To Be a Specialist, you Gotta Have a Special Mind

I have been studying Software recently, and this is true there also. You gotta have the kind of mind that thinks like a computer. There are plenty of software schools that claim to do this for you - to turn you into a software expert painlessly. But none of them say that - a certain kind of mind is necessary for this to happen.

And I will add something else - the people who have developed these minds, are deficient in important ways. Ways that they do not want to know about.

This has been true forever - and is an important part of our human heritage. As we develop special skills, we develop special limitations.

Take The Warrior, for example - as shown in our first literature, the Iliad. These guys could think of nothing but war. And they were easily conquered by people with more diverse skills - such as the Romans.

Thousands of years later, Industrialization produced The Machine - and people who thought like a machine. This gave them advantages (it made them rich) and disadvantages (it made them inhuman, as shown by the Holocaust).

It's too soon to say much about, the disadvantages of thinking like a computer - everyone wants to talk about the advantages instead. But you can be sure these disadvantages exist - and you can get a feel for them, by hanging around those guys - and asking yourself "What's going on here?"

Something they cannot do for themselves.