A case for Research (excerpts from a braindump)
What is my definition of a good days work? I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Engineering has a tangible definition, You push out a new feature or maybe fix a couple bugs! That’s great but do I think deeply? Have I questioned concepts I assume to be true? Do I really think about the bug or is my impulse to just put a bandaid on it cause doing that now takes less time than it takes me to piss. It’s getting increasingly hard with autonomous agents taking over my life. I spend days on autopilot and still feel a sense of fulfillment cause I did get tangible things done without remotely using any part of my brain. But do I think outside of work?
As I was writing the earlier paragraph, I opened Youtube and watched a couple videos of the subway takes guy telling me how to feel about something and I really believe him. Something has caused my brain to develop this incredible aversion to thinking. You know, the thing that makes you human. Why should I even bother sitting and thinking? The world is overstimuating and I have already spent enough time figuring out how to make what I need to live a life of comfortable mediocrity. I have job that demands just enough “creative work” from me that I can now do without thinking, And after work i watch something from my Letterboxd list. I don’ t even think about the movie anymore, i just sleep. I am not thinking because its not helping me anymore but I can always do it when push comes to shove. I know what you are thinking, you think I can’t do it right? Well I am gonna prove it to you. I will do that by sitting down and writing this, thereby taking this train of thought to completion! If i can do that without getting swung into distractions that now exist all around me. Maybe you will believe me then but to be honest I don’t really care if you believe me or not.
Why am I talking about this? Well you see, recently I started doing research which is quite different from engineering. I am used to coding my way out of problems and I have been an engineer for a long time, before this time, a different person existed, in school, a teenager. I barely remember him but I know he was obedient and timid. I feel bad for him as I think of him in third person but one thing I know to be true: He was curious, he was willing to think and his thinking made him so uncomfortable that he forgot who he was.
When you are doing Research, there are no sprints, tasks and results, Forget result, there is sometimes not even a problem statement. Just something interesting, something worth spending time thinking about, poking around, scratching your head. Failing to understand, running completely in the wrong direction for weeks. Reading, More reading than doing. More understanding than building. This is how engineering felt like in the beginning, when I was also an intern 6 years ago, this is what work that makes you think should feel like and work is supposed to make you think.
But is this how life is supposed to make you feel. Are feelings research questions? Have you ever thought about why something make you mad? or do we all just jump into chaos and start useless wars. We are becoming a new flavor of society that struggles to complete it’s thoughts and keeps jumping between infinite un-thought opinions. But I don’t really care about all that. What I am really looking forward to is being uncomfortable again, maybe this time around I won’t completely forget who I am.
No part of this was written/ polished/ touched by an LLM.
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