-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
Commit
This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
- Loading branch information
Showing
1 changed file
with
84 additions
and
0 deletions.
There are no files selected for viewing
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
---|---|---|
@@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ | ||
--- | ||
title: "Solitude, Society, Originality" | ||
date: 2023-11-13T21:49:20+05:30 | ||
categories: ["Polymathy"] | ||
tags : ["reflection", "evolution", "solitude", "inquiry", "balance", "science", "collaboration", "exploration", "knowledge", "technology", "novelty", "perspective", "ideas", "intellectual"] | ||
draft: False | ||
--- | ||
|
||
Some-days, I wonder that I'm born half a millennia too late | ||
into this world given the extent of novel societal tendencies that I'm | ||
not fond of. | ||
|
||
Although, the notion of Batman didn't exist then, given a | ||
choice, I'd probably consider time traveling to an intellectually simpler | ||
life when much of what the present science and engineering entails was | ||
just beginning to be discovered and invented. | ||
|
||
Research options then weren't thresholded by who's packing heavier | ||
compute but rather open to all that could observe patiently and | ||
portrayed the will to ask, sceptic-ize and act according to their whims. | ||
|
||
## On the shoulders of Giants... | ||
|
||
In the earlier days of most subject, huge anchors of contributions | ||
originate from a series of fundamental minor observations, to now | ||
forking into numerous finer threads that tangibly realized in the | ||
growing amounts of research corpus these days. | ||
|
||
The idea of conducting personal research and devising minor domains is | ||
continuously being limited to a select few over the decades as | ||
apprentices struggle to catch up with finer and finer bleeding edges | ||
of something that was so blunt and casually approachable a few hundred | ||
years ago. | ||
|
||
Although this signifies a growth in complexity of abstractions that | ||
humanity has explored as a collective, it does seem to be a gloomy | ||
scenario for the curious observer bounded by his natural instruments | ||
of observation. | ||
|
||
The chances of discovering even the remotest of abstractions | ||
independently are ruined by hyper-connected populations. The chances | ||
of chancing upon the same intellectual abstraction twice from | ||
different roots have dwindled down to none thanks to the power of the | ||
written word and lately, computer networks. | ||
|
||
## A Proposition - Cyber-Solitude | ||
|
||
One possible panacea for this diverse set of intellectual deficiencies | ||
that's forced upon dwellers of the current times, that I've been | ||
testing out is to deliberately distance myself from news and assume a | ||
particular thought hasn't been thought of before even though there's a high | ||
chance it has been, several times. It might even be recorded in some | ||
corners of the internet and be conveniently accessible due to LLMs | ||
slowly replacing search engines. | ||
|
||
Moreover, not reading up the ends of a thread and only restricting | ||
yourself to foundational reads, forcing a rewarding climb up the trees | ||
of knowledge to the particular section of a canopy you were searching | ||
for is a preferable path for me than observing a snapshot of the same | ||
from a satellite zoom-in. | ||
|
||
## I'm not Bad-Mouthing Intellectual Interdependence ... | ||
|
||
... but there's a pretty obvious and distinct line between riding a jet | ||
across continents and what the wright brothers did over the span of a | ||
green field. | ||
|
||
While I can't deny the usefulness of the former, I hope you are | ||
lucky enough to realize the joy of doing something similar to the | ||
latter. | ||
|
||
|
||
## Pseudo-Originality | ||
|
||
Personally, I've found trying to come with non-optimal explanations of | ||
phenomena around me before looking up the tested and accurate versions | ||
to be a fulfilling habit that might just help me retain my sanity and | ||
feed my need for natural novelty than drown myself in readily | ||
available facts and factoids. | ||
|
||
This isn't a jab at collaborative science but a call to independently | ||
practice the solitary variant of the same. Both present a different | ||
sort of satisfaction that might just be the combination needed for a | ||
balanced intellectual diet. |