16 ms·

The Lost Art of Research as Leisure

504 points by altilunium 2y ago

geff82 2y ago
Currently re-visiting and re-describing old tumulus tombs in my area where the last survey was decades ago and where no current description exists. Also, I found tombs via Lidar maps that have been unaccounted before and I am cataloguing them. All that as a hobby and as a member of an association of local history. Things can be done and should!!
- vintermann 2y ago
  I'm doing genealogy. Practically everyone in the hobby is doing research for leisure.
mjfl 2y ago
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submeta 2y ago
What a wonderful article! Thanks for sharing! I’ve been thinking a lot about how research — as both leisure and serious inquiry — is making a comeback in unexpected ways. One sign of that resurgence is the huge interest in so-called “personal knowledge management” (PKM) tools like Obsidian, Roam Research, or Notion. People love referencing Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method, because it promises to structure and connect scattered notes into a web of insights. But here’s the interesting part: the tools themselves are often treated as ends in their own right, rather than as vehicles for truly deep research or the creation of original knowledge. We end up collecting articles, or carefully formatting our digital note-cards, without necessarily moving to the next step — true synthesis and exploration. In that sense, we risk becoming (to borrow from the article) “collectors rather than readers.” I read Mortimer Adler’s "How to read a book" 30 years ago. It mentions severl levels of reading-ability. The highest, he says, is “syntopical reading”, which is a powerful antidote to this trend mentioned above. Instead of reading one source in isolation or simply chasing random tangents, syntopical reading demands that we gather multiple perspectives on a single topic. We compare their arguments and frameworks, actively looking for deeper patterns or contradictions. This process leads to truly “connecting the dots” and arriving at new insights — which, in my view, is one of the real goals of research. So doing research well requires: 1. *A sense of wonder*: the initial spark that keeps us motivated. 2. *A well-formed question*: something that orients our curiosity but leaves room for discovery. 3. *Evidence gathering from diverse sources*: that’s where syntopical reading really shines. 4. *A culminating answer* (even if it simply leads to more questions). 5. *Community*: sharing and testing ideas with others. What stands out is that none of this necessarily requires an academic institution or official credentials. In fact, it might be even better done outside formal structures, where curiosity can roam freely without departmental silos. In other words, anyone can be an amateur researcher, provided they move beyond the mere collection of ideas toward genuine synthesis and thoughtful communication.
- biofox 2y ago
  "How to read a book" sounds like a ridiculous premise for a book, but I can't recommend it highly enough. It's one of the best introductions to academic skills I've ever read. I assimilated much of Adler's advice at university through trial-and-error, but seeing the reading process analysed and systematised into an algorithm was genuinely enlightening. Worth noting that Adler was also the editor of Encyclopdia Britannica's Great Books Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
  - submeta 2y ago
    I learned more about intellectual etiquette & inquiry from this book than from my teachers and professors. And I learned about the canon of european / western literature.
- ikr678 2y ago
  The best home cooks I know do this meta or syntopical reading. For a new dish, gather a few different recipe sources and then look at all the common elements, and work from there.
- zvr 2y ago
  This comment is better than the submitted post.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > Community: sharing and testing ideas with others. Where do you find community interested in serious amatuer research?
tokai 2y ago
Don't buy it at all. Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago. It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now. The article is rolling out the same old bourgeois doomsday theory people like Stefan Zweig and McLuhan subscribed to. Luckily the democratization of literacy or even leaving the medium of the book behind is the opposite of an issue.
- ravenstine 2y ago
  This is why my brain kind of short-circuits when I'm asked the question "do you like to read?" I know what most people actually mean by that, but my gears start turning because not only do I know that I read more than any of my ancestors. Reading is like breathing to me. I guess I do it out of leisure in a sense, but it's a way of life in many respects. Perhaps I don't read much fiction, but not a day goes by that I'm not cracking open an encyclopedia (aka Wikipedia), reading blog posts, investigating research papers, and reading some eBook I've stripped the DRM from on my Kobo. And I'm an oddball – so if I'm reading that much, then surely there are plenty of people out there reading stuff. I do sometimes wonder whether Gen Z and Alpha are even reading anything outside of school anymore, but that's probably more of that doomsday crap I'm prone to slipping into as I gradually become an old man.
  - SeaGully 2y ago
    The boom of Romantasy seems to be attributed at least partially to GenZ. So depending on how you classify reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Romantasy GenZ is definitely still reading.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now. Absolutely - it's a miracle, almost. But relatively few people really do it because they are rarely pursuing truth. They are reading and watching misinformation and disinformation. > Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago. Enjoy yourself; still, most of that is social media and that's equating things based on their medium. It's like saying, 'I look at lots of paintings' when you're talking about your walls, because Jackson Pollack's art and your walls both use paint and some of it even splattered. Also among books, there are instant romances and On the Origin of Species and Analects. There's nothing wrong with the former, but the fact that they all share a medium is almost meaningless. > democratization I'm familiar with the expression, but I think it's an attempt by propagandists and nihilists to ennoble their work. It's 'democratization' that they can spread misinformation and disinformation. Social media is not comparable to books; it's professional media, only 100x worse.
thriw7383848 2y ago
[flagged]
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Why did you even post this comment.
  - thriw7383848 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - piva00 2y ago
    Quite common nowadays to read this type of comment from cowards behind a throwaway. I blame the general discourse in American society, flamed by populists out for a power grab punching down. It's just sad to watch from the outside.
    - thriw7383848 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - lazyasciiart 2y ago
      This commenter certainly doesn’t appear to be a native English speaker, what makes you assume they are American?
      - piva00 2y ago
        Not assuming they're American, I'm blaming the discourse in American society which spills over to other societies in the age of information, if you know English it's impossible to not be affected by USA's bullshit on the internet.
        thriw7383848 2y ago
        [flagged]
bsindcatr 2y ago
I perused the three posts on this blog, and believe that an LLM was heavily used, because I used one daily, and this is the way its content reads. The leisure the author speaks of may be their own, and the research of which they speak today may be done by a machine. I think the intent is good, and if you as the reader get insight from it, then it is still valid, but I cannot read it, because I don’t feel a thread of consciousness helping me experience life with them. If an author chose to instead pair with an LLM to research on their own and write themselves about it, perhaps it would be different. Why do these posts keep getting to the front and even to the top of the HN feed? We are no better than machines, I guess.
- arjunaaqa 2y ago
  I feel the same way.
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  I see the blogger only has 1 post.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- oglop 2y ago
  “We are no better than machines, I guess.” Well, our minds aren’t but we have legs and arms which is cool. But maybe that will change too.
dynm 2y ago
One of the underrated downsides of the professionalization of research is how much it sucked the "fun" out of things. It's strange, but research papers in most fields are written very differently from how people actually talk to each other. Professional researchers still communicate informally like normal humans, in ways that are "fun" and show much more of how they came up with ideas and what they are really thinking. But this is very hard for outsiders to access.
- JohnKemeny 2y ago
  One of my favorites: https://thorehusfeldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/soda2012_submission_247.pdf https://thorehusfeldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/soda201...
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
  Agree! I spent the last 15 years teaching myself genetics and human biology. I will send emails to researchers and we often some long, interesting, conversations. I even assisted a researcher at Stanford, helping her set up a study on a nutritional genetics. And another even stole my idea about ethanol addiction and did a study on it as well. They have no idea I only have a degree in American History and Secondary Education. When they do ask some actually get upset thinking that I was tricking them! I used to get upset, but I know now how much some people hold their degree close to their ego. Science needs more "art", that is the fun part.
- adestefan 2y ago
  Adam Mastroianni talks about this a lot. His best example is at: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-better https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-bette...
brightball 2y ago
I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. When I do Bible study now I do it the same way, find whatever sources I can to cross reference with other history at the time. Strongly recommend it. What’s funny is that history is the subject I was least interested in all through school.
- pplonski86 2y ago
  Could you please recommend some history books?
  - JadeNB 2y ago
    The book that really got me hooked was The rise and fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. He was a journalist in Berlin before WWII, and you can see the journalistic background shine through in his narrative. A lot of what I've read since then has been in trying to trace back the references he gives to how the events of WWII recapitulated older conflicts, which I then went and found references in which to learn about. Barbara Tuchman is a delightful mostly medieval historian, and Mary Beard is a wonderful Roman historian. Both have a decidedly personal voice, which happened to click well with me; your milage may vary. Someone else in the thread mentioned Simon Sebag Montefiore, and I've enjoyed most of what he's written. It feels a little less scholarly than some other popular historical sources, but that's just an informal impression from a tyro. Lots of people enjoy Yuval Harari, but I do not enjoy him at all.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    A people's history of the united states is a good one. Most history is written by the generals and leaders. This account is colored by the oft ignored people.
    - 2y ago
thehyperflux 2y ago
I do a ton of product research for leisure...
markus_zhang 2y ago
Don't know about you guys, but reading has become more and more of a burden for me. It is as if -- I have greatly narrowed my interest such that most books are not interesting any more. Even the sci-fi and fantasy books, once I loved, lost their magic. Nowadays there are only two types of books that excite me: 1) those about software/hardware engineering, such as iWoz(I even bought a few Tom Swift JR books for my son), Showstopper and Soul of the New Machine, and 2) books about existentialism such as Shestov's philosophy books. I suspect it has something to do with getting older and getting kid(s). What about you guys?
- thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  I wonder if after you've read the classics and modern greats you have to start searching out and take chances on books you don't know. I also think people will happily walk away from a show or movie but for some reason won't walk away from a book. If you're 30% in and you hate it, just walk away.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    Yeah I feel that too. It's kinda hard to go away from a book, even a borrowed one and I have no idea why. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself that I should like the book but I don't. I used to read a lot of books including classics and others when I was younger, before 25, but then Internet took off so I barely read books. When my son was born a few years ago I tried to go back and found my interests narrowed to a niche. Anyway, maybe I shouldn't complain as it helps to focus...
  - latexr 2y ago
    > I also think people will happily walk away from a show or movie I’m not so sure. I feel like people may walk away from a show in between seasons, when a new one comes out and they realise they aren’t interested anymore. But in the age of binge watching, it’s harder to realise “I’m not actually enjoying this” because each episode is made to be addictive. With movies, my feeling is that even when people realise midway they’re not enjoying it, they experience sunk cost and will watch to the end hoping it gets better. I remember (but I’m not finding) a This American Life segment about a woman who relished in exiting the movie theatre midway through a feature. It wasn’t seen as a common thing. > but for some reason won't walk away from a book. If you're 30% in and you hate it, just walk away. I completely agree. I’d even say you could do it sooner than 30%.
NalNezumi 2y ago
The blog post gives a slight posh impression. With the excessive quoting of authors and their book but in an incoherent manner that only strengthen the authors narrative by "look many famous people agree with me" and not why they agree with you. I agree with the general sentiment of the article but I think it kinda defeat itself in its need to reaffirm it's own excellence over actually being informative. He could've skipped everything above the "Against hollow reading" Section and got the same message across. The message below that section is valuable but only in value. It doesn't really get in to how to practice it. It laments the modern information landscape but doesn't tell us how. His point can be summarized to "don't be a passive consumer of information, be active in asking questions, refine those questions, and develop answers". How? Write. Write for leisure, not for anyone else but yourself and read it with critical lenses you use when reading others. Only then will you need to refine your writing and thinking, which leads to new questions, new exploration and perspective. Research of any kind is an iterative process. You find new information, you create a bias in favor of it, try to explain many things with it. Then you realize that it doesn't explain everything, and now you have to go back to reading or finding out more. It's easier to catch yourself getting stuck with one idea, when you write those down and review them. Reading as he put it, the introspecting one is only complete when combined with Writing. (Or at least deep contemplation that resembles the structure of writing) This article reminds me of "I don't like honors" by Richard Feynman[1]. Too caught up in how one ought to be, rather than being (or informing). [1] https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared
- mmooss 2y ago
  > The blog post gives a slight posh impression. I don't know about that, but so what if it did? Why is it even worth remarking on? I care about the value of their ideas; they don't need to pass a culture war test first.
  - NalNezumi 2y ago
    [dead]
    - 2y ago
sergioisidoro 2y ago
I think reading is an essential skill, but we also need to get reading out of the pedestal. Because a lot of the time these arguments come across as some sort of literary elitism. Like if you're not ingesting information through reading, it doesn't count. This month I spent many hours listening to lectures on youtube about geopolitics on the Asian continent from the naval war college. Sure I could have read it, but nevertheless I got curious about a topic, engaged in it, and "followed the rabbit holes" I think there is a case to be made that we need to be more active in information seeking, rather than just being fed what the algorithm suggests you - on that topic Technology connections recently made a really good exposition of that issue -- https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA -- But it should not be about the method of ingesting information, but the quality and the intent of it.
- thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  I always love this conversation: Snob: "Listening to an audio book doesn't count as reading the book!" Everyone else in the world: "k"
  - nottorp 2y ago
    I could argue that it doesn't because you use different neural path ways to absorb the book :)
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      Reading material (backlight vs. reflective screen) differs in my experience. Also typing and writing are very different neurologically, but people don't want to acknowledge that, AFAICS.
      - nottorp 2y ago
        Speaking of neural pathways, my pet theory is that you're a lot more likely to be "engaged" by an "influencer" if you watch them talk than if you just read the same speech. Mostly because a lot more of your brain is involved in just handling the input so a lot less is available to notice the bullshit.
atebyagrue 2y ago
This article sums up precisely why I don't mind being a "forever GM". I'm constantly researching new things to flesh out game ideas for my groups to add flavor, immersion & a sense of "reality" to my players' worlds & I love doing it. It almost makes running the actual games for them, an afterthought to tide me over to the new thing to learn about & implement. Great article!
janpmz 2y ago
I did some leisure research on how the Nazca Lines align with mountain shadows and made a publication. That was a nice weekend. https://zenodo.org/records/11422308 https://zenodo.org/records/11422308
- yannis 2y ago
  I find this fascinating; I do a lot of reading and writing (leisure work) outside my own specialization; Some I believe are possibly publishable, but I am reluctant so far to attempt to publish them. Is zenodo a good place for this in your opinion?
  - janpmz 2y ago
    I would have published on arXiv, but to do that you need an endorsement from an established arXiv user in that specific category. And even then, you can only submit papers in that category. On Zenodo, I was able to publish quickly, and I like that I can see the number of views and downloads.
jsemrau 2y ago
“I have studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and even, sad to say, theology, all with great exertion.” – Faust, Part I, Scene I (“Night”)
btrettel 2y ago
I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after that, but it doesn't seem this covers actual obstacles to doing research on the side that I face. I do want to note that to the author, "research" seems to be basically a learning process, whereas I'm interested in building something, which I think is more involved. Here's my perspective on the obstacles towards this form of deeper research: 1. Lack of time and energy. This to me is the largest obstacle for any of the research side projects I've had since finishing my PhD. My day job gets the best of my time and energy and everything else gets scraps. What I do on the side tends to be more superficial than I'd like for this reason. (More specifically: Lots of reading and writing, little implementation of my ideas.) I simply don't have the energy to do much deeper work. I recently concluded that to make progress on the one side project I'm prioritizing, I'm probably going to have to take leave from my job. And it's also been necessary to think like a startup, to limit the scope and focus on a MVP. But even the MVP is still challenging. 2. Intellectual property assignment agreements. A lot of technical folks' employers made them sign agreements that arguably give the employers' full rights to what their employees do in their free time. If I'm working on a side project that could turn into a business, it's simply risky if my employer could swoop in and claim ownership of the entire thing. I think even the "favorable" versions of these agreements that limit what employers can take to things related to what the company does are still overreach. A lot of companies do tons of things and could find justification to take nearly anything for that reason. 3. Lack of collaborators and community. I think the linked article discusses "community of knowledge" in a superficial way. I haven't tried, mind you, but I think it would be really hard to find a group of people online with similar research interests to mine. I think people who have more common or less specific interests would not have a problem, but for anything more specific, finding collaborators is going to be a challenge. I think I won't find a close collaborator until I publish something (could be journal article or even a web page) and they come to me.
DeathArrow 2y ago
It would be nice to afford to practice that art. Most people are practicing the art of putting food on their tables. Most researchers are doing it for a living and they might want to pursue other activities in their free time. Other people do not possess the skill level. Science and research is harder than it was centuries ago.
- JonChesterfield 2y ago
  Perhaps one could work at a US tech company and spend the free time that results on research.
brador 2y ago
The fact that all historians still refuse to acknowledge the origin of the term “yankees”.
jdp 2y ago
Stamp collecting is a good outlet for research as leisure. If you're the type of person who falls into wiki holes and likes talking about what you learn with other people, it might be for you. Many stamp collectors follow the research-as-leisure framework naturally as part of their hobby. The article outlines cultivating curiosity, developing questions, gathering evidence, developing answers, and building communities around that process, which is basically what collectors are doing when they're talking about stamps and other philatelic material. They're sharing discoveries they find interesting, often only after identifying the material, looking up its historical context, drawing parallels to current events, and then formulating some kind of answer or conclusion that makes it worthwhile to share what they've found. I think the experts in a lot of hobbies engage in this sort of recreational research for the joy of it, but it's closer to the norm for casual collectors. There is a whole wide spectrum of collectors though, ranging from aesthetics-driven folks who spend more time on thematic album pages than on researching anything, over to experts in narrow areas like Transylvanian hotel stamps who publish whole books on about how they weren't valid for postal use but were used by hospitality workers nestled up in the Carpathians to get mail from guests back into the official mail stream because the state couldn't be bothered to service up there. If you get into it you'll find there are a lot of curious and motivated people in the middle who are happy to share what they've been reading about (or listening to, or watching) lately.
calvinmorrison 2y ago
Join the RR&R or start your own charter club! https://ephorate.org https://ephorate.org
inktype 2y ago
I'm sure it's still out there, but I don't seem to notice as much prevalence of dedicated research trivia as I used to, like Damn Interesting, or Cracked. Lots of the articles would be some niche question that wasn't just a google away and it was obvious that it took effort and time at a library to write. The closest thing that comes to mind now is Asianometry's youtube channel and mailing list.
awongh 2y ago
I read a fair amount and I actually do research as leisure all the time, but I can’t stand these elitist and unoriginal think pieces about how much better and cooler this person’s habits are than yours. >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else. I actually deeply agree with the advice in the OP around curiosity but personally I end up implementing it in a totally different way than they do. Lately I’ve found that LLMs are an amazing tool for this free-floating “research”- for example “Summarize the top three theories about why suburbs exist and who said them”. The LLM as open ended semantic search engine / research tool is an amazing way to figure out the topology of a subject you want to dive deeper into. I usually work my way down a content ladder from there to podcasts, wikipedia and finally to books. The idea that somehow civilization is ending because of our media consumption habits and that “reading source material” will save us comes off as more an aesthetic fantasy than a real-world complaint about today’s culture. I was around before the internet and I’m so thankful that so much more information is accessible now than it was when there were only books.
- aaron695 2y ago
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- nluken 2y ago
  I think you're generally right about the OP, but I don't see your alternative method as a tonic to the problem the author is discussing. I agree that treating reading as the only way to ingest information is probably wrong, and that the original post tends towards hierarchy in an almost reactionary way, yet at the same time I also see that many people tend to ingest information from other forms of media less critically than they might a book or written piece. I think this dichotomy derives from the different levels of focus we apply to different activities. Reading, even for leisure, demands a level of effort that forces you to focus and, in a way, analyze the information you're ingesting. By removing that barrier, you might fail to fully grasp the ideas that the primary source expressed. In your use case, the LLM can be a great tool to get a start, but it's much easier to accept that output uncritically, which is especially problematic because it bears the biases of the training corpus. Sure, you can mitigate that issue if you're driven by the intellectual curiosity to dig deeper, which it seems you are, but at that point aren't you doing the kind of leisure research that the original post is talking about anyway? You're just using the initial steps to discover the "foundational texts", as the original post puts it, of the field. The LLM step becomes less material to the follow-up reading you've done after the fact. Many, perhaps even most people will not make it to the second step. I see the lack of intellectual curiosity as a problem of focus more than anything else, and in my experience the overly rich media landscape of the internet does not concentrate that focus in most people.
fxtentacle 2y ago
"Where have the amateur researchers gone" To their 2nd job. "and how do we bring them back?" Pay them enough salary to survive on just 1 job.
- aurumque 2y ago
  A lot (and I mean A LOT) of research and breakthroughs in the period of 1500 to 1900 was completed by people with no jobs whatsoever. If you are looking to revive the great mathematicians, writers, philosophers, and scientists of yesteryear, you will need to pay them a UBI and sit back and hope for the best.
- mikrotikker 2y ago
  Plus in 2020 all the news outlets told us not to do our own research.
keepamovin 2y ago
AI is bringing that back. It's so fun to say: "Teach me about..." and just keep going. :)
luizfzs 2y ago
My gut feeling (with bias) is that most people don't think about things around them because society is in a constant state of hurry. If someone is wondering 'how did zoning laws came to be?', they are not being productive. And our western society seems to value the individuals based on how much they produce. The person working, or commuting to/from work, is tired and doesn't have the energy to ponder about the world around us. The 'first researchers' if I may call them that, were the Ionians, a Greek island of merchants, that had the time and resources to pursue the interests of the mind. That's of course, only part of the story. The other part, I'd say, is to have the habit of questioning and wondering about the world around us. That comes with practice. And ironically, lots of parents indirectly discourage their kids from asking questions by becoming annoyed at how many 'whys' their kids ask. Our educational system is also discouraging of such way of thinking. It's mostly a production line of workers.
- randomNumber7 2y ago
  I agree with your gut feeling and add that to me it feels im surrounded by f*ing Zombies. It's not that they are too stupid, but they don't even __try__ to think.
  - gnulinux 2y ago
    My boss regularly criticizes me for thinking too much. Sometimes I stop and think if this is the best way to implement something, and then suddenly receive a lecture about velocity, moving fast, being efficient, being ok with pushing bugs to prod, and all that shebang. Our society has a pathological obsession with productivity.
    - hnben 2y ago
      > then suddenly receive a lecture about velocity, moving fast, being efficient I like to give the opposite kind of lecture, like when someone refused to even consider alternative ways of solving a problem. Some phrases I like to throw around: "you just wasted 2 days of work, because you skipped 30min of research at the start", or "it's arrogant to assume, you'll find the perfect solution on the very first try".
aeblyve 2y ago
The most important thing is having a wealth of free time.
jll29 2y ago
I like the idea of collecting a list of books that you would take with you on a remote island. Imagine you would never leave that island, what would you take? - The Art of Computer Programming I-IVb - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition - ... or perhaps - The Bible - The Scouting Guide to Wilderness First Aid: An Officially-Licensed Book of the Boy Scouts of America: More than 200 Essential Skills for Medical ... in Remote Environments (A BSA Scouting Guide) - ...?
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Certainly survival guide stuff. I was thinking about the civilization book case and wondering if they had forgotten to include sun tzu, clausewitz, etc ...
PaulHoule 2y ago
Marshall McLuhan also thought television would displace reading but I think it only happened for real when YouTube came along in that YouTube vastly expanded the availability of non-fiction TV. One example is the disappearance of text guides for video games: circa 2010 you could still find good FAQs and walkthroughs such that if you got stuck or were trying to work out the dependencies in a Neptunia game such that you need items A, B and C to make item D and you'll have to visit locations E, F and F' (a variant of F you can unlock by making a "plan") you could do it efficiently. Now for a 30 hour game you have to find the right place in 30 hours worth of video -- once in a while you are stuck because there is some place where you can jump where it doesn't look like you can jump and just seeing somebody do it in a video makes it totally clear, but just as often somebody in the video took a different route or has a different build and you've got no freakin' idea even after watching the video. There was already a problem for games like Pokemon where walkthroughs were problematic because of the high variance of builds, but it's far worse in video where you want a database more than you want a walkthrough.
dartos 2y ago
Yeah, quants are another breed.
mykowebhn 2y ago
It's difficult, especially if you have to earn money and support others. I'm taking some time off, and I'm currently busy reading the German Idealist philosophers, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and some Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. I am having the time of my life!
unit149 2y ago
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strawhatdev 2y ago
The victorian urge to travel the world collecting rare botanical samples.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
vonneumannstan 2y ago
>>> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts >I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else. This is how you end up on the Crackpot Index. Thinking you created a theory of everything or a cold fusion device despite literally not knowing algebra or basic electrical engineering.
kishore-jalleda 2y ago
I don't think amateur researchers have disappeared - they're evolving how they discover, process, and share knowledge. And we need both traditional deep reading and newer modalities to accommodate different learning contexts and preferences.
TimorousBestie 2y ago
The largest impediment to researching in my leisure time is the vast and exorbitant paywalls that academic publishers deploy. It’s particularly galling when I know the work was funded by my own tax dollars. If a govt employee had produced the work, it would have been in the public domain. But if the govt gives a grant to a researcher, suddenly their output is intellectual property with a grossly inflated profit margin.
danans 2y ago
> Where free time is not used for research — for developing questions, and investigating the answers with an explorer’s spirit — cultural coherence crumbles. Perhaps, but the reality for a great many is that "free time" is occupied by survival anxiety, whether because that time is spent in additional paid work, care of loved ones, or attempting to get a leg up or to jump on a non-sinking life raft. While technology-enabled cultural fragmentation is undoubtedly a strong influence in this, the long term affordability inversion that has occurred between consumables (food, clothes, electronics, etc) and assets (housing, education, security) has exacerbated the aforementioned anxieties and therefore makes people vulnerable to the charms of the escapism that new types of quick-hit media provide, from cable-news through to social media.
ctrlp 2y ago
Amateur researchers are frequently derided as dilettantes. Sometimes they are. But "Science" is filled with gatekeepers demanding institutional credentials. For good and bad.
sotix 2y ago
I’ve been researching Greek mythology for the past few years as an amateur. It’s been a lot of fun and rewarding for me. There are a few things, which make the research in my leisure time tough though. 1. Society is set up so that I have to prioritize making money in my limited free time. Fortunately this pressure has lessened since I got a well paying job, but it held back my free time for years. 2. Because of the first constraint, I don’t have the time to dive into mastery. I’m reading works at a much slower rate since I have to work everyday. I’ve also found the time over the past few years to study Modern Greek, which I could have spent studying Ancient Greek I suppose. However, I don’t have the time to study both and Modern Greek has been my priority for reasons outside of my research. 3. I owe a great deal of my research to people with PhDs/DPhils on the topic. However, I also can’t contribute much to the field because they deliver their incredible work full time. I’m far less likely to make significant contributions when they have already spent years studying Ancient Greek and then every day performing acts such as translating great works. All that said, I’m satisfied not competing with the experts. I just recognize that this is purely a hobby that I perform for fun when I have the time, which isn’t as often as I need in order to be a more useful researcher.
creer 2y ago
Lost? It has never been easier to do research or start a research project. What has changed is the inclination to read. Reading was a refuge for some - and probably fiction graphic novels, computer games, doom scrolling are now the comparable refuge. So basic, cursory research has lost one population. Did that population do all that much in-depth research. Some sure. Not all that much. So there was perhaps an anomaly in research for a short while and we are now back to deeper research belonging again to the people who enjoy the rabbit hole and the full fledged projects. And for us, research has never been easier.
thinkcritical 2y ago
First of all, there was a lot of interesting food for thought in this post and I love the framework it offers for leisurely research. However; I don't agree with this: > through audiovisual devices, which ask no discipline of the mind, and which are already giving the room the languor of an opium parlor. I wish there was concrete evidence provided to support this. I suspect that learning outcomes are going to be more influenced by the quality of the material and the level of engagement of the learner, regardless of medium. Bad content is bad content, whether it's text or audiovisual, and I can passively read a book as easily as I can passively consume a video.
odyssey7 2y ago
Academia has a combination of monopoly and scarcity that drove would-be researchers insane. Simple as that. I mean this both flippantly in many cases and literally in many others. Academia in my orbit appears to be a risk factor for psychological problems.
cytocync 2y ago
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loxodrome 2y ago
The academic establishment has done a pretty good job of excluding and discrediting anyone without a PhD from actively participating in research.
seu 2y ago
"Books as civilization" implies that those peoples who had not "created" books (or something similar) were not civilized. Quite eurocentric.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
"Fundamental to the art of research as leisure is the creation of formal and informal ‘communities of knowledge’ in which well-researched ideas are communicated in a written form, and presented for wider debate." I think the better message for this article is publish your findings if you do original research. On a personal blog. In a paper. Maybe a book. All the other stuff is a bit circle jerky.
admiralrohan 2y ago
I grew up in poverty in India, so research was never a leisure activity—it was a race to keep up. That’s why I think the article is right about the cultural shift. Deep reading feels like a luxury not everyone can afford. Now, I see more people relying on step-by-step guides instead of digging in themselves. It fits the trend of passive consumption. But reading alone isn’t enough. It only matters if you can use it to solve real problems you care about.
oglop 2y ago
Stan Ulam has a great book discussing his worry about the change in research environments pre-wwII vs post-WWII. Before the war, they’d sit in cafes and draw in tables and just sit and think sometimes as a group. After they would meet in offices with blackboards and no life in the room or fun with direct funding telling them exactly what to study. I think his concern will be shown to be sound. I wonder if LLMs can help bring that kind of exploratory culture back. Because this is not an exploratory culture.
thenthenthen 2y ago
I do research as leisure, any tips on how to keep track of sources, snippets, websites spanning several hdds, machines and decades?
mberlove 2y ago
This article read a little different than I expected from the title. I was just thinking about this topic recently through a book that surveyed historians in the 19th century. So many of them got their starts doing historical research as a hobby or a passion in life. The discoveries they made were a life's work, their joy rather than something required to do (many did make it their occupation, though not all). It's inspiring I think that the depth of passion in any topic can carry you through to important discoveries. In that sense the coding hobbyist and the citizen scientist are little different IMHO.

504 points by altilunium 2y ago

Currently re-visiting and re-describing old tumulus tombs in my area where the last survey was decades ago and where no current description exists. Also, I found tombs via Lidar maps that have been unaccounted before and I am cataloguing them. All that as a hobby and as a member of an association of local history. Things can be done and should!!

vintermann 2y ago
I'm doing genealogy. Practically everyone in the hobby is doing research for leisure.

mjfl 2y ago

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submeta 2y ago

What a wonderful article! Thanks for sharing! I’ve been thinking a lot about how research — as both leisure and serious inquiry — is making a comeback in unexpected ways. One sign of that resurgence is the huge interest in so-called “personal knowledge management” (PKM) tools like Obsidian, Roam Research, or Notion. People love referencing Luhmann’s Zettelkasten method, because it promises to structure and connect scattered notes into a web of insights. But here’s the interesting part: the tools themselves are often treated as ends in their own right, rather than as vehicles for truly deep research or the creation of original knowledge. We end up collecting articles, or carefully formatting our digital note-cards, without necessarily moving to the next step — true synthesis and exploration. In that sense, we risk becoming (to borrow from the article) “collectors rather than readers.” I read Mortimer Adler’s "How to read a book" 30 years ago. It mentions severl levels of reading-ability. The highest, he says, is “syntopical reading”, which is a powerful antidote to this trend mentioned above. Instead of reading one source in isolation or simply chasing random tangents, syntopical reading demands that we gather multiple perspectives on a single topic. We compare their arguments and frameworks, actively looking for deeper patterns or contradictions. This process leads to truly “connecting the dots” and arriving at new insights — which, in my view, is one of the real goals of research. So doing research well requires: 1. *A sense of wonder*: the initial spark that keeps us motivated. 2. *A well-formed question*: something that orients our curiosity but leaves room for discovery. 3. *Evidence gathering from diverse sources*: that’s where syntopical reading really shines. 4. *A culminating answer* (even if it simply leads to more questions). 5. *Community*: sharing and testing ideas with others. What stands out is that none of this necessarily requires an academic institution or official credentials. In fact, it might be even better done outside formal structures, where curiosity can roam freely without departmental silos. In other words, anyone can be an amateur researcher, provided they move beyond the mere collection of ideas toward genuine synthesis and thoughtful communication.

biofox 2y ago
"How to read a book" sounds like a ridiculous premise for a book, but I can't recommend it highly enough. It's one of the best introductions to academic skills I've ever read. I assimilated much of Adler's advice at university through trial-and-error, but seeing the reading process analysed and systematised into an algorithm was genuinely enlightening. Worth noting that Adler was also the editor of Encyclopdia Britannica's Great Books Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...
- submeta 2y ago
  I learned more about intellectual etiquette & inquiry from this book than from my teachers and professors. And I learned about the canon of european / western literature.
ikr678 2y ago
The best home cooks I know do this meta or syntopical reading. For a new dish, gather a few different recipe sources and then look at all the common elements, and work from there.
zvr 2y ago
This comment is better than the submitted post.
mmooss 2y ago
> Community: sharing and testing ideas with others. Where do you find community interested in serious amatuer research?

tokai 2y ago

Don't buy it at all. Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago. It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now. The article is rolling out the same old bourgeois doomsday theory people like Stefan Zweig and McLuhan subscribed to. Luckily the democratization of literacy or even leaving the medium of the book behind is the opposite of an issue.

ravenstine 2y ago
This is why my brain kind of short-circuits when I'm asked the question "do you like to read?" I know what most people actually mean by that, but my gears start turning because not only do I know that I read more than any of my ancestors. Reading is like breathing to me. I guess I do it out of leisure in a sense, but it's a way of life in many respects. Perhaps I don't read much fiction, but not a day goes by that I'm not cracking open an encyclopedia (aka Wikipedia), reading blog posts, investigating research papers, and reading some eBook I've stripped the DRM from on my Kobo. And I'm an oddball – so if I'm reading that much, then surely there are plenty of people out there reading stuff. I do sometimes wonder whether Gen Z and Alpha are even reading anything outside of school anymore, but that's probably more of that doomsday crap I'm prone to slipping into as I gradually become an old man.
- SeaGully 2y ago
  The boom of Romantasy seems to be attributed at least partially to GenZ. So depending on how you classify reading Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Romantasy GenZ is definitely still reading.
mmooss 2y ago
> It has never been more accessible to research any kind of subject and phenomenon than it is now. Absolutely - it's a miracle, almost. But relatively few people really do it because they are rarely pursuing truth. They are reading and watching misinformation and disinformation. > Global book market is healthy and as big as it ever was. Most of us a reading more in a day that even scholars did in a month two centuries ago. Enjoy yourself; still, most of that is social media and that's equating things based on their medium. It's like saying, 'I look at lots of paintings' when you're talking about your walls, because Jackson Pollack's art and your walls both use paint and some of it even splattered. Also among books, there are instant romances and On the Origin of Species and Analects. There's nothing wrong with the former, but the fact that they all share a medium is almost meaningless. > democratization I'm familiar with the expression, but I think it's an attempt by propagandists and nihilists to ennoble their work. It's 'democratization' that they can spread misinformation and disinformation. Social media is not comparable to books; it's professional media, only 100x worse.

thriw7383848 2y ago

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EdwardDiego 2y ago
Why did you even post this comment.
- thriw7383848 2y ago
  [flagged]
- piva00 2y ago
  Quite common nowadays to read this type of comment from cowards behind a throwaway. I blame the general discourse in American society, flamed by populists out for a power grab punching down. It's just sad to watch from the outside.
  - thriw7383848 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    This commenter certainly doesn’t appear to be a native English speaker, what makes you assume they are American?
    - piva00 2y ago
      Not assuming they're American, I'm blaming the discourse in American society which spills over to other societies in the age of information, if you know English it's impossible to not be affected by USA's bullshit on the internet.
      - thriw7383848 2y ago
        [flagged]

bsindcatr 2y ago

I perused the three posts on this blog, and believe that an LLM was heavily used, because I used one daily, and this is the way its content reads. The leisure the author speaks of may be their own, and the research of which they speak today may be done by a machine. I think the intent is good, and if you as the reader get insight from it, then it is still valid, but I cannot read it, because I don’t feel a thread of consciousness helping me experience life with them. If an author chose to instead pair with an LLM to research on their own and write themselves about it, perhaps it would be different. Why do these posts keep getting to the front and even to the top of the HN feed? We are no better than machines, I guess.

arjunaaqa 2y ago
I feel the same way.
booleandilemma 2y ago
I see the blogger only has 1 post.
- deleted 2y ago
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oglop 2y ago
“We are no better than machines, I guess.” Well, our minds aren’t but we have legs and arms which is cool. But maybe that will change too.

dynm 2y ago

One of the underrated downsides of the professionalization of research is how much it sucked the "fun" out of things. It's strange, but research papers in most fields are written very differently from how people actually talk to each other. Professional researchers still communicate informally like normal humans, in ways that are "fun" and show much more of how they came up with ideas and what they are really thinking. But this is very hard for outsiders to access.

JohnKemeny 2y ago
One of my favorites: https://thorehusfeldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/soda2012_submission_247.pdf https://thorehusfeldt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/soda201...
FollowingTheDao 2y ago
Agree! I spent the last 15 years teaching myself genetics and human biology. I will send emails to researchers and we often some long, interesting, conversations. I even assisted a researcher at Stanford, helping her set up a study on a nutritional genetics. And another even stole my idea about ethanol addiction and did a study on it as well. They have no idea I only have a degree in American History and Secondary Education. When they do ask some actually get upset thinking that I was tricking them! I used to get upset, but I know now how much some people hold their degree close to their ego. Science needs more "art", that is the fun part.
adestefan 2y ago
Adam Mastroianni talks about this a lot. His best example is at: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-better https://www.experimental-history.com/p/things-could-be-bette...

brightball 2y ago

I started reading history as a hobby a few years after college when I heard some things from people that just didn’t make sense or didn’t seem true. So I picked up a booked that was well cited, read it while checking the citations after each chapter. Between the Library of Congress and Google, checking original sources has never been easier. It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction. When I do Bible study now I do it the same way, find whatever sources I can to cross reference with other history at the time. Strongly recommend it. What’s funny is that history is the subject I was least interested in all through school.

pplonski86 2y ago
Could you please recommend some history books?
- JadeNB 2y ago
  The book that really got me hooked was The rise and fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. He was a journalist in Berlin before WWII, and you can see the journalistic background shine through in his narrative. A lot of what I've read since then has been in trying to trace back the references he gives to how the events of WWII recapitulated older conflicts, which I then went and found references in which to learn about. Barbara Tuchman is a delightful mostly medieval historian, and Mary Beard is a wonderful Roman historian. Both have a decidedly personal voice, which happened to click well with me; your milage may vary. Someone else in the thread mentioned Simon Sebag Montefiore, and I've enjoyed most of what he's written. It feels a little less scholarly than some other popular historical sources, but that's just an informal impression from a tyro. Lots of people enjoy Yuval Harari, but I do not enjoy him at all.
- sethammons 2y ago
  A people's history of the united states is a good one. Most history is written by the generals and leaders. This account is colored by the oft ignored people.
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thehyperflux 2y ago

I do a ton of product research for leisure...

markus_zhang 2y ago

Don't know about you guys, but reading has become more and more of a burden for me. It is as if -- I have greatly narrowed my interest such that most books are not interesting any more. Even the sci-fi and fantasy books, once I loved, lost their magic. Nowadays there are only two types of books that excite me: 1) those about software/hardware engineering, such as iWoz(I even bought a few Tom Swift JR books for my son), Showstopper and Soul of the New Machine, and 2) books about existentialism such as Shestov's philosophy books. I suspect it has something to do with getting older and getting kid(s). What about you guys?

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
I wonder if after you've read the classics and modern greats you have to start searching out and take chances on books you don't know. I also think people will happily walk away from a show or movie but for some reason won't walk away from a book. If you're 30% in and you hate it, just walk away.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  Yeah I feel that too. It's kinda hard to go away from a book, even a borrowed one and I have no idea why. Maybe I'm trying to convince myself that I should like the book but I don't. I used to read a lot of books including classics and others when I was younger, before 25, but then Internet took off so I barely read books. When my son was born a few years ago I tried to go back and found my interests narrowed to a niche. Anyway, maybe I shouldn't complain as it helps to focus...
- latexr 2y ago
  > I also think people will happily walk away from a show or movie I’m not so sure. I feel like people may walk away from a show in between seasons, when a new one comes out and they realise they aren’t interested anymore. But in the age of binge watching, it’s harder to realise “I’m not actually enjoying this” because each episode is made to be addictive. With movies, my feeling is that even when people realise midway they’re not enjoying it, they experience sunk cost and will watch to the end hoping it gets better. I remember (but I’m not finding) a This American Life segment about a woman who relished in exiting the movie theatre midway through a feature. It wasn’t seen as a common thing. > but for some reason won't walk away from a book. If you're 30% in and you hate it, just walk away. I completely agree. I’d even say you could do it sooner than 30%.

NalNezumi 2y ago

The blog post gives a slight posh impression. With the excessive quoting of authors and their book but in an incoherent manner that only strengthen the authors narrative by "look many famous people agree with me" and not why they agree with you. I agree with the general sentiment of the article but I think it kinda defeat itself in its need to reaffirm it's own excellence over actually being informative. He could've skipped everything above the "Against hollow reading" Section and got the same message across. The message below that section is valuable but only in value. It doesn't really get in to how to practice it. It laments the modern information landscape but doesn't tell us how. His point can be summarized to "don't be a passive consumer of information, be active in asking questions, refine those questions, and develop answers". How? Write. Write for leisure, not for anyone else but yourself and read it with critical lenses you use when reading others. Only then will you need to refine your writing and thinking, which leads to new questions, new exploration and perspective. Research of any kind is an iterative process. You find new information, you create a bias in favor of it, try to explain many things with it. Then you realize that it doesn't explain everything, and now you have to go back to reading or finding out more. It's easier to catch yourself getting stuck with one idea, when you write those down and review them. Reading as he put it, the introspecting one is only complete when combined with Writing. (Or at least deep contemplation that resembles the structure of writing) This article reminds me of "I don't like honors" by Richard Feynman[1]. Too caught up in how one ought to be, rather than being (or informing). [1] https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared

mmooss 2y ago
> The blog post gives a slight posh impression. I don't know about that, but so what if it did? Why is it even worth remarking on? I care about the value of their ideas; they don't need to pass a culture war test first.
- NalNezumi 2y ago
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sergioisidoro 2y ago

I think reading is an essential skill, but we also need to get reading out of the pedestal. Because a lot of the time these arguments come across as some sort of literary elitism. Like if you're not ingesting information through reading, it doesn't count. This month I spent many hours listening to lectures on youtube about geopolitics on the Asian continent from the naval war college. Sure I could have read it, but nevertheless I got curious about a topic, engaged in it, and "followed the rabbit holes" I think there is a case to be made that we need to be more active in information seeking, rather than just being fed what the algorithm suggests you - on that topic Technology connections recently made a really good exposition of that issue -- https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA -- But it should not be about the method of ingesting information, but the quality and the intent of it.

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
I always love this conversation: Snob: "Listening to an audio book doesn't count as reading the book!" Everyone else in the world: "k"
- nottorp 2y ago
  I could argue that it doesn't because you use different neural path ways to absorb the book :)
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    Reading material (backlight vs. reflective screen) differs in my experience. Also typing and writing are very different neurologically, but people don't want to acknowledge that, AFAICS.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Speaking of neural pathways, my pet theory is that you're a lot more likely to be "engaged" by an "influencer" if you watch them talk than if you just read the same speech. Mostly because a lot more of your brain is involved in just handling the input so a lot less is available to notice the bullshit.

atebyagrue 2y ago

This article sums up precisely why I don't mind being a "forever GM". I'm constantly researching new things to flesh out game ideas for my groups to add flavor, immersion & a sense of "reality" to my players' worlds & I love doing it. It almost makes running the actual games for them, an afterthought to tide me over to the new thing to learn about & implement. Great article!

janpmz 2y ago

I did some leisure research on how the Nazca Lines align with mountain shadows and made a publication. That was a nice weekend. https://zenodo.org/records/11422308 https://zenodo.org/records/11422308

yannis 2y ago
I find this fascinating; I do a lot of reading and writing (leisure work) outside my own specialization; Some I believe are possibly publishable, but I am reluctant so far to attempt to publish them. Is zenodo a good place for this in your opinion?
- janpmz 2y ago
  I would have published on arXiv, but to do that you need an endorsement from an established arXiv user in that specific category. And even then, you can only submit papers in that category. On Zenodo, I was able to publish quickly, and I like that I can see the number of views and downloads.

jsemrau 2y ago

“I have studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and even, sad to say, theology, all with great exertion.” – Faust, Part I, Scene I (“Night”)

btrettel 2y ago

I only skimmed everything before "From Theory to Practice: A Framework for Research as Leisure" and read everything after that, but it doesn't seem this covers actual obstacles to doing research on the side that I face. I do want to note that to the author, "research" seems to be basically a learning process, whereas I'm interested in building something, which I think is more involved. Here's my perspective on the obstacles towards this form of deeper research: 1. Lack of time and energy. This to me is the largest obstacle for any of the research side projects I've had since finishing my PhD. My day job gets the best of my time and energy and everything else gets scraps. What I do on the side tends to be more superficial than I'd like for this reason. (More specifically: Lots of reading and writing, little implementation of my ideas.) I simply don't have the energy to do much deeper work. I recently concluded that to make progress on the one side project I'm prioritizing, I'm probably going to have to take leave from my job. And it's also been necessary to think like a startup, to limit the scope and focus on a MVP. But even the MVP is still challenging. 2. Intellectual property assignment agreements. A lot of technical folks' employers made them sign agreements that arguably give the employers' full rights to what their employees do in their free time. If I'm working on a side project that could turn into a business, it's simply risky if my employer could swoop in and claim ownership of the entire thing. I think even the "favorable" versions of these agreements that limit what employers can take to things related to what the company does are still overreach. A lot of companies do tons of things and could find justification to take nearly anything for that reason. 3. Lack of collaborators and community. I think the linked article discusses "community of knowledge" in a superficial way. I haven't tried, mind you, but I think it would be really hard to find a group of people online with similar research interests to mine. I think people who have more common or less specific interests would not have a problem, but for anything more specific, finding collaborators is going to be a challenge. I think I won't find a close collaborator until I publish something (could be journal article or even a web page) and they come to me.

DeathArrow 2y ago

It would be nice to afford to practice that art. Most people are practicing the art of putting food on their tables. Most researchers are doing it for a living and they might want to pursue other activities in their free time. Other people do not possess the skill level. Science and research is harder than it was centuries ago.

JonChesterfield 2y ago
Perhaps one could work at a US tech company and spend the free time that results on research.

brador 2y ago

The fact that all historians still refuse to acknowledge the origin of the term “yankees”.

jdp 2y ago

Stamp collecting is a good outlet for research as leisure. If you're the type of person who falls into wiki holes and likes talking about what you learn with other people, it might be for you. Many stamp collectors follow the research-as-leisure framework naturally as part of their hobby. The article outlines cultivating curiosity, developing questions, gathering evidence, developing answers, and building communities around that process, which is basically what collectors are doing when they're talking about stamps and other philatelic material. They're sharing discoveries they find interesting, often only after identifying the material, looking up its historical context, drawing parallels to current events, and then formulating some kind of answer or conclusion that makes it worthwhile to share what they've found. I think the experts in a lot of hobbies engage in this sort of recreational research for the joy of it, but it's closer to the norm for casual collectors. There is a whole wide spectrum of collectors though, ranging from aesthetics-driven folks who spend more time on thematic album pages than on researching anything, over to experts in narrow areas like Transylvanian hotel stamps who publish whole books on about how they weren't valid for postal use but were used by hospitality workers nestled up in the Carpathians to get mail from guests back into the official mail stream because the state couldn't be bothered to service up there. If you get into it you'll find there are a lot of curious and motivated people in the middle who are happy to share what they've been reading about (or listening to, or watching) lately.

calvinmorrison 2y ago

Join the RR&R or start your own charter club! https://ephorate.org https://ephorate.org

inktype 2y ago

I'm sure it's still out there, but I don't seem to notice as much prevalence of dedicated research trivia as I used to, like Damn Interesting, or Cracked. Lots of the articles would be some niche question that wasn't just a google away and it was obvious that it took effort and time at a library to write. The closest thing that comes to mind now is Asianometry's youtube channel and mailing list.

awongh 2y ago

I read a fair amount and I actually do research as leisure all the time, but I can’t stand these elitist and unoriginal think pieces about how much better and cooler this person’s habits are than yours. >> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else. I actually deeply agree with the advice in the OP around curiosity but personally I end up implementing it in a totally different way than they do. Lately I’ve found that LLMs are an amazing tool for this free-floating “research”- for example “Summarize the top three theories about why suburbs exist and who said them”. The LLM as open ended semantic search engine / research tool is an amazing way to figure out the topology of a subject you want to dive deeper into. I usually work my way down a content ladder from there to podcasts, wikipedia and finally to books. The idea that somehow civilization is ending because of our media consumption habits and that “reading source material” will save us comes off as more an aesthetic fantasy than a real-world complaint about today’s culture. I was around before the internet and I’m so thankful that so much more information is accessible now than it was when there were only books.

aaron695 2y ago
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nluken 2y ago
I think you're generally right about the OP, but I don't see your alternative method as a tonic to the problem the author is discussing. I agree that treating reading as the only way to ingest information is probably wrong, and that the original post tends towards hierarchy in an almost reactionary way, yet at the same time I also see that many people tend to ingest information from other forms of media less critically than they might a book or written piece. I think this dichotomy derives from the different levels of focus we apply to different activities. Reading, even for leisure, demands a level of effort that forces you to focus and, in a way, analyze the information you're ingesting. By removing that barrier, you might fail to fully grasp the ideas that the primary source expressed. In your use case, the LLM can be a great tool to get a start, but it's much easier to accept that output uncritically, which is especially problematic because it bears the biases of the training corpus. Sure, you can mitigate that issue if you're driven by the intellectual curiosity to dig deeper, which it seems you are, but at that point aren't you doing the kind of leisure research that the original post is talking about anyway? You're just using the initial steps to discover the "foundational texts", as the original post puts it, of the field. The LLM step becomes less material to the follow-up reading you've done after the fact. Many, perhaps even most people will not make it to the second step. I see the lack of intellectual curiosity as a problem of focus more than anything else, and in my experience the overly rich media landscape of the internet does not concentrate that focus in most people.

fxtentacle 2y ago

"Where have the amateur researchers gone" To their 2nd job. "and how do we bring them back?" Pay them enough salary to survive on just 1 job.

aurumque 2y ago
A lot (and I mean A LOT) of research and breakthroughs in the period of 1500 to 1900 was completed by people with no jobs whatsoever. If you are looking to revive the great mathematicians, writers, philosophers, and scientists of yesteryear, you will need to pay them a UBI and sit back and hope for the best.
mikrotikker 2y ago
Plus in 2020 all the news outlets told us not to do our own research.

keepamovin 2y ago

AI is bringing that back. It's so fun to say: "Teach me about..." and just keep going. :)

luizfzs 2y ago

My gut feeling (with bias) is that most people don't think about things around them because society is in a constant state of hurry. If someone is wondering 'how did zoning laws came to be?', they are not being productive. And our western society seems to value the individuals based on how much they produce. The person working, or commuting to/from work, is tired and doesn't have the energy to ponder about the world around us. The 'first researchers' if I may call them that, were the Ionians, a Greek island of merchants, that had the time and resources to pursue the interests of the mind. That's of course, only part of the story. The other part, I'd say, is to have the habit of questioning and wondering about the world around us. That comes with practice. And ironically, lots of parents indirectly discourage their kids from asking questions by becoming annoyed at how many 'whys' their kids ask. Our educational system is also discouraging of such way of thinking. It's mostly a production line of workers.

randomNumber7 2y ago
I agree with your gut feeling and add that to me it feels im surrounded by f*ing Zombies. It's not that they are too stupid, but they don't even __try__ to think.
- gnulinux 2y ago
  My boss regularly criticizes me for thinking too much. Sometimes I stop and think if this is the best way to implement something, and then suddenly receive a lecture about velocity, moving fast, being efficient, being ok with pushing bugs to prod, and all that shebang. Our society has a pathological obsession with productivity.
  - hnben 2y ago
    > then suddenly receive a lecture about velocity, moving fast, being efficient I like to give the opposite kind of lecture, like when someone refused to even consider alternative ways of solving a problem. Some phrases I like to throw around: "you just wasted 2 days of work, because you skipped 30min of research at the start", or "it's arrogant to assume, you'll find the perfect solution on the very first try".

aeblyve 2y ago

The most important thing is having a wealth of free time.

jll29 2y ago

I like the idea of collecting a list of books that you would take with you on a remote island. Imagine you would never leave that island, what would you take? - The Art of Computer Programming I-IVb - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition - ... or perhaps - The Bible - The Scouting Guide to Wilderness First Aid: An Officially-Licensed Book of the Boy Scouts of America: More than 200 Essential Skills for Medical ... in Remote Environments (A BSA Scouting Guide) - ...?

readthenotes1 2y ago
Certainly survival guide stuff. I was thinking about the civilization book case and wondering if they had forgotten to include sun tzu, clausewitz, etc ...

PaulHoule 2y ago

Marshall McLuhan also thought television would displace reading but I think it only happened for real when YouTube came along in that YouTube vastly expanded the availability of non-fiction TV. One example is the disappearance of text guides for video games: circa 2010 you could still find good FAQs and walkthroughs such that if you got stuck or were trying to work out the dependencies in a Neptunia game such that you need items A, B and C to make item D and you'll have to visit locations E, F and F' (a variant of F you can unlock by making a "plan") you could do it efficiently. Now for a 30 hour game you have to find the right place in 30 hours worth of video -- once in a while you are stuck because there is some place where you can jump where it doesn't look like you can jump and just seeing somebody do it in a video makes it totally clear, but just as often somebody in the video took a different route or has a different build and you've got no freakin' idea even after watching the video. There was already a problem for games like Pokemon where walkthroughs were problematic because of the high variance of builds, but it's far worse in video where you want a database more than you want a walkthrough.

dartos 2y ago

Yeah, quants are another breed.

mykowebhn 2y ago

It's difficult, especially if you have to earn money and support others. I'm taking some time off, and I'm currently busy reading the German Idealist philosophers, Kant, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, and some Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus. I am having the time of my life!

unit149 2y ago

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strawhatdev 2y ago

The victorian urge to travel the world collecting rare botanical samples.

deleted 2y ago

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vonneumannstan 2y ago

>>> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts >I feel like this person has some kind of dark academia aesthetic fetish that they need to hold onto to feel superior to everyone else. This is how you end up on the Crackpot Index. Thinking you created a theory of everything or a cold fusion device despite literally not knowing algebra or basic electrical engineering.

kishore-jalleda 2y ago

I don't think amateur researchers have disappeared - they're evolving how they discover, process, and share knowledge. And we need both traditional deep reading and newer modalities to accommodate different learning contexts and preferences.

TimorousBestie 2y ago

The largest impediment to researching in my leisure time is the vast and exorbitant paywalls that academic publishers deploy. It’s particularly galling when I know the work was funded by my own tax dollars. If a govt employee had produced the work, it would have been in the public domain. But if the govt gives a grant to a researcher, suddenly their output is intellectual property with a grossly inflated profit margin.

danans 2y ago

> Where free time is not used for research — for developing questions, and investigating the answers with an explorer’s spirit — cultural coherence crumbles. Perhaps, but the reality for a great many is that "free time" is occupied by survival anxiety, whether because that time is spent in additional paid work, care of loved ones, or attempting to get a leg up or to jump on a non-sinking life raft. While technology-enabled cultural fragmentation is undoubtedly a strong influence in this, the long term affordability inversion that has occurred between consumables (food, clothes, electronics, etc) and assets (housing, education, security) has exacerbated the aforementioned anxieties and therefore makes people vulnerable to the charms of the escapism that new types of quick-hit media provide, from cable-news through to social media.

ctrlp 2y ago

Amateur researchers are frequently derided as dilettantes. Sometimes they are. But "Science" is filled with gatekeepers demanding institutional credentials. For good and bad.

sotix 2y ago

I’ve been researching Greek mythology for the past few years as an amateur. It’s been a lot of fun and rewarding for me. There are a few things, which make the research in my leisure time tough though. 1. Society is set up so that I have to prioritize making money in my limited free time. Fortunately this pressure has lessened since I got a well paying job, but it held back my free time for years. 2. Because of the first constraint, I don’t have the time to dive into mastery. I’m reading works at a much slower rate since I have to work everyday. I’ve also found the time over the past few years to study Modern Greek, which I could have spent studying Ancient Greek I suppose. However, I don’t have the time to study both and Modern Greek has been my priority for reasons outside of my research. 3. I owe a great deal of my research to people with PhDs/DPhils on the topic. However, I also can’t contribute much to the field because they deliver their incredible work full time. I’m far less likely to make significant contributions when they have already spent years studying Ancient Greek and then every day performing acts such as translating great works. All that said, I’m satisfied not competing with the experts. I just recognize that this is purely a hobby that I perform for fun when I have the time, which isn’t as often as I need in order to be a more useful researcher.

creer 2y ago

Lost? It has never been easier to do research or start a research project. What has changed is the inclination to read. Reading was a refuge for some - and probably fiction graphic novels, computer games, doom scrolling are now the comparable refuge. So basic, cursory research has lost one population. Did that population do all that much in-depth research. Some sure. Not all that much. So there was perhaps an anomaly in research for a short while and we are now back to deeper research belonging again to the people who enjoy the rabbit hole and the full fledged projects. And for us, research has never been easier.

thinkcritical 2y ago

First of all, there was a lot of interesting food for thought in this post and I love the framework it offers for leisurely research. However; I don't agree with this: > through audiovisual devices, which ask no discipline of the mind, and which are already giving the room the languor of an opium parlor. I wish there was concrete evidence provided to support this. I suspect that learning outcomes are going to be more influenced by the quality of the material and the level of engagement of the learner, regardless of medium. Bad content is bad content, whether it's text or audiovisual, and I can passively read a book as easily as I can passively consume a video.

odyssey7 2y ago

Academia has a combination of monopoly and scarcity that drove would-be researchers insane. Simple as that. I mean this both flippantly in many cases and literally in many others. Academia in my orbit appears to be a risk factor for psychological problems.

cytocync 2y ago

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loxodrome 2y ago

The academic establishment has done a pretty good job of excluding and discrediting anyone without a PhD from actively participating in research.

seu 2y ago

"Books as civilization" implies that those peoples who had not "created" books (or something similar) were not civilized. Quite eurocentric.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

"Fundamental to the art of research as leisure is the creation of formal and informal ‘communities of knowledge’ in which well-researched ideas are communicated in a written form, and presented for wider debate." I think the better message for this article is publish your findings if you do original research. On a personal blog. In a paper. Maybe a book. All the other stuff is a bit circle jerky.

admiralrohan 2y ago

I grew up in poverty in India, so research was never a leisure activity—it was a race to keep up. That’s why I think the article is right about the cultural shift. Deep reading feels like a luxury not everyone can afford. Now, I see more people relying on step-by-step guides instead of digging in themselves. It fits the trend of passive consumption. But reading alone isn’t enough. It only matters if you can use it to solve real problems you care about.

oglop 2y ago

Stan Ulam has a great book discussing his worry about the change in research environments pre-wwII vs post-WWII. Before the war, they’d sit in cafes and draw in tables and just sit and think sometimes as a group. After they would meet in offices with blackboards and no life in the room or fun with direct funding telling them exactly what to study. I think his concern will be shown to be sound. I wonder if LLMs can help bring that kind of exploratory culture back. Because this is not an exploratory culture.

thenthenthen 2y ago

I do research as leisure, any tips on how to keep track of sources, snippets, websites spanning several hdds, machines and decades?

mberlove 2y ago

This article read a little different than I expected from the title. I was just thinking about this topic recently through a book that surveyed historians in the 19th century. So many of them got their starts doing historical research as a hobby or a passion in life. The discoveries they made were a life's work, their joy rather than something required to do (many did make it their occupation, though not all). It's inspiring I think that the depth of passion in any topic can carry you through to important discoveries. In that sense the coding hobbyist and the citizen scientist are little different IMHO.