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My Research Process: Understanding and Cultivating Research Taste — AI Alignment Forum

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This is post 3 of a sequence on my framework for doing and thinking about research. Start here. Thanks to my co-author Gemini 2.5 Pro Spend enough time around researchers, and you'll hear talk of "research taste." It's often presented as a somewhat mystical quality distinguishing the seasoned research from the novice – an almost innate sense for which research ideas will flourish and which will fail. While I believe research taste is very real, incredibly valuable, and a key differentiator I look for, I don't think it's mystical or innate. Talent plays an important role, but taste is largely learned, and with the right mindset you can learn faster. What is research taste? As I define it, research taste is far broader than just picking the right problem at the outset. Research is full of key decisions that will affect the future of the project, without an obvious way to find the right answer: from choosing the research problem itself, to identifying which anomalies are and are not worth

x My Research Process: Understanding and Cultivating Research Taste — AI Alignment Forum How I Think About My Research Process Rationality Frontpage 14 My Research Process: Understanding and Cultivating Research Taste by Neel Nanda 1st May 2025 11 min read 3 14 This is post 3 of a sequence on my framework for doing and thinking about research. Start here . Introduction Spend enough time around researchers, and you'll hear talk of "research taste." It's often presented as a somewhat mystical quality distinguishing the seasoned research from the novice – an almost innate sense for which research

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