[rjzzleep]

What you describe here has always been true in all sciences, but also in medicine. But both modern engineering and education runs completely counter to this. You are encouraged to stay in your niche and never look out. People with vast interested are filtered out by hiring managers.

So the crossdomain pollination that used to exist in scientists is not only not encouraged. It's also actively punished by society.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> But both modern engineering and education runs completely counter to this. You are encouraged to stay in your niche and never look out. People with vast interested are filtered out by hiring managers.

Can you explain more what you're referring to, because this has not been my experience at all. Heck, when I went to college, cross disciplinary majors were all the rage.

I think the thing that is just factually difficult is to actually become skilled in multiple different domains, precisely because the level of study/practice/rehearsal to become proficient in any individual domain keeps going up.

A long time ago you could be a Renaissance man by essentially dabbling in different fields. But today, as this article points out, you need extremely deep expertise in any one area just to understand the status quo - this proof required extremely deep expertise in two separate areas that mathematicians were surprised to be related at all.

[snemvalts]

Tai's Model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai%27s_model) is a perfect example of this

[cpard]

You are making a great point here. I think it’s not just the amount of information and complexity of the domains today, it’s also human nature and emerging politics too.