All of autodidaterous's Comments + Replies

You may want to clarify that when you say things like:

"As an autodidact who now consumes whole fields of knowledge in mere weeks"

People might take it out of context :)

Division of labor is all well and good, but if you've spent much time around others in a business you soon realise that it isn't all that it's cracked up to be. There's a reason why so many of histories prolific inventors had an enormous array of skills in many different areas: because the only person you can really count on to be there is yourself. Employees and colleagues come and go, the only constant is you.

[anonymous]140

"As an autodidact who now consumes whole fields of knowledge in mere weeks"

I also read this in a way that for a whole minute made me despair at my knowledge-acquisition abilities.

I take strong issue with the entire field in two weeks claim. As a practicing "autodidact" for more than ten years post-university, I have assimilated many fields from the standard sciences (biochemistry, medicine, neuroscience, pharmacology, chemistry, physics, electronics, math, statistics, programming) to postgraduate level, to some arts (design, writing & drawing comics) and business topics.

Retrospectively fields like neuroscience were quite simple after learning biochemistry, and I would believe your two weeks claim for a specific aspect... (read more)

lukeprog180

Oh goodness, no. I wasn't claiming mastery of these fields. I was claiming to have understood them well enough to get the information I wanted from them - well enough to have written the (relatively well-researched) posts I linked to in that sentence. Mastery of nearly all fields is not worth the investment of my time. That's what division of labor is for. But I have a much, much better understanding of these fields than reading a few Scientific American and pop-sci books will give someone.