How to Do Research. v1
This post is part of my "research" series. Introduction Sometimes the need is desperate. You have children to raise, cancer to treat, something important broke and you're going down with it. These kind of situations rarely afford you the luxury of time. You have to do the best you can, because it's your life, and you have ultimate responsibility over it. I think information is decisive in almost any scenario. Learning to research out of desperate need is like learning to drive on the way to the hospital. The time to practice any skill is years ago. Or now. Whichever is earlier. I'm working off of two books: Umberto Eco's How to write a thesis and Mortimer Adler's How to read a book. Both have valuable ideas, and between the two there is enough to put together a first approximation to the process. I'm writing this down so that: 1. I'll be forced to think through the entire thing, 2. I can use the resulting guide as a working checklist, 3. I'll have some place I can keep updating as my thougths on the process change, and 4. I can share and discuss it. I am not an expert. This is not a definitive guide. This is work in progress. What do I mean by research? In the academic world, "doing research" means getting published. For a thesis, this means a thesis defense; for a paper, this means peer review and editorial review. The process takes a long time and imposes pressures and incentives that I can only describe as perverse. > [...] the rigor of a thesis is more important than it's scope [...] it is better to build a serious trading card collection from 1960 to the present than to create a cursory art collection. The thesis shares this same criterion. — Eco. How to write a thesis. p5 > On your specific topic, you are humanity’s functionary who speaks in the collective voice. Be humble and prudent before opening your mouth, but once you open it, be dignified and proud. [...] on the topic you have chosen [...] you must be the utmost living authority. — Eco. Ho
Early COVID response on LW was a generalized "this is a big deal." I can't find the post that originally caught my eye, but I remember hitting the supermarkets in Buenos Aires, stocking up on masks and hand sanitizer, and two weeks later seeing the city freak the hell out. Jacob's "Seeing the Smoke" was a strong early signal, and Zvi's updates often considered explicit numbers.