Nehaveigur

Expertise isn’t easily transferable. Chess grandmasters excel at chess, not International Relations, and surgeons are good at surgery, not juggling. True expertise can only arise in contexts that are repetitive, such as playing a large number of chess games or performing the same surgery over and over. This requires similarity between past and present situations to facilitate practice. Thus, true practice is not achievable in fields that are too complex or where the rules aren’t sufficiently well defined for real learning to be possible, like International Relations or business.

Yet, some abstract insights exist that are transferable between fields. I refer to them as concepts. They’re the building blocks of thoughts. Learning to apply concepts is more helpful for understanding the world than learning facts. They’re also more fun.

I like concepts. My own field of Statistical Genetics is an outlier in the biological sciences: Concepts abound. The basics of genetics were worked out in the early 20th century, before there was much genetic data and before we even knew on the molecular level what a gene was. Compared to other fields such as cellular biology, there is still little in terms of factual knowledge that the student of genetics is required to remember. Not having to cram for exams was what drew me to the field in the first place.

On this site, I’ll use a broad definition of concepts. Tools for thought that are strictly speaking not concepts, like Fermi calculations, will make the list. To be included, a concept must offer insight in how the world works and be abstract enough to be applicable to more than one discipline. This implies that the non-expert can understand and apply the concept.

Over time, I’ll add more concepts to this site. You can find them all by filtering under the Concepts category.