I was about to write approximately this, so thank you! To add one point in this direction, I am sceptical about the value of reducing the expectation for researchers to explain what they are doing. My research is in two fields (arithmetic geometry and enumerative geometry). In the first we put a lot of burden on the writer to explain themselves, and in the latter poor and incomplete explanations are standard. This sometimes allows people in the latter field to move faster, but
it leaves critical foundational gaps, which we can ignore for a while but which eventually causes lot of pain;
sometimes really critical points are hidden in the details, and we just miss these if we don’t write the details down properly.
Disclaimers:
while I think a lot of people working in these fields would agree with me that this distinction exists, not so many will agree that it is generally a bad thing.
I’m generally criticising lack of rigour rather than lack of explanation. I am or claiming these necessarily have to go together, but in my experience they very often do.
I was about to write approximately this, so thank you! To add one point in this direction, I am sceptical about the value of reducing the expectation for researchers to explain what they are doing. My research is in two fields (arithmetic geometry and enumerative geometry). In the first we put a lot of burden on the writer to explain themselves, and in the latter poor and incomplete explanations are standard. This sometimes allows people in the latter field to move faster, but
it leaves critical foundational gaps, which we can ignore for a while but which eventually causes lot of pain;
sometimes really critical points are hidden in the details, and we just miss these if we don’t write the details down properly. Disclaimers:
while I think a lot of people working in these fields would agree with me that this distinction exists, not so many will agree that it is generally a bad thing.
I’m generally criticising lack of rigour rather than lack of explanation. I am or claiming these necessarily have to go together, but in my experience they very often do.