this definitely seems like a useful model for some purposes, I expect it will live in my head now. you do say right up top that this is a galaxy-brained theory, but I still feel the need to nitpick
I feel like this is more true the more generalist-y the stuff you’re doing is to begin with
in your quiz of examples, I perceive a trend where the technical examples are less generalist-y than the other ones, which I conjecture is because that’s in fact the area that Lightcone has the most specific expertise in
I claim that there exist lots of other kinds of tasks that are similarly specific in non-(purely-)technical directions, that it seems possible Lightcone has less visibility over
my personal experience is that many of my strengths are “the more technical side of design”, e.g. music theory and language learning and poetry translation, as distinct from more purely-creative design; I guess this is not so much a nitpick as perhaps something like “if you have sufficient combination of Design and Technical then you can combine them in useful ways”?
except I definitely know people who are quite good at some kinds of Design and way better than me at more central kinds of Technical, who are less good than me at the kind of technical-design I do
relatedly I was surprised you put “legal” squarely in Design, it seems v much a Design-Technical hybrid
there are also three- and four-way skill-combination tasks! e.g. directing a choir is all four—you need the design sense to decide how you want the piece to sound; the technical music chops to track all the parts and notice and pinpoint mistakes; the management skill to manage the group’s energy and attention; and the physical dexterity to wave your arms comprehensibly
and—I notice I disbelieve that someone who is good at, say, interior design and programming and people managing and climbing, would be able to become a proficient choir director quickly with no prior practice in music specifically
(I do think their management skill would transfer; their physical skill may or may not (it would if they were a dancer); but I do not think interior design transfers that well to music-design nor programming to music-technicals)
(possibly you would not put any of music under Technical? I might disagree with that though, or at least I definitely think there are more and less technical parts of music)
relatedly I do think people can have much more granular skill-spikiness
as you mentioned in another comment physical skills differ from each other really quite a lot, I think there’s any correlation between like “running skill” and “guitar skill” but really pretty little
my Things are “music” and “languages” and things that are in those fields are just for some reason way easier for me than most things that aren’t
I’ve known a lot of people who are really good at Design around words and really bad at Design around spaces, or really good at Design around spaces but couldn’t carry a tune, etc.
there are skills that benefit greatly from learning them early in life and/or just take a great deal of time to learn
additionally I do think this tetrachotomy is not exhaustive
executive function/time management/conscientiousness/whatever is probably worth tracking as a separate skill
“management” is sort of a subset of “social”, which is another important skill area in many professional and other pursuits
emotional skills are also an important thing but they kind of pervade other stuff rather than being a well-defined cluster in themselves usually
rationality also seems kind of separate tbh. like, calibration, careful reasoning, paying attention to the actual things people say rather than the vague vibes of those things, etc.
or maybe it also kinda straddles the Technical/Design divide
(I expect there’s other stuff I’m not thinking of, also)
Thanks for thinking through this in more detail! I think I roughly agree with you for the cases where someone is already good at singing and/or playing an instrument; I do think musical skill generalizes fairly well. (And thanks for spelling out the scenario of “you can actually practice this hands-on intensively for weeks or months in a row as your primary activity”; my default felt sense of weeks/months necessary to do something does not by default involve total primary focus.)
I don’t think I expect non-musicians to be reliably able to skill up in 6 focused months, though! Some would, if they have a good ear and, say, facility in learning languages or similar (to get really used to sheet music). But some would not be able to pick up basic pitch manipulation fast enough, and some might get stuck on becoming fluent in sheet music, and some might have trouble with the kind of vertical listening needed to evaluate harmonies & pick up mistakes.
Though to be fair, the part of that I’m most confident of is that it’s very hard to get from “tone-deaf” to “proficient with sufficient ease to scaffold additional complexity”; I might be more willing to believe that if you already have that kind of proficiency you can often skill up significantly in 6 months if you focus fully on it.