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other similar domains include stock picking, spirituality, and relationships, psychology, child-rearing, cooking a steak, etc.... all the "Serious Important Stuff" needs to have twice the amount of knowledge as everything else.https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1359214964611837953 …

the result of trying to integrate incompatible world views results in a "compromise" of heuristics and rules. it's a solid and virtuous attempt to reconcile everything. picking the "best of all worlds"https://twitter.com/a_yawning_cat/status/1359517724372705287?s=20 …

however, without a mental framework, it's like having 100 boxes of different christmas decorations without a tree. or like a very small tree where you spend most of your time swapping around decorations. no matter how much "effort" you put into the problem, you NEVER "solve" it

this is where depth can be more useful than breadth. depth requires creating a mental model from scratch. you have to grow the thing from seed, raise it through its teenage and young adult years, and sunset it as its time wanes. raising a pet or a plant is a similar endeavor.

individuals who have personal mental models of similar height often recognize each other. e.g. a 5 star general, an elite athlete, a concert pianist, etc.... even if the specific topics are wildly different, there's mutual respect for the effort put into the tall christmas tree.

the steak and the christmas tree also point to traps around this kind of mastery. the steak trap is to read too much into something, seeing massive amounts of signal when it's mostly noise that doesn't matter. it's very hard to take 10,000 hr mastery of steak searing seriously