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the stream

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Someone recently asked for my advice on pursuing independent research and exploration. My answer ended up long and winding, so I thought it might be useful for others to read and contemplate. Though I'm mostly speaking from my experience in machine learning and human-computer interaction, I think my general takeaways apply to many fields. Eventually, this will end up on my blog. In the meantime, here's a less polished thought dump. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that a research field is simply a community of people who share (1) a small set of problems they agree are important and interesting, and (2) a set of investigative methods to go after those problems and uncover new knowledge. This definition of a research field is broader (and, I’d argue, more accurate) than the version tied strictly to academia, at least if your main goal is to make a meaningful discovery or claim about the world that matters beyond your own curiosity. Given that framing, one way to think about how to mak

the stream 2024/12/22 4:16 Early lessons about independent exploration Someone recently asked for my advice on pursuing independent research and exploration. My answer ended up long and winding, so I thought it might be useful for others to read and contemplate. Though I'm mostly speaking from my experience in machine learning and human-computer interaction, I think my general takeaways apply to many fields. Eventually, this will end up on my blog. In the meantime, here's a less polished thought dump. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that a research field is simply a community of people who

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