All of these things are "research" 🤔
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One axis for distinction that I like is whether you're trying to understand "what people say about X" vs. "what X does at a gears level". Both are useful, but in different contexts.
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This is somewhat orthogonal to depth of research. You can spend years studying what people say about X and produce a beautiful synthesis. I think this is what excellent journalism strives for? But it's a qualitatively different activity than trying to build detailed models.
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In case it sounds like I'm advocating for the detailed models too strongly: that is usually not what I want to do. A detailed model of "how to run" would be very interesting but is probably not what you want if you're training for a marathon.