Everytime I tweet non-trivial thoughts, I get a flood of links/pointers to work by others that people think I ought to be familiar with/connect to. I appreciate it, but without specific hooks I’ll likely ignore it. If I followed all such leads I’d get no thinking of my own done.
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If you actually want to help me (or anyone) think better, supply hooks. Supporting/confirmation bias hooks that build on what I’m saying in a yes-and improv way are most useful: “This book adds to your idea and as a bonus connects to your other pet topic of mediocrity”)
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Disconfirmation leads are second-best? Why, because until I build something worth subjecting to falsifying scrutiny, I’m not going to bother. The momentum of a creative fugue is more important for the first half of a thinking session, and confirmation fodder is 10x more useful.
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Least useful is just pointers to vaguely similar thinking you’ve seen elsewhere with no clear build-up or break-down creative destruction dialectical potential with reference to mine. It may be there, but unless you give me a specific preview, screening the leads is intractable.
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Think about it from my point of view. I’m generally trying to build out a thought that’s useful, interesting, and has some novelty. Pointing to undifferentiated similar things can only convince me to abandon a bunny trail, not pursue it more deeply (if that’s what you want of me)
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted David Chapman
And of course, if I detect hints that a reference/pointer is a warning shot across my bows, to defend intellectual turf, you’ll attract a very different, beefy kind of hostile attention from me rather than respectful and grateful clue-following
https://twitter.com/meaningness/status/1156970208709398529?s=21 …Venkatesh Rao added,
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Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Extraordinary Banana
Also, be aware that my thinking style involves a LOT of “scholarly civil disobedience” ie refusing to know about things. Please don’t be offended if I seem reluctant to go down paths you’re eager to send me down. It’s just process discipline.https://twitter.com/literalbanana/status/1008714338574585856?s=21 …
Venkatesh Rao added,
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This may not be your style or best style for all topics, but I prefer reinventing wheels to digging up refs or getting lost in other minds mazes. It’s a big reason I left academic research. It’s how I uncover whatever nuggets of interestingness I do, and how I have unpaid fun.
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Thank you for reading my social media API documentation. Yes it’s a small-minded, petty way of conducting one’s intellectual life, obsessively protecting elan vital, fun, and shitposting rights over being a good, collegial citizen of scholarly communities. Sorrynotsorry
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Gonna leave this thread pinned.
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End of conversation
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