I agree about the “finds important”. Just be aware that it is slippery. Communities can and do redefine what is important in such a way that they circle around the insiders and keep out the outsiders.
An example from my life was to be in an educational technology lab where some of the professors were researching online schools. Once the Open University opened up in the UK, however, it and a few other ones were suddenly being roundly criticized by these same professors who were previously into the whole idea. The discussions struck me as a sort of search process: the professors were trying to understand how they can sideline the Open U as working on non-interesting question, and they seemed to be sort of trying out ideas with each other and seeing what might stick.
I can give other examples, but ultimately, follow Larry McNerney’s advice about this kind of thing. :) If you are approaching someone cold, you have to have your first 1-2 sentences of your message be basically a threat. Tell the reader: you must read my paper, or you’re going to really be made to look foolish! And you have to have a way to actually do that.
You can also just try a slower approach and chat people and/or an LLM for advince. I feel like there is a whole new territory for an individually curious person nowadays. GitHub is already amazing for this, but combining it with an LLM is bringing us a new world of personal craftsmanship that never existed before. Why not explore the new world instead of knocking on the door of the old one?
I agree about the “finds important”. Just be aware that it is slippery. Communities can and do redefine what is important in such a way that they circle around the insiders and keep out the outsiders.
An example from my life was to be in an educational technology lab where some of the professors were researching online schools. Once the Open University opened up in the UK, however, it and a few other ones were suddenly being roundly criticized by these same professors who were previously into the whole idea. The discussions struck me as a sort of search process: the professors were trying to understand how they can sideline the Open U as working on non-interesting question, and they seemed to be sort of trying out ideas with each other and seeing what might stick.
I can give other examples, but ultimately, follow Larry McNerney’s advice about this kind of thing. :) If you are approaching someone cold, you have to have your first 1-2 sentences of your message be basically a threat. Tell the reader: you must read my paper, or you’re going to really be made to look foolish! And you have to have a way to actually do that.
You can also just try a slower approach and chat people and/or an LLM for advince. I feel like there is a whole new territory for an individually curious person nowadays. GitHub is already amazing for this, but combining it with an LLM is bringing us a new world of personal craftsmanship that never existed before. Why not explore the new world instead of knocking on the door of the old one?