This is only tangentially relevant, but adding it here as some of you might find it interesting:
Venkatesh Rao has an excellent Twitter thread on why most independent research only reaches this kind of initial exploratory level (he tried it for a bit before moving to consulting). It’s pretty pessimistic, but there is a somewhat more optimistic follow-up thread on potential new funding models. Key point is that the later stages are just really effortful and time-consuming, in a way that keeps out a lot of people trying to do this as a side project alongside a separate main job (which I think is the case for a lot of LW contributors?)
Quote from that thread:
Research =
a) long time between having an idea and having something to show for it that even the most sympathetic fellow crackpot would appreciate (not even pay for, just get)
b) a >10:1 ratio of background invisible thinking in notes, dead-ends, eliminating options etc
With a blogpost, it’s like a week of effort at most from idea to mvp, and at most a 3:1 ratio of invisible to visible. That’s sustainable as a hobby/side thing.
To do research-grade thinking you basically have to be independently wealthy and accept 90% deadweight losses
Also just wanted to say good luck! I’m a relative outsider here with pretty different interests to LW core topics but I do appreciate people trying to do serious work outside academia, have been trying to do this myself, and have thought a fair bit about what’s currently missing (I wrote that in a kind of jokey style but I’m serious about the topic).
Thanks, these links seem great! I think this is a good (if slightly harsh) way of making a similar point to mine:
“I find that autodidacts who haven’t experienced institutional R&D environments have a self-congratulatory low threshold for what they count as research. It’s a bit like vanity publishing or fan fiction. This mismatch doesn’t exist as much in indie art, consulting, game dev etc”
Also, I liked your blog post! More generally, I strongly encourage bloggers to have a “best of” page, or something that directs people to good posts. I’d be keen to read more of your posts but have no idea where to start.
Thanks! I have been meaning to add a ‘start here’ page for a while, so that’s good to have the extra push :) Seems particularly worthwhile in my case because a) there’s no one clear theme and b) I’ve been trying a lot of low-quality experimental posts this year bc pandemic trashed motivation, so recent posts are not really reflective of my normal output.
For now some of my better posts in the last couple of years might be Cognitive decoupling and banana phones (tracing back the original precursor of Stanovich’s idea), The middle distance (a writeup of a useful and somewhat obscure idea from Brian Cantwell Smith’s On the Origin of Objects), and the negative probability post and its followup.
This is only tangentially relevant, but adding it here as some of you might find it interesting:
Venkatesh Rao has an excellent Twitter thread on why most independent research only reaches this kind of initial exploratory level (he tried it for a bit before moving to consulting). It’s pretty pessimistic, but there is a somewhat more optimistic follow-up thread on potential new funding models. Key point is that the later stages are just really effortful and time-consuming, in a way that keeps out a lot of people trying to do this as a side project alongside a separate main job (which I think is the case for a lot of LW contributors?)
Quote from that thread:
Also just wanted to say good luck! I’m a relative outsider here with pretty different interests to LW core topics but I do appreciate people trying to do serious work outside academia, have been trying to do this myself, and have thought a fair bit about what’s currently missing (I wrote that in a kind of jokey style but I’m serious about the topic).
Thanks, these links seem great! I think this is a good (if slightly harsh) way of making a similar point to mine:
“I find that autodidacts who haven’t experienced institutional R&D environments have a self-congratulatory low threshold for what they count as research. It’s a bit like vanity publishing or fan fiction. This mismatch doesn’t exist as much in indie art, consulting, game dev etc”
Also, I liked your blog post! More generally, I strongly encourage bloggers to have a “best of” page, or something that directs people to good posts. I’d be keen to read more of your posts but have no idea where to start.
Thanks! I have been meaning to add a ‘start here’ page for a while, so that’s good to have the extra push :) Seems particularly worthwhile in my case because a) there’s no one clear theme and b) I’ve been trying a lot of low-quality experimental posts this year bc pandemic trashed motivation, so recent posts are not really reflective of my normal output.
For now some of my better posts in the last couple of years might be Cognitive decoupling and banana phones (tracing back the original precursor of Stanovich’s idea), The middle distance (a writeup of a useful and somewhat obscure idea from Brian Cantwell Smith’s On the Origin of Objects), and the negative probability post and its followup.