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Why I Keep a Research Blog

gregorygundersen.com

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Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#51

Post by chubot »

Fantastic article! All true and well-explained. This Grothendieck quote

If you don’t see that what you are working on is almost obvious, then you are not ready to work on that yet.

reminds me of

Live in the future, then build what's missing

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

The way I see it, both are saying that if you want to be creative, then you can't just think, study, or hope for inspiration. You have to immerse yourself and your mind in a different environment, in a different frame, and then new problems and solutions will be in plain view.

Another way to say it is that half of the problem is choosing the problem, or formulating the problem. But if you start from the same situation or frame, then you're likely to come up with the same problems as everyone else.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#52

Post by tomtung »

mbeex wrote: post #23

I have been looking for a blogging environment for this kind of topics for some time. So, my question to the author: What kind of software / tools /styles are behind this blog in the technical sense? I see mathjax, probably some static site generator(?), what else are you using?

Also not the author, but if you want minimum hassle and don't care most of the blog-like features, you can:

- Write in Markdown using your favorite editor (I like Typora[1]; StackEdit[2] is also great)

- Render them in-browser with Docsify[3] (so that you don't even need to worry about setting up a separate build step)

- Deploy to GitHub pages or GitLab pages for free

------

[1] https://typora.io/

[2] https://stackedit.io/

[3] https://docsify.js.org/

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#54

Post by gwgundersen »

thiagomgd wrote: post #36
mbeex wrote: post #23

I have been looking for a blogging environment for this kind of topics for some time. So, my question to the author: What kind of software / tools /styles are behind this blog in the technical sense? I see mathjax, probably some static site generator(?), what else are you using?

If I can give my 2 cents, think about how you would like to write and publish, and where do you want to focus. I've tried to use static site generators (mostly Hugo), but in the end, I've realized that I spent way more time making little tweaks to my theme, creating short codes "to help me create content", than actually writing. Now, I plan on just having a blog to myself, to post what I've been reading, with some hi…

I didn't want to make the post overly long by adding a section on "failure modes," but certainly one of them is: spend a long time building and tweaking a blog rather than writing. I've done this too and work to avoid it.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#55

Post by yesenadam »

pjc50 wrote: post #10
cushychicken wrote: post #4

I absolutely love this. It's a great distillation of many of the reasons I myself keep a blog. It's a means, and an end, of learning more, and keeping yourself accountable to your knowledge. It is difficult to know what you should know when you have a lot to learn and are in an intelligence-signaling environment. A side effect of having written detailed technical notes is that I calibrate my confidence on a topic. If…

I don't have a blog, but I find it much, _much_ easier to write comments here on HN. And I greatly improved my electronics knowledge through answering questions on electronics.stackexchange. There are some important questions which are easy to phrase but hard to answer. One day I want to write the a canonical introduction to electron flow models, provisionally titled "Lies you have been told about the electron". I al…

If you don't know it, you may find this interesting: Bill Beaty's amasci.com, with What is Electricity?[0], with a lot of pages explaining misconceptions about electricity, currents, transistors, capacitors etc etc. Or "Science Myths" in K-6 Textbooks and Popular culture[1] - Bad Electricity, Bad Physics etc. There's much more. Even if it all seems wrong to you it may be useful to you as a model or spur! I love his writing. And his stubborn experimentalist's persistence to observe and understand what's actually going on, no matter what the theory or other people say.

Also, he has what I found useful and inspiring advice about writing/putting stuff online, e.g.

"Make your website be your filing cabinet. If you have little projects underway, put them on your website while working on them. Reject the paper-publishing traditions of polishing an article to perfection before publication. DO NOT ELEVATE IMAGE OVER CONTENT. (Perhaps even keep yourself honest by cultivating a deep revulsion for "image.") Instead, let all your flaws hang out, and type things directly into your site in rough draft form (label them UNDER CONSTRUCTION if you really must).

Expunge the fear of embarassment from your life, and instead practice making foolish mistakes in front of thousands of strangers. Stop using your PC to store files, instead use your website as your main storage. Let people poke through your filing cabinet. It will contain far more than a perfectly polished website does."[2]

[0] http://amasci.com/miscon/whatis.html

[1] http://amasci.com/miscon/miscon.html

[2] http://amasci.com/faq.html

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#56

Post by rytill »

loceng wrote: post #37
rytill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What forum rules would you like to see experiments with?

The easiest one would simply be removing the down vote mechanism. If with an existing site then can compare with the years' prior stats - assuming they've been recorded; I don't know if HN does. There are a number of things you could monitor - would be interesting to see if any sets of people with the same behaviour change their behaviour more than just down voting, like if they stay on the site more or less, if they…

You’ve got an old and wise account, but for me, hacker news is a place I can’t downvote.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#57

Post by agentultra »

skmurphy wrote: post #44
agentultra wrote: post #13

"Writing is Nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is" [0] Writing is my primary tool. I keep a blog... and journals. I keep a journal for my reading: what I've read, what I thought about it, choice things I'd like to recall. I keep a journal of my mathematical reading, thoughts, and work. Programming too! Keeping your writing in a blog and sharing it with others puts a bit of pressure on you to keep a…

"Writing is Nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is" Great quote, it's actually by Bob Mugele (see earlier cite http://commonplacebook.com/jokes/funny-lists/one-liners-from... ) his website is http://www.junglebob.net/cv.html I exchanged email with him and he confirmed he coined it in the mid-90's

Good to know!

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#58

Post by vidarh »

Darkphibre wrote: post #32
rytill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What forum rules would you like to see experiments with?

Not op, but one idea: Ask for an articulate reason for downvoting. Increases the barrier of downvotes, and if people don't feel that it's articulate they could then downvote the downvote (with their reasons why). Frequently downvoted reasons could be added to a blacklist that requires additional elucidation before being able to submit the downvote. This has been an interesting thought experiment. I'd expect the resul…

Slashdot has (had? Haven't used Slashdot for years) a reason for up/downvotes, coupled with meta-moderation where you would occasionally be asked to moderate someone elses choice of moderation.

Don't remember how well it worked.

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#59

Post by svat »

agentultra wrote: post #13

"Writing is Nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is" [0] Writing is my primary tool. I keep a blog... and journals. I keep a journal for my reading: what I've read, what I thought about it, choice things I'd like to recall. I keep a journal of my mathematical reading, thoughts, and work. Programming too! Keeping your writing in a blog and sharing it with others puts a bit of pressure on you to keep a…

> "Writing is Nature's way of showing you how sloppy your thinking is"

Also:

• "You write to find out what you believe… When I write, things occur to me. It's a way of thinking. But you can perform your thinking instead of just thinking it." — https://web.archive.org/web/20161201164608/http://www.thepar... / https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/09/adam-phillips-paul-...

• "To think, you have to write. If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking. […] Everyone thinks they think. If you don't write down your thoughts, you are fooling yourself." — Leslie Lamport (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/3-642 , 1:30 & 45:34)

• "Turing machines are incredibly more powerful than Finite Automata. Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil. Think about it. It tells you something about the power of writing." — Manuel Blum (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/research02.txt)

Re: Why I Keep a Research Blog

#60

Post by kortilla »

loceng wrote: post #37
rytill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What forum rules would you like to see experiments with?

The easiest one would simply be removing the down vote mechanism. If with an existing site then can compare with the years' prior stats - assuming they've been recorded; I don't know if HN does. There are a number of things you could monitor - would be interesting to see if any sets of people with the same behaviour change their behaviour more than just down voting, like if they stay on the site more or less, if they…

No downvotes == youtube. People as a whole are too fucking immature and stupid to work in this kind of system because there is no negative feedback for extremism (one-sided views without nuance).

People knee-jerk upvote just as much as they knee-jerk downvote and eliminating one half of the knee-jerks has nasty side effects.

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