There is a pretty big hole on how to find “the 1-3 most prominent pieces on each side”. When first encountering a claim on the context of an academic debate, this is usually not an issue. Often, not so much. Obviously, if you simply came up with the claim you have no conveniently laid out pointer to the academic literature.
“Just write something”, or the vomit pass, is an invaluable technique. I have been doing this more and more over the last two years. Having full license to be wrong is incredibly freeing, and it makes it much easier to iterate on an idea. You just read what you wrote and pay attention to the parts that make you cringe.
I broadly agree. I think it is sometimes challenging to find the major pieces on an issue, though rarely super challenging (usually, if I just read the first few pieces I find and search citations backwards and forwards, at some point I find myself running into the same pieces over and over).
Brief notes:
Unlike Umberto Eco’s “How to Write a Thesis”, and like johnwensworth’s “How To Write Quickly While Maintaining Epistemic Rigor”, this does not propose you sacrifice the importance of questions on the altar of rigor
There is a pretty big hole on how to find “the 1-3 most prominent pieces on each side”. When first encountering a claim on the context of an academic debate, this is usually not an issue. Often, not so much. Obviously, if you simply came up with the claim you have no conveniently laid out pointer to the academic literature.
“Just write something”, or the vomit pass, is an invaluable technique. I have been doing this more and more over the last two years. Having full license to be wrong is incredibly freeing, and it makes it much easier to iterate on an idea. You just read what you wrote and pay attention to the parts that make you cringe.
I broadly agree. I think it is sometimes challenging to find the major pieces on an issue, though rarely super challenging (usually, if I just read the first few pieces I find and search citations backwards and forwards, at some point I find myself running into the same pieces over and over).