On the way home from high school, I read about intelligent bins in Singaporean housing estates. It reported how full the bins were, and if they needed to be emptied. It puzzled me, for I had no idea how to build such a contraption. It certaintly sounded useful. That was when I thought that Electronics could be a good major.
But, I was (mostly) curious about other things. My hobby was playing 4X games. I was also in a club that did social work. Some engineering majors started off fiddling with tools like radios and programmable electronics; others would have coded software. I had only learnt programming in college.
I eventually majored in Electrical Engineering (and later, streamed into Information Engineering, to complement the degree with more courses from the CS Department). Where I am, specialisation is prized. Such is the British academic system - you only take modules from the subject you do. Others (humanities and languages) if you must, but they do not count towards your GPA. Even in your application essay, you talk about what you did in relation to that subject. I wrote about radios, and how I worked with them in the military.
My earlier interests in politics and economics caught up, though only much later in college. By then, I had been through calculus, linear algebra, statistics, optimisation and control theory. I had read about causal inference, when I was interested in A/B Testing. So, discovering that these could be used in economics was refreshing. My reflection on my education is that it’s like greek architecture - you start mostly in a common pot at the flooring, ascend upwards in a pillar, then reconnect at the roof.
But where does the pillar end? Should we keep ascending up a single pillar? And certainly, not everything in one major relates to the others. Yet, unexpected lateral connections form all the time, some when we least expect. What I read about HVDC Electrical Systems could be useful in analysing the regional dynamics of Southeast Asia - of which its impending power system integration will be a key part.
Is the British academic system right to force everyone up a single bark? Specialisation is important, but only to a degree. Wiggle room should be encouraged at the top - cross-pollination. A great way to do this is to release a pool of courses for other departments. The EE Department here allows other engineering majors to take courses in Optimisation and Sustainable Electrical Systems. This is clearly useful knowledge for any engineer. But should it solely be limited to engineers? Barring class capacity, what about the scientists?
Should we strive towards a society of hyper-specialisation? The recent outrage against the award of a Nobel prize in Physics to machine learning researchers implies a rejection of cross-pollination in science. When interdisciplinary work is shunned upon, we miss out on major breakthroughs. Deep specialism does not imply that we cannot specialise in multiple areas. As Heinlein said, specialisation is for insects.
This is not limited only to research. In work, lateral movements should be encouraged. Let people work on their interests - their rabbit hole for the month - especially if they have deep specialism elsewhere (of course, don’t compose the whole team of generalists). The 80/20 rule at work helps with this; the only bottleneck is to make such intra-organisational connections easy. I believe that hyper-specialism dooms one to local minima; diversity is a global optimisation strategy.
At large, there is an ongoing debate on whether society should be led by generalists or specialists. Certainly, most tracks in management - the MBA types - seem to glorify the generalist. The usual argument is that these individuals can ‘see all’, ‘bring an outside opinion’, or sometimes, have viable networks that companies can tap on. In my view, it is alright for the leader to be a generalist, even good. The role of the leader here is to deal with “high-order variety” - instability. That said, they must be educated on history and business management. Where specialism matters is within boards and the strategy function of organisations - to produce insights and eke out efficiencies. Above all, there must be a good mix for success.
Let me caveat that I am not a trained biologist. But, even nature has her own take on this debate. The humble cockroach is the generalist - it thrives in most environmental conditions and consumes most organic matter. The koala sits on the opposite side of that spectrum. Its fate is to perish in the wildfire, or stay in the zoo.
These species pay a trade off for their evolved behaviours. Generalists may lose to specialists in stable environments, competing with them for the same food. Yet they flourish in instability.
As omnivores who can live in most environments, humans are arguably the ultimate of generalists. Some might say this is why we have become so successful.