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An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

nicholas.carlini.com

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Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#41

Post by butILoveLife »

nxobject wrote: post #7

For non-CS people – if you're a little confused by "conference paper", CS is a little idiosyncratic in that papers are often primarily disseminated through conferences, rather than independent journals. The advice is good in general, though!

Academia is so cult-ish. I'm convinced its some sort of way to distinguish themselves from their higher paid, higher demand, industry peers. (if you can call them peers)

My experience with Academia is that its full of people who couldn't get jobs after undergrad, so they stayed in school. Their parents are at least middle class and support this route so they can harvest some of the status of having a PhD or professor.

I'd be less bitter if so much 'science' that came out in the last 100 years didn't fail to replicate... Yet we were expected to learn it like it was fact, while signing the praises of the authors. Literal waste of resources.

Meanwhile, industry is sending the world forward with life changing improvements. I think academia would hope they had some impact on it, but I think its wishful thinking.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#42

Post by suddenlybananas »

butILoveLife wrote: post #41
nxobject wrote: post #7

For non-CS people – if you're a little confused by "conference paper", CS is a little idiosyncratic in that papers are often primarily disseminated through conferences, rather than independent journals. The advice is good in general, though!

Academia is so cult-ish. I'm convinced its some sort of way to distinguish themselves from their higher paid, higher demand, industry peers. (if you can call them peers) My experience with Academia is that its full of people who couldn't get jobs after undergrad, so they stayed in school. Their parents are at least middle class and support this route so they can harvest some of the status of having a PhD or professor…

This reads like sour grapes.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#43

Post by jcattle »

butILoveLife wrote: post #41
nxobject wrote: post #7

For non-CS people – if you're a little confused by "conference paper", CS is a little idiosyncratic in that papers are often primarily disseminated through conferences, rather than independent journals. The advice is good in general, though!

Academia is so cult-ish. I'm convinced its some sort of way to distinguish themselves from their higher paid, higher demand, industry peers. (if you can call them peers) My experience with Academia is that its full of people who couldn't get jobs after undergrad, so they stayed in school. Their parents are at least middle class and support this route so they can harvest some of the status of having a PhD or professor…

You are aware where neural nets originated? Who came up with the concept of backpropagation to train them?

Sure, nowadays this whole field is pushed forward by industry. But I would argue that for most technological advancements the foundations are laid in traditional academia.

Of course if you are not in academia you will only ever get in touch with the things which work out and get picked up by industry, completing the impression that only industry is doing valuable stuff. Insert suvivorship bias meme here

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#44

Post by sdwr »

specproc wrote: post #34
devonkelley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Taste is not using LLMs to write HN comments.

Taste is definitely not overindexing on "it's not x, it's y" and accusing everyone who makes a comparison of being a bot

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#45

Post by cgearhart »

jltsiren wrote: post #25
cgearhart wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems even less actionable, and somewhat misaligned with the OP article. “Taste” implies an ability to distinguish between a good example and a bad one. If it’s only recognizable in retrospect then it’s just another name for survivorship bias.

If you need actionable guidelines, you may not be the right person to do research. At least not now. Research is all about studying topics of uncertain value. You have to commit to a project long before you can say if it's actually worth doing. Taste comes with deliberate effort and experience. It doesn't tell you that a topic is definitely worth studying, but it increases the likelihood that you will guess right.

Eh. I think my point is that the OP is presented as a “how to” (literally: “how to do important research”) and then it immediately dodges the question by saying “have good taste”. That does not help anyone do important research or improve the quality of the research they do; it’s a cop out.

If I wrote about “how to paint great art” or “how to cook great meals” or “how to build great things” then it would be silly to say “have good taste”—even if that’s part of the answer. It won’t help anyone else to improve in any of those endeavors.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#46

Post by tptacek »

pastage wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #30

Best bit: Put in an unreasonable amount of effort > Earlier I made an analogy to being an explorer; here's another I like even more. Think of yourself as a wildlife photographer. Obviously you need to be in the right place (you won't get a great picture of anything from your couch) and you need to be skilled at your craft. But once you've met those preconditions, the way to get the best picture is to just spend an un…

> The only rule that matters is delivering the message to your reader The point is he is a superb writer in my book, it is fun to read and there are similarly good quotes that say the same in different ways. It is not enough to hone your technical skill alone because "the right circumstances" do not appear if you only change one variable. When I read this I see someone having fun, being able to convey that is a good…

He is a really good writer and a very fair criticism of everything he says in this post is "yeah this is all easy for you to say" because he does appear to be supernatural.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#47

Post by ABCLAW »

janalsncm wrote: post #26
jltsiren wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need actionable guidelines, you may not be the right person to do research. At least not now. Research is all about studying topics of uncertain value. You have to commit to a project long before you can say if it's actually worth doing. Taste comes with deliberate effort and experience. It doesn't tell you that a topic is definitely worth studying, but it increases the likelihood that you will guess right.

What is the point of writing the prescription to “have good taste” then? Either the reader already has it, in which case there’s no point in being told that. Or the reader doesn’t, in which case you have declared that good taste cannot be taught. Perhaps the author’s next article should be How to win the lottery: be lucky which is just about as actionable.

You can cultivate good taste by intentionally taking in a lot of information about what's in the field, and what you like and what you don't like about it. This could be commenting on elements of film, fashion, photography, but it can also be having a sense of what you like to see stylistically in a contract, in a framework, or in corporate culture.

I recall reading an interview about a legendary developer, and the majority of the interview was not focused on his coding decisions or the structures he built, but it was about a notebook that he kept with voluminous notes about what was good and what wasn't. That notebook is a materialized version of 'taste', and it's certainly something almost anyone could put together with enough effort and time.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#48

Post by ctoa »

jcattle wrote: post #43
butILoveLife wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia is so cult-ish. I'm convinced its some sort of way to distinguish themselves from their higher paid, higher demand, industry peers. (if you can call them peers) My experience with Academia is that its full of people who couldn't get jobs after undergrad, so they stayed in school. Their parents are at least middle class and support this route so they can harvest some of the status of having a PhD or professor…

You are aware where neural nets originated? Who came up with the concept of backpropagation to train them? Sure, nowadays this whole field is pushed forward by industry. But I would argue that for most technological advancements the foundations are laid in traditional academia. Of course if you are not in academia you will only ever get in touch with the things which work out and get picked up by industry, completing…

The earliest neural network work on perceptrons was done in an applied contract lab for the US Navy, it was not done in an academic setting.

Backpropagation has been reinvented multiple times, because it is a basic application of the chain rule. The earliest recognizable usage of it is in control theory at NASA during the Apollo program.

It's a mistake to be dismissive of academic work which has been very important, but it's equally a mistake to think that academia is the sole source of foundational work.

Re: An opinionated take on how to do important research that matters

#49

Post by nxobject »

butILoveLife wrote: post #41
nxobject wrote: post #7

For non-CS people – if you're a little confused by "conference paper", CS is a little idiosyncratic in that papers are often primarily disseminated through conferences, rather than independent journals. The advice is good in general, though!

Academia is so cult-ish. I'm convinced its some sort of way to distinguish themselves from their higher paid, higher demand, industry peers. (if you can call them peers) My experience with Academia is that its full of people who couldn't get jobs after undergrad, so they stayed in school. Their parents are at least middle class and support this route so they can harvest some of the status of having a PhD or professor…

There’s a lot of bold claims here that are wildly unfamiliar with me:

- What status do you think people with PhDs or who teach and do research have? (And do you think that having those beliefs is necessary to remain in academia?)

- Who are we learning that we’re supposed to be treating like fact, and singing the praises of? (I remember learning about, say, Hindley-Milner type inference in undergrad, but I didn’t think of it as “fact”, and nor did I have to write of its praises to pass my classes.)

- I wanted to become a mathematician, and my colleagues are currently statisticians that work on medical claims data from entire health systems. What does “replicate” mean in this case? Similarly, what does “replicate” mean in the context of industry, if a comparison is being set up here?

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