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Then there's how to read a research paper for hackers. I see each article as a patch. Our minds are both running operating systems and decentralized repos. Each of us are specialized and running a different custom OS, so may require different sets of patches. Science is specifically concerned with our mental models of how the world works. Different fields in science are like different levels of abstraction in programming. My specialty leans more towards higher levels, so subjects like psychology, philosophy, biology, are more relevant to my mental model than lower level mathematics, chemistry, and physics. When I read research articles, I'm primarily interested in extracting an abstract high-level idea, which I can apply to my repo. I start with the end of the abstract, then discussion, conclusion, results, to find the main point, then only look at details if I can use them. Once I have a simple idea, I merge it by connecting it to related ideas in a functional way. Each idea then becomes like a code snippet of a function, and my process of learning is like coding, where although you may copy/paste a snippet off the web, you still need to reason with logic to connect it into your code so it actually works. If I can't make something work right now in my repo, it doesn't commit, so is temporarily stashed, where I may either forget about it, or come back to it if I find the missing pieces to fit it into the working directory. |