danielalmeida
Joined 12 years ago
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https://www.danielalmeida.me/
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Comment · 8 years ago
I think the main point made by the author is that we should _be able to_ read properly and consciously make the decision to do so for some texts. I don't think anyone would argue that we should carefully read every single shallow, poorly written blog post out there.
"We need to cultivate a new kind of brain: a “bi-literate” reading brain capable of the deepest forms of thought in either digital or traditional mediums. A great deal hangs on it: the ability of citizens in a vibrant democracy to try on other perspectives and discern truth; the capacity of our children and grandchildren to appreciate and create beauty; and the ability in ourselves to go beyond our present glut of information to reach the knowledge and wisdom necessary to sustain a good society."
Comment · 9 years ago
This is all over the place and reads like a collection of random pieces of advice.
Why not stop at "An engineer makes something work. You are more than that. You are an artisan." and present a reasonable line of argument?
Comment · 9 years ago
Here's a better title: "What the PhDs we interviewed should've known before interviewing with us".
Comment · 9 years ago
Basecamp has 50 employees. Google was founded in 1998 and has 50k employees. I think there's something more to be said about the differences in their experiences and the kind of mistakes they have made.
Comment · 9 years ago
I agree with you. To put it simply, papers are optimized for the scientific community and making them "more accessible" to outsiders has a cost. I'd settle for better writing and presentations within the scientific community for now. If you ever find researchers that blog about their research in simple terms, I think it's safe to assume they're using their personal time to do that (I know of very few; Andy Ko [1] comes to mind).
Comment · 9 years ago
Not necessarily. IMO, she proposes a specific way of "thinking" about the paper's content (I use another approach [1]). Papers are written following a certain structure because many people think it's a better way of presenting the ideas in detail/with the necessary rigor (that's what other "scientists" in the field would expect). For example, no researcher expects a five-sentence summary of the background. Personally, I expect an explanation of the relevant concepts/techniques and some sort of analysis of how existing work relates to the paper (instead of a list of related papers). At least in software engineering, many papers state the research questions explicitly, i.e., they would be identified if you read the paper from beginning to end. They tend to have a "results" section as well, so summarizing the results myself would be an intellectual exercise. Once you understand how papers are usually structured, you pick up on many of those things as you go (I mean, as you simply read the paper as the author intended).
On a side note, I'd say that many researchers don't do a good job of conveying their ideas clearly (it gets worse with conference presentations). It won't really matter in what order you try to read their papers.
[1] http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/p...
Comment · 9 years ago
Because they are not writing for non-scientists.
Comment · 9 years ago
Posted and discussed before multiple times.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8815065