Disagree. Peter Thiel wrote about this in zero to one. The "well rounded" candidate is essentially hedging their bets. An indefinite optimist.

> You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.

> A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one. This is not what young people do today, because everyone around them has long since lost faith in a definite world. No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball.

Cramming entrance exams is not super useful, but it does select for motivation and ability to focus intensely. Much more useful measure than having your parents set up a fake charity for you to volunteer at.

Side-rant: I just watched a clip[0] and I have to say something about the misrepresentation of the Hockney-Falco thesis[1] in it.

And when I say I have to I really mean that: I'm Dutch, tried studying physics, dropped out, switched to studying art, specifically photography (even built my own camera at one point), then in the first year of art school was introduced to the Hockney-Falco thesis, then went to the International Congress of Physics Students one last time to hang out with my friends, decided to give a talk on the topic, and ended up winning best talk of the conference. So I'm kind of obliged to Have Some Opinions on this topic.

The clip mentions the HF thesis as if Hockney introduced the notion that the Dutch painters in Vermeer's time used optical tools. That's... not what the thesis claimed. Johannes Vermeer lived in the 17th century[2]. As the clip (correctly) states, telescopes and mirrors were known to the Netherlands by then - in fact the earliest known records of a refracting telescope is from a failed patent application in the Netherlands in 1608[3].

From what I remember, the hypothesis that Vermeer used optical tools wasn't controversial even back in the mid-2000s, a decade before this film came out. While there was no direct proof, he did live in the right place and period to have been introduced to telescopes, and artists trying out new tools is obviously a thing that happened throughout history. Being secretive about his work was obviously also very suspicious. I recall that we also discussed how certain visual qualities of the painting suggested the use of optical tools - Vermeer's style was also just so noticeably different and photograph-like compared to his peers. To be clear, nobody thought this diminished the quality of Vermeer's paintings: he was still innovating and mastering his tools, and creating the beautiful paintings that he made still took tremendous skill.

However, what the Hockney-Falco thesis claims is that Early Renaissance painters like, say, Jan van Eyck[4] already used optical tools, centuries before telescopes and optical mirrors optics were introduced in Europe. We're talking 15th century onwards. And not only that, that this was secret knowledge hidden by the painter's guilds, of which no known record survives even though we have records of all the other painting techniques used. That's what makes it so controversial.

The hypothesis that there was a painter who lived during a time of great innovation in optical tools in the place where those innovations took place, then secretly used those tools to get a leg up on the competition is very plausible.

The suggestion that the entirety of Europe's Renaissance painters learned about optical tools from Arab lands but managed to keep this knowledge secret for centuries sounds like a conspiracy theory.

(also, it's completely ignorant of the realistic qualities of some of the old Roman art[5], and those painters definitely did not have high quality lenses available to them)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqWwuRnj3o

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telescope

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_van_Eyck

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_art

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit "Douglas disagreed with classical economists who recognised only three factors of production: land, labour and capital. While Douglas did not deny the role of these factors in production, he considered the "cultural inheritance of society" as the primary factor. He defined cultural inheritance as the knowledge, techniques and processes that have accrued to us incrementally from the origins of civilization (i.e. progress). Consequently, mankind does not have to keep "reinventing the wheel". "We are merely the administrators of that cultural inheritance, and to that extent the cultural inheritance is the property of all of us, without exception." ... Douglas believed that it was the third policy alternative [the object of the industrial system is merely to provide goods and services] upon which an economic system should be based, but confusion of thought has allowed the industrial system to be governed by the first two objectives [to impose upon the world a system of thought and action and to create employment]. If the purpose of our economic system is to deliver the maximum amount of goods and services with the least amount of effort, then the ability to deliver goods and services with the least amount of employment is actually desirable. Douglas proposed that unemployment is a logical consequence of machines replacing labour in the productive process, and any attempt to reverse this process through policies designed to attain full employment directly sabotages our cultural inheritance. Douglas also believed that the people displaced from the industrial system through the process of mechanization should still have the ability to consume the fruits of the system, because he suggested that we are all inheritors of the cultural inheritance, and his proposal for a national dividend is directly related to this belief."

One of my strongest recommendations to people on social networks is to engage down-thread. Talk to other people, not just the top post. Get beyond your glancing para-social relationship, and expand your Metcalfe-factor by commenting and liking other people's engagement.

Especially for new or young networks, a lot of people are truly starved for engagement & don't see the pattern of being engaged with. Engagement has to be bootstrapped, by people individually deciding to look through & find & engage with others who are putting themselves out there.

The opposite of the curve shown here is the "who is engaged with" curve. And it's like 0.3% of people (made up number) getting 99% of the engagement. It's a tyranny of popularity, and it legitimizes everyone elses dead quiet, their non-activity. We ought engage more robustly. Not just with the popular magnets.

In the suburbs kids never stopped playing in the street.

This article is written by someone who lives in a city.

"In many ways, a world built for cars has made life so much harder for grown-ups." - but this isn't true in a suburb.

I've really started to notice who all the articles complaining about cars are written by people who only know what cities are like.

Move to a suburb - it's much nicer, and you'll barely see any cars.

> Spirit added that “more than 1,000 tests have been completed to confirm the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the affected material to ensure continued airworthiness.”

So basically, has nothing to do with safety? Is this simply Uncle Sam is mad he couldn't take a dip of the proceeds?