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solitude, society, originality
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rajp152k committed Nov 13, 2023
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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.

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