I’m on a year-long fellowship right now, and this is partly what has made me admit the conceit in the “indie researcher” self-label. I’m doing this sort of thinking for the first time since ~2006 or so (the year I last submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal).https://twitter.com/kevinmarks/status/1195806039708520448 …
-
-
Many things get called “research” and a lot of ego-sensitivity gets attached to it. I think of it mainly in terms of (high risk of no valuable output)*(high ratio of invisible to visible output)*(high time demands). Let me try to pseudo-quantify this and take the ego element out:
Show this thread -
1. Intelligence briefs 2. Gartneresque research 3. Investigative journalism 3. Market research 4. Broad societal trend research 5. Data-heavy trend research, pure math 6. Tech futures, humanities 7. S/W tech, social science 8. Generic STEM 9. Big science 10. Paradigm shifts
Show this thread -
This scale isn’t commentary on the intelligence, creativity, or imagination of the people who do such work. Higher on the scale is simply riskier, more time-consuming, and requires more backend work, even holding the human factor constant
Show this thread -
One thing I probably could do is raise funding for a small research institution/lab working on problems in the 6-8 range. Maybe 4-5 staff. The thing is I don’t want to run a research org, which is an entirely different interest/ambition than doing research. It takes a COO type.
Show this thread -
Strange-looping in a secondary meta thread I did later.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1195937380210921472 …
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
I have seen that work in History. I've somewhat experienced it in Political Sciences
-
Also reminds me of John Harrison, a clockmaker in a recent read of
@rorysutherland Alchemy – who was denied a prize for establishing an instrument to measure the longitude to within half a degreepic.twitter.com/pXbtTa0RdY
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
Lots of interesting thoughts here. I think what you're saying is that indies don't attract research funding. I believe that. 1/n
-
But many academics effectively "fund" their research by doing teaching... it's the institutional quid-pro-quo. I could probably fund the same amount of research time by other means, e.g. software contracting/consultancy. I often think about this. 2/n
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
Self-experimentation isn't very imaginative, but it's easier than getting approval to do human trials
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
