Generalists vs specialists – Who has a greater chance of success? (2019)
The best thing I ever read on this topic came from biology. In &quot;The Diversity of Life,&quot; E.O. Wilson describes how specialist species thrive in stable environments. The stability allows them to evolve &quot;deeply&quot; into a niche and outcompete any species less specialized for that same niche. So if I&#x27;m really great at plucking fruit from tall trees, and you suck at it, I win. In unstable environments, however—say all of those trees burn down in a forest fire—it&#x27;s the generalists that triumph, because they have more options and are therefore more resilient. Of course specialization and generalization are abstract terms. Reality can operate on a spectrum, often a discontinuous one at that. So maybe I&#x27;m a finch that&#x27;s best at poking my long beak into a particular kind of tree, but in a pinch I can also hoover up ants off the ground better than most of the other creatures in my ecosystem. So it goes for humans competing in an economy too.