Building up an intellectual edifice (of whatever quality) around some topic of interest: fairly rare
I definitely do this. I have half formed books that I might write one day on topics that interest me, and have sprawling Yed graphs in which I’m trying to make sense of confusions and conflicting evidence.
One thing of note is that I was introduced to explicit model building and theorizing a couple of years ago. Because of this had the mental handle of “building a model” as a thing that one could do, with a few role models of people doing it.
I was doing model building of some kind before then (I remember drawing out a graph of body language signals when I was about 21), but I think having the explicit handle helped a lot.
I definitely do this. I have half formed books that I might write one day on topics that interest me, and have sprawling Yed graphs in which I’m trying to make sense of confusions and conflicting evidence.
One thing of note is that I was introduced to explicit model building and theorizing a couple of years ago. Because of this had the mental handle of “building a model” as a thing that one could do, with a few role models of people doing it.
I was doing model building of some kind before then (I remember drawing out a graph of body language signals when I was about 21), but I think having the explicit handle helped a lot.