1) Because the skills required to be a good distiller are very similar to the skills required to be a good researcher, most people who’d become good distillers become good researchers instead for status/impact/etc reasons. However, a good-not-great distillation could still be produced by someone who’s new to the field, and hence is directly valuable (with the caveat that a senior researcher should still probably have to look at the piece to check if there aren’t any errors, but that’s a substantially lower time commitment than writing the piece oneself).
2) Distillation is a great way to build and demonstrate skill for newcomers to a field.
Idea: have internships such as Nonlinear’s or run CERI/SERI/CHERI-style fellowships focusing fully or in part on producing distillations.
The point 1 is correct, but there is a difference: when you research it’s often needed to live near a research group. Distillation is more open to remote and asynchronous work.
(1) — I think there is probably a correlation between good distillers and good researchers, but it isn’t one-to-one. Distillers probably have a stronger comparative advantage in communication and simplification, whereas researchers probably would be better at creativity and diving deep into specific focus areas. It seems like a lot of great academics struggle with simplifying and broadcasting their core ideas to a level of abstraction that a general audience can understand.
(2) — completely agree, I think it would a great skill signal.
1) Because the skills required to be a good distiller are very similar to the skills required to be a good researcher, most people who’d become good distillers become good researchers instead for status/impact/etc reasons. However, a good-not-great distillation could still be produced by someone who’s new to the field, and hence is directly valuable (with the caveat that a senior researcher should still probably have to look at the piece to check if there aren’t any errors, but that’s a substantially lower time commitment than writing the piece oneself).
2) Distillation is a great way to build and demonstrate skill for newcomers to a field.
Idea: have internships such as Nonlinear’s or run CERI/SERI/CHERI-style fellowships focusing fully or in part on producing distillations.
The point 1 is correct, but there is a difference: when you research it’s often needed to live near a research group. Distillation is more open to remote and asynchronous work.
(1) — I think there is probably a correlation between good distillers and good researchers, but it isn’t one-to-one. Distillers probably have a stronger comparative advantage in communication and simplification, whereas researchers probably would be better at creativity and diving deep into specific focus areas. It seems like a lot of great academics struggle with simplifying and broadcasting their core ideas to a level of abstraction that a general audience can understand.
(2) — completely agree, I think it would a great skill signal.
I love the fellowship idea as well!