[notahacker]

My first thought on reading him talking about equations to estimate numbers of fighters based on a few parameters is that there are entire subfields of academia devoted to debating regularities like this: most of economics, most of modern IR theory, substantial parts of psychology, sociology and politics. And the standard criticism (within the subfield, at least) isn't that there is something inherently wrong with expressing part of the world as a mathematical model, but that the mathematical model chosen is wrongly specified. The world isn't hostile to the concept of simulations, but it does have a horrible tendency to produce data that casts doubt on their accuracy.

[danielscrubs]

I’m always baffled by how little self proclaimed geniuses actually read current research papers.

It’s almost like they protect their pride by not challenging themselves, thereby being able to say they are knowledgeable with a conscience.

[TheAceOfHearts]

Do you have advice on how one can get more into reading interesting research papers in Computer Science and Software Engineering? I've previously tried subscribing to ACM but found that too many of their articles weren't of much interest or relevance to me. I definitely do feel like I've gotten lazy and that I don't challenge myself enough, but it's hard to break out of these patterns so I'd welcome any suggestions or recommendations which could help me grow.

I usually start reaching for research papers when I'm aware of a specific problem and I'm looking for the different approaches that have been taken to try and solve said problems.

Every few months I visit the NIST website and I browse through their catalogue to pick out interesting articles and publications to add to my queue.

[UncleMeat]

Most papers are available on author websites or arxiv. I'd check out the titles of papers in recent software engineering conferences (ICSE is a great starter) and read what you are interested in. For CS more broadly you'll need to start with a field and then find conferences since conferences are broken up by topic.

[danielscrubs]

I like to check the award section of “best thesis paper” of my local university for fun and then at work I have to read research papers in my area but then I just use a search engine to find it.

Start small and don’t take it too seriously! Little by little, just as learning a new language.