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The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

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Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#141

Post by woodson »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #133
kevinsync wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that people do this less to actually feel superior to others and more as a desperate act of establishing an identity, ANY identity, to simply feel seen and validated in spite of just being yet another person on the planet. This uniquely-human…

Plenty of animals go out of their way to be seen. If it’s a pretty bird it’s most likely a male bird. Animals at play do appear to show off to each other. Orcas wear salmons as hats as if it was a fast fashion trend. I don’t think humans are unique in this regard at all.

These observations are interpretations of behavior viewed through human eyes. (What’s the concept of a “hat” to an orca?)

Perhaps we interpret their behavior this way because it is our behavior.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#142

Post by jksflkjl3jk3 »

mmooss wrote: post #124
_fat_santa wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I still go on Wikipedia deep dives where you end up going from link to link for hours. I think the author is entirely incorrect with that quote, the whole idea of leasure research is that there are no rules, some will go ask an LLM, others will go read 'foundational text' while others will just browse Wikipedia.

If that's what you like to do, of course that's fine. If we are going to talk with each other about what we like to do, we need to agree on meaning. In my thinking, the definition of research is to find truth . As ultimate solutions to that goal, Wikipedia and LLM output lack sufficient accuracy and lack verifiability. Many find them useful as bibliographic tools that point us to accurate, verifiable sources. Also, r…

> the primary sources; that's where the truth is

Why is a primary source a better source for the "truth"? Often secondary sources have distilled the original rough ideas into more refined expressions of the original complex ideas. A secondary source will also have had more chances to catch any mistakes.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#143

Post by cjbgkagh »

woodson wrote: post #141
cjbgkagh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of animals go out of their way to be seen. If it’s a pretty bird it’s most likely a male bird. Animals at play do appear to show off to each other. Orcas wear salmons as hats as if it was a fast fashion trend. I don’t think humans are unique in this regard at all.

These observations are interpretations of behavior viewed through human eyes. (What’s the concept of a “hat” to an orca?) Perhaps we interpret their behavior this way because it is our behavior.

Since it’s a trend it comes and goes, and the behavior spreads in a manner similar to fashion trends.

Google pics for it, can you think of any other reason for an orca to wear a salmon on their head.

Song birds also have similar fashions in what they choose to sing and that spreads much faster than evolution can explain.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#144

Post by mmooss »

tokai wrote: post #5

Don't buy it at all. Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago. It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now. The article is rolling out the same old bourgeois doomsday theory people like Stefan Zweig and McLuhan subscribed to. Luckily the democratization of literacy…

> It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now.

Absolutely - it's a miracle, almost. But relatively few people really do it because they are rarely pursuing truth. They are reading and watching misinformation and disinformation.

> Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago.

Enjoy yourself; still, most of that is social media and that's equating things based on their medium. It's like saying, 'I look at lots of paintings' when you're talking about your walls, because Jackson Pollack's art and your walls both use paint and some of it even splattered.

Also among books, there are instant romances and On the Origin of Species and Analects. There's nothing wrong with the former, but the fact that they all share a medium is almost meaningless.

> democratization

I'm familiar with the expression, but I think it's an attempt by propagandists and nihilists to ennoble their work. It's 'democratization' that they can spread misinformation and disinformation. Social media is not comparable to books; it's professional media, only 100x worse.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#145

Post by aaronbaugher »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
rottc0dd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Fey…

> In audio and visual medium, it is somewhat easier to trick myself into following the flow without actually understanding. That just means exploiting the medium to full potential hasn't been normalized yet. Much like with the books, you can pause video and audio. And, much like with books, you can go through the material once to get the high-level overview, and then play it again to learn more, now that you have bet…

I find myself rewinding a lot when listening to podcasts or watching videos. It's definitely more trouble trying to hit the right spot where my mind started wandering, compared to realizing the same thing with a book and flicking my eyes back to wherever the text looks familiar and restarting there, so that may be part of it.

At least for fiction, I like audiobooks for rereading something I've read before, where I can enjoy the story and it doesn't matter whether I miss a few lines that might include an important plot point. With a new book, I'm just rewinding too much unless it's a really engaging book and reader.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#146

Post by mykowebhn »

It's difficult, especially if you have to earn money and support others.

I'm taking some time off, and I'm currently busy reading the German Idealist philosophers, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and some Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. I am having the time of my life!

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#147

Post by wantless »

tpoacher wrote: post #65
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…

I have exactly the same experience, and in fact, I'm slowly starting to lose interest in the 'nerdy' books too. However, I don't necessarily think the problem is books. I think the problem is 'time', and how reading has evolved in my life to be less about "the enjoyment of the action of reading" into "the necessity of acquiring the information" (even if that 'necessity' is intended for 'leisure' / 'pleasure'). It's a…

I have begun to recognize a sense of restlessness in myself that prompts me to optimize for information, as you have said, and I think I can begin to name it: anxiety due to withdrawal. It is illuminating to have once been a smoker because the feeling is quite similar. That our tastes have changed is due at least in part to the addiction of information. And a solution, at least in part, is to accept the pain of withdrawal.

It can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish good habits from bad where they involve the necessities and pleasures of life, such as food and information. Bad habits tend to comfort us in the moment but weaken us over time; good habits tend toward opposite. When I am honest with myself, I recognize the majority of my information seeking as quelling some anxious feeling rather than building true knowledge or wisdom, and the majority of the information I sought to be naught but empty distractions in the long term. And I also recognize my backlogs as a series of deaths that I have not accepted: I retain them to grasp onto the passing potentiality of my youth; I hold fast to the mirage of different lives.

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#148

Post by paulgerhardt »

woodson wrote: post #141
cjbgkagh wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of animals go out of their way to be seen. If it’s a pretty bird it’s most likely a male bird. Animals at play do appear to show off to each other. Orcas wear salmons as hats as if it was a fast fashion trend. I don’t think humans are unique in this regard at all.

These observations are interpretations of behavior viewed through human eyes. (What’s the concept of a “hat” to an orca?) Perhaps we interpret their behavior this way because it is our behavior.

“Faction” and “fashion” are etymological doublets. We wear trends as much to establish which tribe we are apart of as to impress potential mates.

The trend of Orcas wearing hats feels very much the same: https://archive.is/2024.12.15-213212/https://www.nationalgeo...

Re: The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

#149

Post by svara »

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…

You're not wrong, but anti elitism is a much greater problem than potentially being perceived as elitist.

When I say you should read, I'm not really saying that's the only valid way to take in information.

I'm saying that to a first approximation, if you do read, you are probably practicing healthy habits around taking in information. And if you don't, it's likely you're not.

It's a slightly blunt statement, but the more nuanced 'try to engage with information deeply, think through multi-step reasoning cascades on your own, integrate different sources of information and transfer them to new domains' really doesn't land in the same way.

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