Jessica Hullman

jessicahullman.bsky.social

24 July 2025 23:33

Not a shocking revelation or anything, but the more senior I’ve gotten, the more I’ve accepted that being able to discriminate when a research question or method has a principled motivation (ie is logically coherent, avoids leaps of faith) vs when it’s hazy only marginally correlates w/ success 1/

Jessica Hullman

jessicahullman.bsky.social

24 July 2025 23:33

The thing that bugs me most about this being the reality is how much it’s considered acceptable to treat the logical soundness or rigor in justifying research as a matter of opinion. It shuts down opportunities for personal growth that can be more fulfilling, even if it’s undervalued 4/4

Jessica Hullman

jessicahullman.bsky.social

24 July 2025 23:33

Of course no one likes to acknowledge this bc then they’d have to acknowledge that they’re willing to deprioritize actual knowledge in favor of other things. Or they admit it but claim it’s not their fault, it’s the system. Or they argue it’s how science is supposed to progress, through gesturing 3/

Jessica Hullman

jessicahullman.bsky.social

24 July 2025 23:33

There are research areas where it matters more, but by and large it’s just not very predictive of typical measures of success. In fact, it may hold you back if that’s what you’re after. The norm is to set one’s personal standards for truth to ‘what can I get away with’ not ‘what is actually true‘ 2/

Sung Kim

sungkim.bsky.social

31 May 2025 15:15

An Infinitely Large Napkin by Evan Chen The Napkin project is a personal exposition project of his aimed at making higher math accessible to high school students. The philosophy is stated in the preamble. eBook: venhance.github.io/napkin/Napki... Project: web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html