, I’ve never worked with transportation, I was saying these things from the top of my head. It is just an example. Maybe what I said wouldn’t work, maybe it has already been done or maybe it doesn’t even make sense factually. I just used this as an example. The main thing is that the thinking process worked for me, and I just wanted to share that with you cause I feel like you could be an amazing inventor.
Loving the game definately helps, I totally agree with you. But I also believe that the society is kind of designed. This is why it’s so much clearer a path to follow standard education, get a undergrad degree, a masters, a PHD and become a specialist. Than to prove yourself as a generalist. As a generalist, you can figure things out yourself easier, sure. But you also have so much more to figure out.
Thank you!