American Greatness
Spencer P. Morrison
Mar. 14, 2018
Isaac Newton was a genius—perhaps the most intelligent man ever to walk this earth. It was he who uncovered the laws of motion, he who unraveled light’s mysteries, and he who first invented calculus. His work underpins modern mathematics, physics, and engineering.
And yet Newton lost his entire fortune in the South Sea Bubble—the 18th century’s great stock market crash. Newton was dreadfully overconfident. He thought his genius in mathematics would make him a genius investor. He was wrong. He had no idea what he was doing, and he paid the price.
That Newton made this mistake is unsurprising: expertise, knowledge, and even intelligence are often domain-specific and compartmentalized. In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, the former American memory champion Joshua Foer notes that chess masters can often recall every competitive game of chess they’ve ever played—piece positions and all. And yet, their memories are no better than average when it comes to memorizing poems or phone numbers. Their memory skills are domain-specific. Importantly, domain-specificity applies to all manner of expertise.
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https://amgreatness.com/2018/03/14/why-ben-shapiro-is-wrong-on-free-trade/
