We sometimes hear questions of the form “Even a summer internship feels too short to make meaningful progress on real problems. How can anyone expect to meet and do real research in a single afternoon?”
There’s a Zeno-esque sense in which you can’t make research progress in a million years if you can’t also do it in five minutes. It’s easy to fall into a trap of (either implicitly or explicitly) conceptualizing “research” as “first studying and learning what’s already been figured out, and then attempting to push the boundaries and contribute new content.”
The problem with this frame (according to us) is that it leads people to optimize for absorbing information, rather than seeking it instrumentally, as a precursor to understanding. (Be mindful of what you’re optimizing in your research!)
There’s always going to be more pre-existing, learnable content out there. It’s hard to predict, in advance, how much you need to know before you’re qualified to do your own original thinking and seeing, and it’s easy to Dunning-Kruger or impostor-syndrome yourself into endless hesitation or an over-reliance on existing authority.
Instead, we recommend throwing out the whole question of authority. Just follow the threads that feel alive and interesting. Don’t think of research as “study, then contribute.” Focus on your own understanding, and let the questions themselves determine how often you need to go back and read papers or study proofs.
Approaching research with that attitude makes the question “How can meaningful research be done in an afternoon?” dissolve. Meaningful progress seems very difficult if you try to measure yourself by objective external metrics. It is much easier when your own taste drives you forward.
Yeah, I actually think Alignment Research Field Guide is one of the best resources for EAs and rationalists to read regardless of what they’re doing in life. :)
I would also echo the advice in the Alignment Research Field Guide:
Thank you! And adding that to my reading list :D
Yeah, I actually think Alignment Research Field Guide is one of the best resources for EAs and rationalists to read regardless of what they’re doing in life. :)