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Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia — LessWrong

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Terminology note: When I say “an aesthetic”, I mean an intuitive (“I know it when I see it”) sense of what a completed paper, project, etc. is ideally “supposed” to look like. It can include both superficial things (the paper is properly formatted, the startup has high valuation, etc.), and non-superficial things (the theory is “elegant”, the company is “making an impact”, etc.). (Mostly copied from this tweet) I think if you want to say something that is: …then it’s NOT going to conform to the aesthetic of what makes a “good” peer-reviewed academic psych paper. The problem is that this particular aesthetic demands that results be (A) “novel”, and (B) “surprising”, in a certain sense. Unfortunately, if something satisfies (1-3) above, then it will almost definitely be obvious-in-hindsight, which (perversely) counts against (B); and it will almost definitely have some historical precedents, even if only in folksy wisdom, which (perversely) counts against (A). If you find a (1-3) thing t

x Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia — LessWrong Hamming Questions Incentives Intellectual Progress (Society-Level) Research Taste World Modeling Frontpage 158 Some (problematic) aesthetics of what constitutes good work in academia by Steven Byrnes 11th Mar 2024 14 min read 12 158 (Not-terribly-informed rant, written in my free time.) Terminology note: When I say “an aesthetic” , I mean an intuitive (“I know it when I see it”) sense of what a completed paper, project, etc. is ideally “supposed” to look like. It can include both superficial things (the paper

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