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.<p>>> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I usually work my way down a content ladder from there to podcasts, wikipedia and finally to books.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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"<p>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 -- <a href="https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA</a> -- But it should not be about the method of ingesting information, but the quality and the intent of it.
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.<p>It was a really mind blowing exercise. Much more interesting than fiction.<p>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.<p>What’s funny is that history is the subject I was least interested in all through school.
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.<p>The leisure the author speaks of may be their own, and the research of which they speak today may be done by a machine.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>The person working, or commuting to/from work, is tired and doesn't have the energy to ponder about the world around us.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Our educational system is also discouraging of such way of thinking. It's mostly a production line of workers.
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.
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.<p>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 <i>Neptunia</i> 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.<p>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 <i>Pokemon</i> 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.
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.<p>Things can be done and should!!
What a wonderful article! Thanks for sharing!<p>I’ve been thinking a lot about how <i>research</i> — 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.<p>But here’s the interesting part: the <i>tools</i> 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.”<p>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 <i>multiple</i> 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 <i>real</i> goals of research.<p>So doing research well requires:<p>1. *A sense of wonder*: the initial spark that keeps us motivated.<p>2. *A well-formed question*: something that orients our curiosity but leaves room for discovery.<p>3. *Evidence gathering from diverse sources*: that’s where syntopical reading really shines.<p>4. *A culminating answer* (even if it simply leads to more questions).<p>5. *Community*: sharing and testing ideas with others.<p>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, <i>anyone</i> can be an amateur researcher, provided they move beyond the mere collection of ideas toward genuine synthesis and thoughtful communication.
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.<p>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.
Don't know about you guys, but reading has become more and more of a burden for me.<p>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.<p>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.<p>I suspect it has something to do with getting older and getting kid(s).<p>What about you guys?
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 <i>why</i> they agree with you.<p>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.<p>The message below that section is valuable but only in <i>value</i>. It doesn't really get in to <i>how</i> to practice it. It laments the modern information landscape but doesn't tell us <i>how</i>. 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".<p>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 <i>need</i> to refine your writing and thinking, which leads to new questions, new exploration and perspective.<p>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)<p>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).<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iNCiQzMDcV0?feature=shared</a>
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.<p>Did that population do all that much in-depth research. Some sure. Not all that much.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
"Where have the amateur researchers gone"<p>To their 2nd job.<p>"and how do we bring them back?"<p>Pay them enough salary to survive on just 1 job.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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?<p>- The Art of Computer Programming I-IVb<p>- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs<p>- Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid<p>- Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition<p>- ...<p>or perhaps<p>- The Bible<p>- 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)<p>- ...?
I did some leisure research on how the Nazca Lines align with mountain shadows and made a publication. That was a nice weekend.
<a href="https://zenodo.org/records/11422308" rel="nofollow">https://zenodo.org/records/11422308</a>
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:<p>> through audiovisual devices, which ask no discipline of the mind, and which are already giving the room the languor of an opium parlor.<p>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.
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.
> Where free time is not used for research — for developing questions, and investigating the answers with an explorer’s spirit — cultural coherence crumbles.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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).<p>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.
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.<p>I wonder if LLMs can help bring that kind of exploratory culture back. Because this is not an exploratory culture.
Amateur researchers are frequently derided as dilettantes. Sometimes they are. But "Science" is filled with gatekeepers demanding institutional credentials. For good and bad.
This article sums up precisely why I don't mind being a "forever GM".<p>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!
>>> for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts<p>>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.<p>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.
It would be nice to afford to practice that art. Most people are practicing the art of putting food on their tables.<p>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.
It's difficult, especially if you have to earn money and support others.<p>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!
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 <i>building</i> something, which I think is more involved. Here's my perspective on the obstacles towards this form of deeper research:<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
"Books as civilization" implies that those peoples who had not "created" books (or something similar) were not civilized. Quite eurocentric.
“I have studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and even, sad to say, theology, all with great exertion.”
– Faust, Part I, Scene I (“Night”)
The largest impediment to researching in my leisure time is the vast and exorbitant paywalls that academic publishers deploy.<p>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.
"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."<p>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.<p>All the other stuff is a bit circle jerky.
Academia has a combination of monopoly and scarcity that drove would-be researchers insane. Simple as that.<p>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.