The model is very simple and the conclusion pretty far-reaching althought interesting. Rather than assume that the conclusion is true I would hunt for what modelling details were glossed over.
Say both painting and stand-up comedy teach self-expression. If magic utilises that then it doesn’t double benefit from that. That is learning a field lowers how much other fields support learning of new fields.
I could also see how learning a field sements a mindset that makes it harder than completely naive person to learn something. Say a lawer benefits from a a mechanistic blind interpretation of rules and painting supports a impulsive reinterpretion and forfeiting rule use. The two experts teachings would actively resist the other kind of adatation. Now it might be it’s own skill to not make them conflict that much or find the context barriers were one approach is applicable over the other. But this is still work over someone to whom the area is the only truth. That is while there might be “synergistic” pairs the probablility that you have “antisynergistic” pairs increases as you pick up fields.
Even if the simple analysis isn’t ironglad ti is likely that the value of being a polymath is undervalued and the exact circumstances where it makes sense to adopt a polymath strategy rather than an expert strategy is not that widely discussed. Further complication to that is that a group of experts that have different areas of expertise is somewhat comparable to a group of homogenous polymaths. So even if moving to a more polymath strategy would make a single person more competent it’s likely that being more starkly expert would increase the groups effectiveness if others can employ enough trust to get dominated by the opinions of the experts. This might also have it’s own singularity conditions. That is at some point there is enough trust that any area you can train a single person to be a expert on, the group can be made to effectively have by adding a person to it.
The model is very simple and the conclusion pretty far-reaching althought interesting. Rather than assume that the conclusion is true I would hunt for what modelling details were glossed over.
Say both painting and stand-up comedy teach self-expression. If magic utilises that then it doesn’t double benefit from that. That is learning a field lowers how much other fields support learning of new fields.
I could also see how learning a field sements a mindset that makes it harder than completely naive person to learn something. Say a lawer benefits from a a mechanistic blind interpretation of rules and painting supports a impulsive reinterpretion and forfeiting rule use. The two experts teachings would actively resist the other kind of adatation. Now it might be it’s own skill to not make them conflict that much or find the context barriers were one approach is applicable over the other. But this is still work over someone to whom the area is the only truth. That is while there might be “synergistic” pairs the probablility that you have “antisynergistic” pairs increases as you pick up fields.
Even if the simple analysis isn’t ironglad ti is likely that the value of being a polymath is undervalued and the exact circumstances where it makes sense to adopt a polymath strategy rather than an expert strategy is not that widely discussed. Further complication to that is that a group of experts that have different areas of expertise is somewhat comparable to a group of homogenous polymaths. So even if moving to a more polymath strategy would make a single person more competent it’s likely that being more starkly expert would increase the groups effectiveness if others can employ enough trust to get dominated by the opinions of the experts. This might also have it’s own singularity conditions. That is at some point there is enough trust that any area you can train a single person to be a expert on, the group can be made to effectively have by adding a person to it.