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Research Intimacy: Internalizing obscure knowledge, equations, relationships, and ways of thinking related to a research topic.
Research intimacy is different from theoretical knowledge. It involves internalizing information that hasn’t become part of the “scientific cannon” yet. Observations we don’t (yet) see as important, or haven’t (yet) digested. The ideas are raw.
(A personal example: I’ve memorized hundreds of neurons in InceptionV1. I know how they behave, and I know how that behavior is built from earlier neurons. These seem like obscure facts, but they give me powerful, concrete examples to test ideas against.)
Research intimacy is also different from research taste. But it does feed into it, and I suspect it’s one of the key ingredients in beating the “research taste market.”
As your intimacy with a research topic grows, your random thoughts about it become more interesting. Your thoughts in the shower or on a hike bounce against richer context. Your unconscious has more to work with. Your intuition deepens.
I suspect that a lot of “brilliant insights” are natural next steps from someone who has deep intimacy with a research topic. And that actually seems more profound.
