One thing I mastered in failing to get a Ph.D. was an ability to research things for their own sake. That is, I never learned how to properly research

Commodified incuriosity - by Rob Horning - Internal exile

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2024-09-02 20:00:06

One thing I mastered in failing to get a Ph.D. was an ability to research things for their own sake. That is, I never learned how to properly research anything at all; I just mutated procrastination into a taste for curiosity in itself and would search not for answers to any specific problems but for further questions. One book would lead to fifteen others, and so on, and I never got anywhere close to organizing any of my “findings” or even developing a dissertation topic. I just wanted to be lost in the library, and I’ve been a dilettante ever since.

I was reminded of those days by this short post by computer science professor Ben Recht, which contrasts learning how to do research with learning how to prompt an LLM. His point is that to become an expert in a field, one must know how to search through a discipline’s literature:

Only part of math research is being able to find the right answer. Another essential part is learning to see patterns so you don’t have to look up the answer as you piece together an argument. There’s a complex interaction between this pattern recognition and understanding how to engage with external literature. And, you know, there’s also the ability to know when something is correct. When I translated solutions from library books, I had to work through the logic of the proofs and know when pieces didn’t fit.