Which would be great if it were available to everyone — rather than requiring a) school, and/or b) the ability to do research in the first place.
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Take someone who doesn't want to do university courses, but does want to get into research, and doesn't already know how to do effective research. What options does such a person have?
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(Maybe
@Meaningness or@SamoBurja have ideas?)1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes -
Replying to @reasonisfun @ToKTeacher and
Hmm…. it might depend on what field you want to do research in? Probably you need to join a community of practice. Nowadays those are virtually always controlled by increasingly-dysfunctional institutions with high barriers to entry.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun and
Possibly you can find an eccentric individual mentor (but that has obvious downsides). A few research institutions are independent of universities and industry, but mostly they demand a graduate degree, and aren’t interested in fostering learning as such.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun and
It’s obvious to many people that something has to replace research universities, or at least supplement them, because they don’t work well anymore. However, no one has more than a vague sense of what that might be.
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Replying to @Meaningness @reasonisfun and
I have been searching for exactly this, but yes- the main advice that I have gotten is that while academia sucks, it's sort of the only way because it's the only way to find communities of practice. Specifically got this from someone who did independent research b4 grad school
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Replying to @The_Lagrangian @reasonisfun and
Yup. Ideally you need a primary mentor (PhD advisor) and a community of near-peers, some a bit ahead of you (your advisor’s research team). If one or the other of those is dysfunctional, it can still work, just. Without either… it’s maybe not impossible, but extremely unusual.
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Replying to @Meaningness @The_Lagrangian and
I can’t imagine pulling this off without a quid pro quo, unless you found an amazingly generous advisor/community.
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Replying to @astupple @The_Lagrangian and
Right; the semi-explicit deal is mentoring in exchange for work on the advisor’s overall project.
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This is part of why I asked about fields. In math or Classics, there’s no resources required, and a prof might be willing to take on an extraordinarily motivated and bright informal student who is not formally enrolled.
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