Sometimes this transfer can take the form of a persistent metaphor, or maybe an experience that makes itself known to you while you're thinking about something else, or simply your attention is guided to look at something in a particular light. Knowledge in many domains, connected to the right problem, can lead to profoundly effective abduction. Peirce called abduction: the process of generating hypotheses. Many useful discoveries or insights are the result of an almost magical use of what C.S. I think the value of polymaths is more 'synthetic', not necessarily 'analytic'. I think a lot of philosophers use this approach too. I think Erdős said of his own mathematical ability (no doubt with some humility) that it was very much a 'bag of tricks' he would apply to the problems his multitudinous collaborators were working on.
Of course, none of this is meant to defend or elevate people participation in random internet discussions, or generating “content marketing”, to “generalists”. That clarity serves as a great platform on which to then incorporate the inputs of specialists from different fields relevant to the situation. Generalists are typically far better at motivating the relevance of a problem/situation and filtering out the important details from the unimportant. Eg, while being taught in grad school by a world renowned expert, I realized that he’d been teaching the subject longer than any of the students had been alive! Consequently, there have a hard time communicating with those not well-versed in their field. Having access to a highly sophisticated hammer, everything looks like a nail through their lens.
(Hyper)specialists have a hard time understanding context outside their narrow domains, and filtering the relevance of their own specialization to a situation. I think the author/post neglects the most important reason for valuing generalists and learning from them. That seems like a pretty normal reaction for someone with limited attention and study resources? Am I missing something? yeah, then I find myself more inclined to read others’ opinions, more confident than my own, and defer to trusting them unless I have a strong instinct otherwise. I know from my own experience that even as someone who has a tendency to challenge, I find myself constrained by my lack of experience on many subjects, my estimation of the time involved to become conversant, and my general feeling of limited time and energy. particularly accepting of critical feedback along some lines but biased against other kinds of critical feedback Especially in a forum where existing contributions are: And one can at least infer that gaining that confidence may involve significant time and effort. Unless you have high confidence in your ability to grasp the subject, this can be considerably daunting to someone who isn’t blessed with high confidence generally. A little preparation and basic work-study and critical thinking skills is all a post needs, along with something you really want to say and is actually worth saying, of course.