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Chris Olah is first author on these papers in distill.pub: - https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ - https://dis

by rrherr 7y ago

Chris Olah is first author on these papers in distill.pub: - https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ - https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/ https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/ - https://distill.pub/2016/augmented-rnns/ https://distill.pub/2016/augmented-rnns/ He explains his personal mission, doing research distillation to reduce research debt, in this essay: https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/ https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/

behnamoh 7y ago
I wish more people were interested in research distillation. Recently I've been searching for intuitive explanations of different areas of math, and while there are some great blogs that do so, the lack of such materials is indeed obvious. I don't think academia is going to contribute to this mission as it's mostly governed by a make-it-look-ridiculously-difficult-so-people-won't-find-it-approachable-and-thus-give-you-much-credit-for-doing-impressive-work culture.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Your hostile attitude to the people putting the work in is disrespectful and inappropriate. It's like the people who make entitled demands of open source software authors. Academics don't get rewarded for confusing each other, they have to create research that their peers appreciate, understand, and value.
  - feral 7y ago
    That's naive. Academia isn't some perfect system with perfect incentives. There's plenty of incentive to dress something up as more complex and impressive and using more high powered machinary than needed, e.g. impressing reviewers, qualifying for a particular conference, convincing the funding body that your pet technique can actually be useful etc I don't think you'd find many academics that dispute this, though hopefully they'd think a lot of people are trying to do good research. It'd be like open source software if it was done as a hobby; a lot of academics get public funding.
    - stonogo 7y ago
      The things you describe are common among unsuccessful academics. It is not common to see a researcher build a career on pissing off all the funding agencies and hoodwinking a project into a conference for which it is not appropriate. I suspect you'd find thousands of academics who dispute your claims. Nobody is going to claim perfection, but the problems you're describing are not systemic and basically absent from anyone with a career.
      - feral 7y ago
        >I suspect you'd find thousands of academics who dispute your claims. I should have chosen my words more carefully; we can probably find 1000s of academics to dispute a lot of perspectives on academia. > are not systemic and basically absent from anyone with a career. So, leaving aside criticism of any particular field, and to take just one pretty big cross-discipline trend, there's this 'replication crisis' thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis (wiki links to plenty of reputable sources). I find it difficult to reconcile that with the idea that incentives to over-inflate claims were 'basically absent from anyone with a career'. Maybe we think everyone was just really bad at statistics?
        stonogo 7y ago
        The replication crisis is a real example of an incentive problem rampant in the current system. However, this leads to a disproportionate emphasis on original research. Accusing it of leading to the things you talked about is a non sequitur. Again, by no means is academia perfect. But insisting that its primary problem is that grant writers are a pack of pathological liars is both incorrect and unhelpful in solving actual problems, that's all. And yeah. I would say that most people would benefit from regular refreshers on statistics... in or out of academia.
        feral 7y ago
        > Accusing it of leading to the things you talked about is a non sequitur. I didn't say the replication crisis lead to bad incentives. I cited it as evidence bad incentives exist. > But insisting that its primary problem is that grant writers are a pack of pathological liars I didn't say remotely that. Academics have incentives to make their work sound overly impressive, and many are playing this game. That doesn't mean every grant writer is a pathological liar, but it's very naive to think they aren't incentivised to oversell findings, and many do.
  - Allower 7y ago
    >they have to create research that their peers appreciate, understand, and value. That's the problem. They SHOULD be creating research that is USEFUL, not a play for status in a tribe of over inflated egos.

by rrherr 7y ago

behnamoh 7y ago

I wish more people were interested in research distillation. Recently I've been searching for intuitive explanations of different areas of math, and while there are some great blogs that do so, the lack of such materials is indeed obvious. I don't think academia is going to contribute to this mission as it's mostly governed by a make-it-look-ridiculously-difficult-so-people-won't-find-it-approachable-and-thus-give-you-much-credit-for-doing-impressive-work culture.

lonelappde 7y ago
Your hostile attitude to the people putting the work in is disrespectful and inappropriate. It's like the people who make entitled demands of open source software authors. Academics don't get rewarded for confusing each other, they have to create research that their peers appreciate, understand, and value.
- feral 7y ago
  That's naive. Academia isn't some perfect system with perfect incentives. There's plenty of incentive to dress something up as more complex and impressive and using more high powered machinary than needed, e.g. impressing reviewers, qualifying for a particular conference, convincing the funding body that your pet technique can actually be useful etc I don't think you'd find many academics that dispute this, though hopefully they'd think a lot of people are trying to do good research. It'd be like open source software if it was done as a hobby; a lot of academics get public funding.
  - stonogo 7y ago
    The things you describe are common among unsuccessful academics. It is not common to see a researcher build a career on pissing off all the funding agencies and hoodwinking a project into a conference for which it is not appropriate. I suspect you'd find thousands of academics who dispute your claims. Nobody is going to claim perfection, but the problems you're describing are not systemic and basically absent from anyone with a career.
    - feral 7y ago
      >I suspect you'd find thousands of academics who dispute your claims. I should have chosen my words more carefully; we can probably find 1000s of academics to dispute a lot of perspectives on academia. > are not systemic and basically absent from anyone with a career. So, leaving aside criticism of any particular field, and to take just one pretty big cross-discipline trend, there's this 'replication crisis' thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis (wiki links to plenty of reputable sources). I find it difficult to reconcile that with the idea that incentives to over-inflate claims were 'basically absent from anyone with a career'. Maybe we think everyone was just really bad at statistics?
      - stonogo 7y ago
        The replication crisis is a real example of an incentive problem rampant in the current system. However, this leads to a disproportionate emphasis on original research. Accusing it of leading to the things you talked about is a non sequitur. Again, by no means is academia perfect. But insisting that its primary problem is that grant writers are a pack of pathological liars is both incorrect and unhelpful in solving actual problems, that's all. And yeah. I would say that most people would benefit from regular refreshers on statistics... in or out of academia.
        feral 7y ago
        > Accusing it of leading to the things you talked about is a non sequitur. I didn't say the replication crisis lead to bad incentives. I cited it as evidence bad incentives exist. > But insisting that its primary problem is that grant writers are a pack of pathological liars I didn't say remotely that. Academics have incentives to make their work sound overly impressive, and many are playing this game. That doesn't mean every grant writer is a pathological liar, but it's very naive to think they aren't incentivised to oversell findings, and many do.
- Allower 7y ago
  >they have to create research that their peers appreciate, understand, and value. That's the problem. They SHOULD be creating research that is USEFUL, not a play for status in a tribe of over inflated egos.