Cross-posted to LessWrong.
I notice I rely on two metaphors of intellectual work:
1. intellectual work as exploration – intellectual work is an expedition through unknown territory (a la Meru, a la Amundsen & the South Pole). It’s unclear whether the expedition will be successful; the explorers band together to function as one unit & support each other; the value of the work is largely “in the moment” / “because it’s there”, the success of the exploration is mostly determined by objective criteria.
Examples: Andrew Wiles spending six years in secrecy to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, Distill’s essays on machine learning, Robert Caro’s books, Donne Martin’s data science portfolio (clearly a labor of love)
2. intellectual work as performance – intellectual work is a performative act with an audience (a la Black Swan, a la Super Bowl halftime shows). It’s not clear that any given performance will succeed, but there will always be a “best performance”; performers tend to compete & form factions; the value of the work accrues afterward / the work itself is instrumental; the success of the performance is mostly determined by subjective criteria.
Examples: journal impact factors, any social science result that’s published but fails to replicate, academic dogfights on Twitter, TED talks
Clearly both metaphors do work – I’m wondering which is better to cultivate on the margin.
My intuition is that it’s better to lean on the image of intellectual work as exploration; curious what folks here think.
I’m a bit unclear on the question exactly. You ask which metaphor is better to cultivate on the margin, but I’m not sure for whom or for what purpose. Both metaphors seem clearly true to some extent to me, and which metaphor it fits more depends a lot on individuals and fields IMO.
Yeah, I’ve realized I’m most interested in the question of which metaphor is better to be holding while doing intellectual work.
See this comment.
From the examples you’ve given, you show a pretty heavy bias toward “intellectual work as exploration” providing us with things that are more true and useful, and I suppose I don’t doubt you, in that it is “better” to take the approach more likely to give us something true and useful at the end (for which exploration, if not fully optimized, seems better-suited than performance).
That said, if I understand you correctly, it seems as though much exploration involves looking at the “performance” of others, and that performance exists only a as a layer on top of someone’s prior exploration (however distant). Peter Singer sitting and reading and thinking for a long time is important, but Peter Singer giving a TED talk is also important, if we think of “intellectual work” as “have the idea, and make sure others also come to have the idea”.
Thanks, I found this helpful. TED talks are a great example of intellectual performance without a negative connotation.
I’ve realized I’m most interested in the question of which metaphor to be holding while doing intellectual work.
On that, I think it makes sense to be (almost) exclusively using the “exploration” metaphor when doing intellectual work.
Then, it seems good to switch to the “performance” metaphor when it’s time to propagate ideas (or hand off to a partner specialized in intellectual performance).
Open question for me: Is it costly to grow skillful in intellectual performance? Does it make one’s intellectual work worse / less truth-seeking? (My intuition is “yes, it’s costly” but seems plausible that the performance skill could be safely compartmentalized.)
My intuition is that becoming skillful is difficult, as it would be for most performance skills, but that it’s quite possible to do so without getting worse at intellectual work, as long as you continue to value that work and have a social circle that won’t let you slack off on truthseeking. Many intellectual “performers” who get a bit epistemically lazy may have been prevented from doing so if they’d had friends around to check their worst impulses.