A book that explains the problems with specialization, and why having a wider range of expertise is the better way to succeed, by David Epstein.

Summary

The Cult of the Early Start espouses the idea that to succeed, one must start early, to get ahead early, in order to stay ahead of everyone else. Chinese style Tiger moms do it, Polgár did it (3 times no less, with his 3 chess prodigy daughters), and it’s how Tiger Woods was made. But that’s not the path that Roger Federer followed, and when looking at the data across many domains, most successful people actually did not have early starts and specializations, but rather jumped between different fields. Why? Because most problems in the world are from “wicked” domains.

“Kind” vs. “wicked” domains:

• Kind domains are areas where the world is well known, and responds reliably and predictably to actions. They tend to be narrow, such as games (e.g. chess), and specialized fields (e.g. firefighting)
• Wicked domains are areas where the world is too complex to be known fully, and often responds in opaque and unpredictable ways to actions. These are typically wider fields, such as the world of business, economics, and more accurately represents the real world that most people need to deal with

Early start and specialization work well in kind domains, but fail in wicked domains. Early childhood “head start” programs are typically found to be ineffective - the other kids catch up later on anyway - because the skills they teach (e.g. reading) are closed (i.e. do not yield a long lasting advantage, their benefits “fade out”). Specialization has created parallel trenches, where people are only focused on finding solutions by digging deeper into their own trench, forgetting to look over at other trenches where the solution may actually lie. Additionally, specialists tend to have a difficult time abandoning conventions in moments of crisis, as seen in the Challenger disaster with O-rings, and in cases where experienced firemen refuse to drop their tools even when they should and just run, resulting in their deaths.

Most hard problems in the world are wicked, and this is where the vast majority of the value is. Solving problems in wicked domains requires the ability to apply general conceptual knowledge broadly to various different, previously unseen areas. Progress is often made by using distant analogies accrued from experience in seemingly unrelated fields. So the wider the domain of knowledge a person possesses, the more varied the analogies and ideas that can be drawn from for inspiration. Thus range is good, and one should not be discouraged from switchings fields to broaden their experience.

What about grit, the personality trait of singularly focused perseverance in the face of adversity? There is plenty of research and books on the benefits of grit, which seems to contradict the author’s advice here. Turns out, many studies on grit were biased by studying already special groups of people, such as spelling bee competitors and West Point cadets. These groups may have unique properties that bias the data in favor of grit. For example, the lack of flexibility for military officers to switch to different departments causes high attrition rate where officers quit. Generally, change of focus or direction should not be seen as giving up. Maybe the people who quit decided that whatever they were doing was not a good fit, so it was better overall.

Commentary

There are some glaring problems in the book’s arguments.

Data shows that most successful people don’t specialize early? But this could have different explanations. Maybe most people don’t specialize early, and therefore the base population of the sample is already skewed. The base rate is difficult to measure, but without taking it into account, the validity of the data is questionable at best.

The arguments made are often not backed up by convincing evidence. Stories are used (such as the NASA O-ring story), and most of them are quite interesting, but they are mostly anecdotal, and could have easily been cherry-picked. The only saving grace is the Dark Horse Project mentioned in the book. It offers much of the missing data on the argument for range, as it is a fairly large data set that goes beyond mere anecdotes.

The philosophical ideas around “kind” and “wicked” problems are great, and make a lot of sense. But they are not original to this book. It was formulated decades ago in the context of social planning. So this book has a case of “what’s good isn’t original; what’s original is not exactly bad, but definitely circumstantial.”