the end of the specialist
for decades we were told to specialize. pick one thing, go deep, and become the expert. that advice actually made sense back then because information was scarce and the tools we had were super limited. if u wanted to be a doctor, you spent 10 years just learning that one thing. you didn't have time for anything else. it was safe. it was the way to win. but honestly the world just shifted and most people havent realized it yet.
marc andreessen just said founders will need skills across 6-8 different fields going forward. he isnt saying expertise doesnt matter. it still does. but the game has changed because ai tools now let you operate at a competent level across domains you would never have time to master on your own. think about it... you can now write code, design a logo, and analyze a balance sheet in the same afternoon without having a degree in any of them. the barrier to entry for "being good enough" just totally collapsed.
the most interesting people in bitcoin were never just pure coders or pure economists. they were the weird ones. the ones who understood game theory and cryptography and austrian economics and network effects all at once. they were generalists who could see how the pieces fit together when the specialists were still arguing in their own little corners. the specialists built the parts but the generalists built the revolution. they saw the big picture because they werent stuck in a silo.
the same thing is happening right now with ai. the big breakthroughs arent coming from people who only know machine learning. they are coming from the synthesizers who can connect ml to biology or physics or economics. if you only know one thing, you are basically a tool. if you know how to connect five things, you are the one using the tools.
long term this changes everything about how we think about school and hiring and what being an expert even means. are we raising a generation of narrow specialists for a world that is about to reward synthesis and breadth? its kinda scary if u think about it. the "expert" is becoming a commodity while the person who can bridge the gap between fields is becoming the most valuable person in the room. specialists build the tools. generalists see where they fit.
the world doesn't need more people who only know how to do one thing. it needs people who can lead the way through the noise. what skills are you combining that nobody else is? what dots are you connecting that everyone else is missing?
