This post introduces a potentially very useful model, both for selecting problems to work on and for prioritizing personal development. This model could be called “The Pareto Frontier of Capability”. Simply put:
By an efficient markets-type argument, you shouldn’t expect to have any particularly good ways of achieving money/status/whatever - if there was an unusually good way of doing that, somebody else would already be exploiting it.
The exception to this is that if only a small amount of people can exploit an opportunity, you may have a shot. So you should try to acquire skills that only a small number of people have.
Since there are a lot of people in the world, it’s incredibly hard to become among the best in the world at any particular skill.
This means you should position yourself on the Pareto Frontier—you should seek out a combination of skills where nobody else is better than you at everything. Then you will have the advantage in problems where all these skills matter.
It might be important to contrast this with the economical term comparative advantage, which is often used informally in a similar context. But its meaning is different.
If we are both excellent programmers, but you are also a great writer, while I suck at writing, I have a comparative advantage in programming. If we’re working on a project together where both writing and programming are relevant, it’s best if I do as much programming as possible while you handle as much as the writing as possible—even though you’re as good at me as programming, if someone has to take off time from programming to write, it should be you. This collaboration can make you more effective even though you’re better at everything than me (in the economics literature this is usually conceptualized in terms of nations trading with each other).
This is distinct from the Pareto optimality idea explored in this post. Pareto optimality matters when it’s important that the same person does both the writing and the programming. Maybe we’re writing a book to teach programming. Then even if I am actually better than you at programming, and Bob is much better than you at writing (but sucks at programming), you would probably be the best person for the job.
I think the Pareto frontier model is extremely useful, and I have used it to inform my own research strategy.
Say some new field opens up that combines field X and field Y. Researchers from each of these fields flock to the new field. My experience is that virtually none of the researchers in either field will systematically learn the other field in any sort of depth. The few who do put in this effort often achieve spectacular results.
This post introduces a potentially very useful model, both for selecting problems to work on and for prioritizing personal development. This model could be called “The Pareto Frontier of Capability”. Simply put:
By an efficient markets-type argument, you shouldn’t expect to have any particularly good ways of achieving money/status/whatever - if there was an unusually good way of doing that, somebody else would already be exploiting it.
The exception to this is that if only a small amount of people can exploit an opportunity, you may have a shot. So you should try to acquire skills that only a small number of people have.
Since there are a lot of people in the world, it’s incredibly hard to become among the best in the world at any particular skill.
This means you should position yourself on the Pareto Frontier—you should seek out a combination of skills where nobody else is better than you at everything. Then you will have the advantage in problems where all these skills matter.
It might be important to contrast this with the economical term comparative advantage, which is often used informally in a similar context. But its meaning is different. If we are both excellent programmers, but you are also a great writer, while I suck at writing, I have a comparative advantage in programming. If we’re working on a project together where both writing and programming are relevant, it’s best if I do as much programming as possible while you handle as much as the writing as possible—even though you’re as good at me as programming, if someone has to take off time from programming to write, it should be you. This collaboration can make you more effective even though you’re better at everything than me (in the economics literature this is usually conceptualized in terms of nations trading with each other).
This is distinct from the Pareto optimality idea explored in this post. Pareto optimality matters when it’s important that the same person does both the writing and the programming. Maybe we’re writing a book to teach programming. Then even if I am actually better than you at programming, and Bob is much better than you at writing (but sucks at programming), you would probably be the best person for the job.
I think the Pareto frontier model is extremely useful, and I have used it to inform my own research strategy.
While rereading this post recently, I was reminded of a passage from Michael Nielsen’s Principles of Effective Research:
This pointed out some things I hadn’t noticed about how the post relates to comparative advantage. Thanks.