Aspects of academia differ between different areas of academia.
Larry McEnerneygives a tip about how to decode how academics in a given field express that writing is valuable. Regularly go through papers of the field and underline all words that seem to signal value. Make lists of those words.
His talk is also good because it illustrates what academia is about: Solving problems of interest to other academics in a scientific field or solving problems someone else is paying to solve.
If you are an outsider you have the freedom to care about different problems.
In hard science textbooks are a secondary source. Plenty of textbooks don’t tell you about how the textbook knows what it knows in depth. You get that from reading the underlying papers.
Aspects of academia differ between different areas of academia.
Larry McEnerneygives a tip about how to decode how academics in a given field express that writing is valuable. Regularly go through papers of the field and underline all words that seem to signal value. Make lists of those words.
His talk is also good because it illustrates what academia is about: Solving problems of interest to other academics in a scientific field or solving problems someone else is paying to solve.
If you are an outsider you have the freedom to care about different problems.
In hard science textbooks are a secondary source. Plenty of textbooks don’t tell you about how the textbook knows what it knows in depth. You get that from reading the underlying papers.