The point of Being the (Pareto) Best in the World is that you can quite easily become a true expert in X if X is a sufficiently narrow intersection of domains. For example, the best person for writing music notation software is neither a programmer nor a musician, but someone having reasonable skills in both music and programming.
This post seems to make a broader claim, namely that multi-domain expertise can improve your confidence in every single domain, even if you never face actual cross-domains problems. I find this point much less obvious. If you just want to raise a general level of overall confidence, fine. But I fail to see how your expertise in a field could possibly raise your confidence in another (unrelated) field. When your piano teacher is yelling at your terrible execution of the Well-Tempered Clavier, you can’t just repeat to yourself “Screw it, I’ve a PhD in Computer Science!”… in order to improve, you need to actually exercise at the instrument, and your PhD isn’t going to help you with that.
After ten years spent between computer science and formal music training, my overall evaluation is that formal music training will definitely not make you a better programmer in general (and vice versa). The only meaningful exception for me were the music notation software courses aimed at musicians, which I found ridiculously easy for obvious reasons.
Thanks for this post. Yes, that is mostly the idea that I am discussing here, which I think can have beyond practical and work related benefits. Mainly, that it makes one more secure and confident in their life as a whole.
Another thought related to that is that it probably makes not only for more secure personality and confidence, but also more secure career in case one field becomes more obsolete.
Reminds me of Being the (Pareto) Best in the World.
The point of Being the (Pareto) Best in the World is that you can quite easily become a true expert in X if X is a sufficiently narrow intersection of domains. For example, the best person for writing music notation software is neither a programmer nor a musician, but someone having reasonable skills in both music and programming.
This post seems to make a broader claim, namely that multi-domain expertise can improve your confidence in every single domain, even if you never face actual cross-domains problems. I find this point much less obvious. If you just want to raise a general level of overall confidence, fine. But I fail to see how your expertise in a field could possibly raise your confidence in another (unrelated) field. When your piano teacher is yelling at your terrible execution of the Well-Tempered Clavier, you can’t just repeat to yourself “Screw it, I’ve a PhD in Computer Science!”… in order to improve, you need to actually exercise at the instrument, and your PhD isn’t going to help you with that.
After ten years spent between computer science and formal music training, my overall evaluation is that formal music training will definitely not make you a better programmer in general (and vice versa). The only meaningful exception for me were the music notation software courses aimed at musicians, which I found ridiculously easy for obvious reasons.
Thanks for this post. Yes, that is mostly the idea that I am discussing here, which I think can have beyond practical and work related benefits. Mainly, that it makes one more secure and confident in their life as a whole.
Another thought related to that is that it probably makes not only for more secure personality and confidence, but also more secure career in case one field becomes more obsolete.