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Comment by boredemployee | Hacker News Reader

>> Statistically, the opposite is happening: human knowledge is becoming deeper.

Do you have a source to point to? (honestly wondering)

>> to converse intelligently about things outside one's area of expertise

Just had this conversation the other day. 90% of my old college teachers (engineering) could talk about and explain in depth many many topics out of their field (philosophy, history, geography and what not). That's not the case today.

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> 90% of my old college teachers (engineering) could talk about and explain in depth many many topics out of their field (philosophy, history, geography and what not).

How do you know they could explain it in depth?

I've heard a lot of people who think they know history/philosophy/economics (especially on HN), but what they really know is pop history/philosophy/economics.

I've had a similar experience. I think this loss of generalization is (dishearteningly) most visible in CS departments: many of my CS peers were openly scornful or disdainful of their liberal arts requirements, which in turn were diluted to ensure that mediocrity or inattention would not filter them out of their degrees. The end result: thousands of yearly graduates qualified to program (and by virtue bring money and renown back to the department), and nothing else.

Edit: And to be clear, these were not stupid people, and there is an important sense in which they were right to be scornful: the classes were clearly not intended to challenge them. I don't believe that particular blame can be levied on them.

College professors are like the academically top 1% of CS graduates. Are you comparing apples to apples?

I didn't come from CS :)

I think it is important to remember not to value judge these sorts of widespread skills. Does it matter today that I can't shape a flint or ride a horse?

I think the error here is in judging the absence of specific skills, and not in judging the broad absence of non-specialized skills.

In other words: it's wrong (and ridiculous) to judge someone for not knowing how to shape a flint, but it's correct to note that we should all have some general set of skills that aren't tied directly to our academic backgrounds or professions.

I think there’s a huge difference between being able to do something and being able to intelligently converse about it. The former I would not expect of people for tasks outside their specialization, but the latter seems like a more reasonable ask - especially if the demographic is college professors.

There's this common sense that creativity and great ideas come when you gather two "unrelated topics", maybe riding a horse can spark some new idea in a new field (ie. robotics)

Presumably you can use a lighter and drive a car though.

One of those two may no longer be the case for people soon...

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