4 ms·

I don't see anything wrong with the "textbook" -> "review" -> "article" strategy to climbing a mountain of debt. A good review paper should hit a sweet spot in

by cing 10y ago

I don't see anything wrong with the "textbook" -> "review" -> "article" strategy to climbing a mountain of debt. A good review paper should hit a sweet spot in terms of exposition, digestion, abstraction, and noise filtering. Transformative new ways of visual thinking, well, that's a different story. The problem is just that the pace of research in the authors field is too fast at the moment. What's the hurry? Over time, the citation graph will reveal the most significant work, and the community will naturally distill that research for maximum effect. The danger is that beautiful distillation of an extremely "niche topic" will not change the fact that it has limited scope and may even limit abstraction. Of course, I say danger with tounge-in-cheek...

colah3 10y ago
You're right that reviews and textbooks do valuable distillation, but I'd claim we can do much much better. I think we can distill things massively better -- create massively better explanations and ways of thinking about ideas -- if only we invested more in it. It isn't just when the distillation happens, it's the quality. That's a really bold claim and all I can do is point to the occasional example where someone put effort into distilling and did something wonderful. My intuition is that these aren't one-off miracles, but are the expected result when the community takes this really seriously. The problem is that distillation is requires focused energy. Reviews and textbooks give us a bit, but it's diffuse. I think we can do much better, and I hope we'll be able to demonstrate that with Distill.
- mncharity 10y ago
  > distillation [] requires focused energy As well as an underappreciated magnitude of expertise. You might like my "Scientific expertise is not broadly distributed - an underappreciated obstacle to creating better content" http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6 http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6 . > create massively better explanations and ways of thinking about ideas Agreed. My hobby project this month is: assuming it's possible to teach size down to atoms in early primary school [1], could we then leverage that to do a multi-scale interdisciplinary "nucleons-up" introduction to atoms and materials. Current content is so notably incoherent, and leaves both students and teachers so very steeped in misconceptions, that there seems an opportunity for supplemental content, if it can be shaped to work. [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE "Remembering Sizes 2015" - the approach seemed promising... the videos didn't.
gabrielgoh 10y ago
My experience points the other way. Surveys and textbooks are good in principle, but I rarely find myself using them in research. When you're looking to understand a very specific thing (e.g. what is ADMM? How fast does the conjugate gradient algorithm converge?), there's just far too much notational buy-in needed to get started in a survey, or god forbid to hunt down a textbook with a chapter on the subject. These are necessary evils if the topic is esoteric enough. But far more useful are lecture notes, powerpoint slides, technical articles, stackoverflow answers. These materials are scattered about the internet, and are useful even in their unpolished, typo-ridden state, is it any surprise they are the top hits on google? I am certain the community would benefit from polish and incentive to put these things down in paper.
- cing 10y ago
  Achieving a research-level understanding of a topic is quite different than working in the trenches on new research. I figured the goal of distill.pub was the former. I think you're partially describing a search problem. Google fails to return relevant passages from full-text papers/books for whatever copyright reasons (ignoring the notational buy-in). The remaining issue is that reviews/surveys/textbooks do not provide the complete picture necessary to perform successful research. I'm sure they fall short on specific things that are scattered around the web; practicalities, implementation details, quick definitions, etc. But are you suggesting that distilled publications should include all this information in one place?
jessriedel 10y ago
One counter-example of many from my field: Physics textbooks used at the elite institutions are awful. They have persisted for many decades, and there's no sign they will change.
neutronicus 10y ago
Because PhD theses are almost always better introductions than review papers. ;)

by cing 10y ago

colah3 10y ago

You're right that reviews and textbooks do valuable distillation, but I'd claim we can do much much better. I think we can distill things massively better -- create massively better explanations and ways of thinking about ideas -- if only we invested more in it. It isn't just when the distillation happens, it's the quality. That's a really bold claim and all I can do is point to the occasional example where someone put effort into distilling and did something wonderful. My intuition is that these aren't one-off miracles, but are the expected result when the community takes this really seriously. The problem is that distillation is requires focused energy. Reviews and textbooks give us a bit, but it's diffuse. I think we can do much better, and I hope we'll be able to demonstrate that with Distill.

mncharity 10y ago
> distillation [] requires focused energy As well as an underappreciated magnitude of expertise. You might like my "Scientific expertise is not broadly distributed - an underappreciated obstacle to creating better content" http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6 http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/MHjx6 . > create massively better explanations and ways of thinking about ideas Agreed. My hobby project this month is: assuming it's possible to teach size down to atoms in early primary school [1], could we then leverage that to do a multi-scale interdisciplinary "nucleons-up" introduction to atoms and materials. Current content is so notably incoherent, and leaves both students and teachers so very steeped in misconceptions, that there seems an opportunity for supplemental content, if it can be shaped to work. [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/RBigE "Remembering Sizes 2015" - the approach seemed promising... the videos didn't.

gabrielgoh 10y ago

My experience points the other way. Surveys and textbooks are good in principle, but I rarely find myself using them in research. When you're looking to understand a very specific thing (e.g. what is ADMM? How fast does the conjugate gradient algorithm converge?), there's just far too much notational buy-in needed to get started in a survey, or god forbid to hunt down a textbook with a chapter on the subject. These are necessary evils if the topic is esoteric enough. But far more useful are lecture notes, powerpoint slides, technical articles, stackoverflow answers. These materials are scattered about the internet, and are useful even in their unpolished, typo-ridden state, is it any surprise they are the top hits on google? I am certain the community would benefit from polish and incentive to put these things down in paper.

cing 10y ago
Achieving a research-level understanding of a topic is quite different than working in the trenches on new research. I figured the goal of distill.pub was the former. I think you're partially describing a search problem. Google fails to return relevant passages from full-text papers/books for whatever copyright reasons (ignoring the notational buy-in). The remaining issue is that reviews/surveys/textbooks do not provide the complete picture necessary to perform successful research. I'm sure they fall short on specific things that are scattered around the web; practicalities, implementation details, quick definitions, etc. But are you suggesting that distilled publications should include all this information in one place?

jessriedel 10y ago

One counter-example of many from my field: Physics textbooks used at the elite institutions are awful. They have persisted for many decades, and there's no sign they will change.

neutronicus 10y ago

Because PhD theses are almost always better introductions than review papers. ;)