Research Debt

• Research Debt
• Achieving a research-level understanding of most topics is like climbing a mountain.
• Aspiring researchers must struggle to understand vast bodies of work that came before them, to learn techniques, and to gain intuition
• Upon reaching the top, the new researcher begins doing novel work, throwing new stones onto the top of the mountain and making it a little taller for whoever comes next.
• People expect the climb to be hard
• It reflects the tremendous progress and cumulative effort that’s gone into mathematics
• The climb is seen as an intellectual pilgrimage, the labor a rite of passage
• But the climb could be massively easier
• It’s entirely possible to build paths and staircases into these mountains.
• That is, really outstanding tutorials, reviews, textbooks, and so on.
• technical debt
• institutional debt
• Poor Exposition
• Interpretive Labor
• Clear Thinking
• Research Distillation