<story><title>We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom (2021)</title><url>https://realizeengineering.blog/2021/01/20/we-are-drowning-in-information-while-starving-for-wisdom/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>This article is totally ignoring the existence of academic &amp;quot;handbooks&amp;quot;, which is where the wisdom lies.&lt;p&gt;The whole idea is that individual papers are &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to be exploratory, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. They&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to be a deluge of information.&lt;p&gt;But then every decade or so a team of academics take it upon themselves to serve as editors to a handbook, which attempts to survey the field in terms of history, where the most value has been found so far (and what hasn&amp;#x27;t panned out), and current promising directions. Usually something like 20-50 chapters, each contributed by a different author.&lt;p&gt;If you want to get into the wisdom of a field, the first thing you do is pull out the most recent 800-page handbook, read the first few chapters, and then drill down in your area of interest on the remaining part.&lt;p&gt;To say there &amp;quot;are no prizes for wisdom&amp;quot; is absurd, when being selected to publish in a handbook (or being an editor) is prestigious, a mark that you&amp;#x27;ve very much &amp;quot;made it&amp;quot; in the field.&lt;p&gt;And of course there are plenty of other things that serve similar roles, such as literature review papers or similar. (In philosophy you can write a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, for instance.)&lt;p&gt;If you aren&amp;#x27;t finding wisdom anywhere, it means you&amp;#x27;re simply not looking right.&lt;p&gt;(And this isn&amp;#x27;t even to mention the fact that at some point somebody will popularize major progress in a field in a general-audience book, e.g. when Daniel Goleman wrote the book &amp;quot;Emotional Intelligence&amp;quot; or Stephen Hawking wrote &amp;quot;A Brief History of Time&amp;quot;.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>earthicus</author><text>I agree with you that academic summary works are probably the best way for a non-researcher to learn what exists, what&amp;#x27;s known (and what isn&amp;#x27;t). Since i&amp;#x27;ve never seen them discussed or referenced on this website, let me also point out the existence of academic encyclopedias, such as the Springer encyclopedia of algoriths[1] (each entry is essentially a slightly more pedagogical review article about a subfield or important problem in CS, along with loads of references to the literature for digging deeper), and the delightful encyclopedia of distances [2](800 pages long!). A couple others i&amp;#x27;ve seen that may be of interest to this audience are the encyclopedia of systems and control[3], and the encyclopedia of unconventional computing[4]&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately some of these are absurdly expensive, so if you don&amp;#x27;t want to go the piracy route the cheapest way to access them is to get a membership to your local public university&amp;#x27;s library system, which in the US typically costs like $100 a year or something.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-1-4939-2864-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-1-4939-2...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-3-662-52844-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;book&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-3-662-52844-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-3-030-44184-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-3-030-44...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-1-4939-6883-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;link.springer.com&amp;#x2F;referencework&amp;#x2F;10.1007&amp;#x2F;978-1-4939-6...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom (2021)</title><url>https://realizeengineering.blog/2021/01/20/we-are-drowning-in-information-while-starving-for-wisdom/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>This article is totally ignoring the existence of academic &amp;quot;handbooks&amp;quot;, which is where the wisdom lies.&lt;p&gt;The whole idea is that individual papers are &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to be exploratory, throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. They&amp;#x27;re &lt;i&gt;supposed&lt;/i&gt; to be a deluge of information.&lt;p&gt;But then every decade or so a team of academics take it upon themselves to serve as editors to a handbook, which attempts to survey the field in terms of history, where the most value has been found so far (and what hasn&amp;#x27;t panned out), and current promising directions. Usually something like 20-50 chapters, each contributed by a different author.&lt;p&gt;If you want to get into the wisdom of a field, the first thing you do is pull out the most recent 800-page handbook, read the first few chapters, and then drill down in your area of interest on the remaining part.&lt;p&gt;To say there &amp;quot;are no prizes for wisdom&amp;quot; is absurd, when being selected to publish in a handbook (or being an editor) is prestigious, a mark that you&amp;#x27;ve very much &amp;quot;made it&amp;quot; in the field.&lt;p&gt;And of course there are plenty of other things that serve similar roles, such as literature review papers or similar. (In philosophy you can write a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, for instance.)&lt;p&gt;If you aren&amp;#x27;t finding wisdom anywhere, it means you&amp;#x27;re simply not looking right.&lt;p&gt;(And this isn&amp;#x27;t even to mention the fact that at some point somebody will popularize major progress in a field in a general-audience book, e.g. when Daniel Goleman wrote the book &amp;quot;Emotional Intelligence&amp;quot; or Stephen Hawking wrote &amp;quot;A Brief History of Time&amp;quot;.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aiwv</author><text>Not only have I never heard of this kind of &amp;quot;handbook&amp;quot; (in spite of having an advanced degree), it isn&amp;#x27;t clear to me how they actually would be a reliable source of wisdom. It sounds like they are supposed to be a meta-analysis of the current state field, but to take it up a meta-level, who is analyzing the meta-analysis? How do I know the editors didn&amp;#x27;t just select their friends who have similar viewpoints? In the abstract, a handbook seems as likely to send me wildly astray as it is to send me down the right path. Almost by design, I&amp;#x27;d naively expect handbooks to amplify the status quo and discourage more radical ideas (as most institutions are wont to do). This might be good or bad depending on the status quo but either way I&amp;#x27;m likely only going to get out wisdom proportional to what I bring in.</text></comment>