[HN Gopher] Research as leisure activity
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Research as leisure activity
Author : gmays
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-06-04 13:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.personalcanon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.personalcanon.com)
| Sakos wrote:
| I'm sort of disappointed that this isn't actually about research
| as leisure activity. I love to learn about topics in-depth, which
| will entail going through all kinds of literature and scientific
| papers to see what We've collectively learned about a particular
| topic. It's basically my replacement for reading novels in my
| free time. I guess it's not real research in an academic sense,
| but I try my best to be thorough and systematically go through
| the papers in detail (more or less, since in the end reading and
| learning to read papers is an art that can be practiced and
| refined).
| runeblaze wrote:
| Reading papers is absolutely part of academic research. The
| other part is probably producing things and submitting to
| journals/conferences advancing things based on what one has
| read (and hopefully having a day job that pays for the
| publication fees and travel fees...)
| magneticnorth wrote:
| It does start out touting a particular piece of software, but
| the last section, "What does doing research for leisure mean?"
| does go into research as a leisure activity, and the author
| promises more posts on the topic in the future.
|
| I'm with you, I really enjoy learning just for the sake of
| learning and feel very lucky that I get to live now, when there
| is almost always a rich lode of existing research that I can
| read on almost any topic that strikes my curiosity.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I, too, love doing in-depth research of things as a
| recreational activity. Particularly things that are outside of
| my sphere of competency.
|
| I also end up writing essays about what I've discovered,
| basically as a means of having some sort of "goal" for the
| research.
| mistermann wrote:
| Very interesting, this seems like a potential source of great
| power.
| wslh wrote:
| At [1] the first chapter is "The Computer Revolution Hasn't
| Happened Yet". I think it continues to be valid, we are currently
| amazed about AI but we need to keep our eyes open for more.
|
| [1] https://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/01.html#Chap01
| nico wrote:
| Are there publications for "research as a leisure activity"?
|
| Somewhere where I can read what "amateurs" are researching in
| their free time?
|
| There's a few channels I follow on YouTube, but they all seem to
| be living off of the content they produce
|
| I'm curious about communities of people with scientific
| inclinations, doing experiments of interesting things "at home"
| t_mann wrote:
| You seem to equate research as a leisure activity with amateur
| research. If you read 'leisure' simply as 'outside your main,
| bread-earning job', then it absolutely can be cutting edge
| research published in peer-reviewed outlets. It's not even
| _that_ uncommon, look for people who have a university
| affiliation (that isn 't just teaching) as a side gig. And
| that's just one way you could be pursing serious research
| outside your main job, you don't even need a university
| affiliation - it's certainly helpful with access to resources,
| feedback, ideas (and, let's be honest, it probably helps with
| visibility/credibility too), but it's not strictly necessary.
| As a different example, there are some (rare) examples where
| legitimate mathematical results were discovered by hobbyists
| going completely on their own. I also remember a documentary
| about a crew of retirees, including former physics professors
| and a precision mechanics engineer, who were performing physics
| experiments of masses at extremely low accelerations to test
| some limits of special relativity iirc - which in itself was
| technically the result of 'leisure research', like several of
| Einstein's most famous discoveries.
|
| If it's something you're interested in, my suggestion would be
| to decide on a rough area and then seek out experts to
| brainstorm ideas for a suitable problem for you to work on,
| maybe one that leverages your existing skills in a creative way
| (like the engineer in the above example).
| gehwartzen wrote:
| > look for people who have a university affiliation (that
| isn't just teaching) as a side gig.
|
| Can you expand on this? Like people who have full time jobs
| in perhaps a different field but do research on the side
| using the facilities/resources of a university? If so how
| does one slide into a gig like that?
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