I have wondered about that actually. Thanks, I'll read that, looks interesting.

Surely Donald Knuth and John Carmack are genuine masters though? There's the Elon Musk theory of mastery where everyone says you're great, but you hire a guy to do it, and there's the <nobody knows this guy but he's having a blast and is really good> theory where you make average income but live a life fulfilled. On my deathbed I want to be the second. (Sorry this is getting off topic.)

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fragmede 3 days ago | parent [-]

Masters of what though?

Steve Jobs wrote code early on, but he was never a great programmer. That didn’t diminish his impact at all. Same with plenty of people we label as "masters" in hindsight. The mastery isn’t always in the craft itself.

What actually seems risky is anchoring your identity to being the best at a specific thing in a specific era. If you're the town’s horse whisperer, life is great right up until cars show up. Then what? If your value is "I'm the horse guy," you're toast. If your value is taste, judgment, curiosity, or building good things with other people, you adapt.

So I’m not convinced mastery is about skill depth alone. It's about what survives the tool shift.

	▲	WhyOhWhyQ 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I won't insult the man, but I never liked Steve Jobs. I'd rather be Wozniak in that story. "taste, judgment, curiosity, or building good things with other people" Taste is susceptible to turning into a vibes / popularity thing. I think success is mostly about (firstly just doing the basics like going to work on time and not being a dick), then ego, personality, presentation, etc... These things seem like unfulfilling preoccupations, not that I'm not susceptible to them like anyone else, so in my best life I wouldn't be so concerned about "success". I just want to master a craft and be satisfied in that pursuit. I'd love to build good things with other people, but for whatever reason I've never found other people to build things with. So maybe I suck, that's a possibility. I think all I can do is settle on being the horse guy. (I'm also not incurious about AI. I use AI to learn things. I just don't want to give everything away and become only a delegator.) Edit: I'm genuinely terrified that AI is going to do ALL of the things, so there's not going to be a "survives the shift" except for having a likable / respectable / fearsome personality
	▲	re-thc 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Steve Jobs wrote code early on, but he was never a great programmer. That didn’t diminish his impact at all. I doubt Jobs would classify himself as a great programmer, so point being? > So I’m not convinced mastery is about skill depth alone. It's about what survives the tool shift. That's like saying karate masters should drop the training and just focus on the gun? It does lose meaning.