I've slowly come to the realisation that the majority of very smart people are only smart in the field they work in.

Maybe the majority of well paid people are paid for their behavioral predictability than ingenuities...

That's generally the case for everything in our lives, though. Part of what keeps civilization going is minimizing variance / maximizing predictability of people.

In modern societies, we try to keep unpredictable people away from anything important. In the most extreme cases, we lock them up in prisons and mental hospitals. In less extreme cases, we gatekeep: for example, you have to go through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license, to be allowed to own a firearm, or be employed in certain positions. Degree of such gatekeeping is usually proportional to the damage wrong behavior can cause.

And then in general, we have laws and cultures and social customs that slowly grind us into shape, every day of our lives, making us ever so slightly more similar to each other with every interaction, so that we can predict each others' behaviors and cooperate effectively.

(I bring this up sometimes in context of AI/ML, where I complain that modern ML is made of black boxes with unpredictable failure modes. The usual reply is, "but humans are black boxes too!". Well, they aren't completely opaque - thanks to shared hardware architecture and "theory of mind", and to the degree it's not enough, society ensures predictability is maximized.)

I had never thought about society this way. Thanks for this insight.

> for example, you have to go through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license

Where? Wasn't required for me to fly or drive...

> to be allowed to own a firearm,

Not true even of a lot of restrictive jurisdictions. (even the UK).

> or be employed in certain positions

Sometimes this is true of being e.g. law enforcement or somewhere that requires a security clearance. But not very common.

In the olden days, they called it hubris, and it was a sin against the gods.

And often surprisingly below average in everything else.

To be a successful white collar criminal, you need to be cunning more than smart.

These are very different qualities.

And have a good attorney.

Well intellect can be broad or narrow too.

source: I can be very smart and incredibly stupid too

One should not base one's opinion of SpaceX engineers on this one example.

As another data point, Musk is chief engineer, and also involved in securities fraud in other roles ("going private $420").

Just because one is smart in rocket engineering doesn't mean they also smart in other field.

Nobody can be smart at everything.

Greed often outweighs any smarts.

I'd also assume that they wouldn't have the free time for insider trading schemes.

Smart, well-accomplished millionaires fell for Madoff scam

Smart people can be pretty stupid.