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The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

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Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#51

Post by JadeNB »

mattlondon wrote: post #48
markus_zhang wrote: post #28

Don't know about you guys, but reading has become more and more of a burden for me. It is as if -- I have greatly narrowed my interest such that most books are not interesting any more. Even the sci-fi and fantasy books, once I loved, lost their magic. Nowadays there are only two types of books that excite me: 1) those about software/hardware engineering, such as iWoz(I even bought a few Tom Swift JR books for my son…

Genuinely I cannot remember the last time I read a book . I read absolute crap-tons of interesting stuff online, but books? Those out-of-date, read-only, closed-perspectives from people with their ideas/thoughts/biases/prejudices they're trying to implant into your brain? Nope. I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the intellectualism around it. "What books are you reading right now?" is a sort of shibb…

> I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the intellectualism around it. … Don't play the game. If you don't like reading books and don't get much out of it, don't do it.

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that it's good to get your knowledge wherever you enjoy getting it, as long as it's from a reliable source and you're checking them when possible for any claims you intend to rely on. With that said, I think that:

> Genuinely I cannot remember the last time I read a book. I read absolute crap-tons of interesting stuff online, but books? Those out-of-date, read-only, closed-perspectives from people with something they're trying to say? Nope.

may go too far the other direction in implying that books have nothing valuable to offer, which I think isn't true. (I'm also curious about the "from people with something they're trying to say" line, which, coming after the others, sounds like it's meant to be criticism. Surely that's true of wherever else you get your information, too? I can't imagine wanting to read the writing, in any form, or watch the videos or listen to the podcasts or whatever, of someone who isn't trying to say something.)

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#52

Post by sethammons »

pplonski86 wrote: post #21
brightball wrote: post #19

I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. W…

Could you please recommend some history books?

A people's history of the united states is a good one. Most history is written by the generals and leaders. This account is colored by the oft ignored people.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#54

Post by rottc0dd »

sergioisidoro wrote: post #34

I think reading is an essential skill, but we also need to get reading out of the pedestal. Because a lot of the time these arguments come across as some sort of literary elitism. Like if you're not ingesting information through reading, it doesn't count. This month I spent many hours listening to lectures on youtube about geopolitics on the Asian continent from the naval war college. Sure I could have read it, but n…

This is a personal take. I agree if you are actively participating and grappling with the material in your mind. One reason I like reading is that, if I don't understand I cannot move on to next step. So, it forces me to actively participate, argue and understand the text.

In audio and visual medium, it is somewhat easier to trick myself into following the flow without actually understanding. I heard, that is why Feynman lectures are bad for some people. It is very easy to understand, but doing physics require active problem solving.

Consuming audio is the most human way and if it works for you, it works for you.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#56

Post by btrettel »

I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after that, but it doesn't seem this covers actual obstacles to doing research on the side that I face. I do want to note that to the author, "research" seems to be basically a learning process, whereas I'm interested in building something, which I think is more involved. Here's my perspective on the obstacles towards this form of deeper research:

1. Lack of time and energy. This to me is the largest obstacle for any of the research side projects I've had since finishing my PhD. My day job gets the best of my time and energy and everything else gets scraps. What I do on the side tends to be more superficial than I'd like for this reason. (More specifically: Lots of reading and writing, little implementation of my ideas.) I simply don't have the energy to do much deeper work. I recently concluded that to make progress on the one side project I'm prioritizing, I'm probably going to have to take leave from my job. And it's also been necessary to think like a startup, to limit the scope and focus on a MVP. But even the MVP is still challenging.

2. Intellectual property assignment agreements. A lot of technical folks' employers made them sign agreements that arguably give the employers' full rights to what their employees do in their free time. If I'm working on a side project that could turn into a business, it's simply risky if my employer could swoop in and claim ownership of the entire thing. I think even the "favorable" versions of these agreements that limit what employers can take to things related to what the company does are still overreach. A lot of companies do tons of things and could find justification to take nearly anything for that reason.

3. Lack of collaborators and community. I think the linked article discusses "community of knowledge" in a superficial way. I haven't tried, mind you, but I think it would be really hard to find a group of people online with similar research interests to mine. I think people who have more common or less specific interests would not have a problem, but for anything more specific, finding collaborators is going to be a challenge. I think I won't find a close collaborator until I publish something (could be journal article or even a web page) and they come to me.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#57

Post by mattlondon »

JadeNB wrote: post #51
mattlondon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely I cannot remember the last time I read a book . I read absolute crap-tons of interesting stuff online, but books? Those out-of-date, read-only, closed-perspectives from people with their ideas/thoughts/biases/prejudices they're trying to implant into your brain? Nope. I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the intellectualism around it. "What books are you reading right now?" is a sort of shibb…

> I think there is a lot of elitism about reading and the intellectualism around it. … Don't play the game. If you don't like reading books and don't get much out of it, don't do it. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that it's good to get your knowledge wherever you enjoy getting it, as long as it's from a reliable source and you're checking them when possible for any claims you intend to rely on. With that s…

> can't imagine wanting to read the writing, in any form, or watch the videos or listen to the podcasts or whatever, of someone who isn't trying to say something.)

There is too much "agenda" in most things I read. If you get to the stage of getting a publishing deal, then you likely have "something to say" that is advancing that agenda.

Grass-roots publishing online has people trying to push their own agendas too of course, but you don't need to have an "edge" that publishers need to put up your own website or blog or whatever. You can put up something entirely dull and mundane.

And the crucial thing IMHO that the internet has that books don't have is the intangible and throw-away nature. How many times have you read a book all the way to the end even though you are not enjoying it or not getting anything out of it? I've found you'll often feel you must finish a book simply because you physically have the copy and that perhaps you spent real money on it too, so it feels like the right thing to do. Online you close the tab the moment you decide it's not what you want, and you don't keep on consuming the author's agenda just because you have the tab open in the same way people feel compelled to finish a book. You can open many tabs at once, scan over hundreds of sources, discarding what you don't need etc in a matter of minutes ... meanwhile with a book you've just got past the preface and you'll keep on donating your limited time alive to read through to the end of the book often even if you don't want to (obviously some people do just abandon a book mid-way through, but I've found that very often most people don't)

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#58

Post by derektank »

i_love_retros wrote: post #25
brightball wrote: post #19

I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. W…

Curious, what events are documented in the bible that correspond to actual historical events? Does it have good historical accuracy for the time it was written? (forgive my ignorance, I have never read the bible) Have you read Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore? I admit I didn't finish it, but what I did read was very interesting. Although I admittedly didn't fact check it.

With respect to the New Testament, Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" is the most contemporary historical account of the region, written in the late 1st century, and attests to the execution of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas, the rule of Pontius Pilate in Judea, and some other events attested to in the New Testament. Some of these events are themselves corroborated by Roman authors and archaeological evidence, such as coins and the Pilate stone.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#59

Post by mysterydip »

bayindirh wrote: post #44
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always love this conversation: Snob: "Listening to an audio book doesn't count as reading the book!" Everyone else in the world: "k"

Actually, I'm somewhere in between about Audio books. First of all, for some books, that's great. Esp, if read by a good voice actor. It can convert a book to radio theater, that's magic. However, if you're listening while you're driving, or being distracted, you lose the some parts of the picture. Lastly, not all books are good audio books. Some of them need stopping, reflecting, and some re-reading sometimes. So, h…

Personally, even if I lose something listening to an audiobook while driving, I gain more than if I did something else. It's otherwise lost time. I can always re-listen and gain something I missed the first time.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#60

Post by vonunov »

pplonski86 wrote: post #21
brightball wrote: post #19

I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. W…

Could you please recommend some history books?

Handwriting in America, Thornton
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