This is also why I could not be a modern scientist.

It’s not just a cliché to state that a modern scientist often knows very much about an extremely tiny area. There is nothing wrong with that, but it’s just not for me at all.

It’s often why I can romp all over intellectually those with college degrees, especially the arrogant ones who believe their degree in computational hydrodynamics means they know everything about every field. When in reality they usually only know a moderate bit about that one field they’ve studied and usually not much else.

I’m not an expert in any field, but I’ve always strived to know moderately much about every thing I possibly can.

I think it is a huge mistake for no generalists to be present in science as specialists often see very little, and understand even less. That’s just the nature of specialization.

Stepping outside of science and into the broader world, administrators and politicians certainly much prefer specialists to generalists. A specialist is not likely to oppose much of anything or have strong political opinions either way as they just do not understand enough outside of their field to do so.

A generalist is more of a threat. For similar reasons, humanities scholars are also a threat, and this is the main reason humanities programs are being sharply curtailed or outright eliminated at many universities. (In the humanities, you absolutely must be a generalist before you become a specialist, as otherwise you cannot even understand your own field.)

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Let’s say that we could stop all cultural appropriation tomorrow. No feathered headdress would ever again mar a fashion runway. Blackface would remain a thing of the past. Only those signalling their identification with the Palestinian struggle would wear the keffiyeh. Yet here’s a sticking point – since the scarf was once just a symbol of Arab masculinity, should we revert to that? Given that almost every cultural form has been purloined from somewhere else, it proves tricky to tell what belongs to whom, and to separate the offensive jerks from those pursuing respectful cultural innovation. The line between insider and outsider can be surprisingly indistinct.

Obsessing so much over cultural appropriation is to me extremely silly because 99% of everything in every culture everywhere ever has been “appropriated” from some other culture.

That is just how humans work.

I think I truly must not be human, as I can only solve captchas about 40% of the time on the first try.

This guy has the same problem it seems.