research as leisure activity

Or, in the discourse of our times, people with “autistic special interests”—but I kind of hate this term, as it implies that the desire to autodidactically develop expertise in a field and share it with others is an unusual desire, instead of a deeply human one...and it seems part of a broader cultural trend to restrict and even pathologize fairly ... See more

When research is your leisure activity, you’ll end up making connections between your existing interests and new ideas or topics. Everything gets pulled into the orbit of your intellectual curiosity. You can go deeper and deeper into a narrow topic, one that seems fascinatingly trivial and end up learning about the big topics:

I truly think that autodidacts are responsible for all that is good and great about alternative culture.

Research as leisure activity involves as much rigor as necessary .

As a result, research as leisure activity is exuberantly undisciplined or antidisciplinary .

• Research as leisure activity is directed by passions and instincts . It’s fundamentally very personal: What are you interested in now ? It’s fine, and maybe even better, if the topic isn’t explicitly intellectual or academic in nature. And if one topic leads you to another topic that seems totally unrelated, that’s something to get excited about—n

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Research is strengthened by a social and intellectual community .

Research ideally has contemporary relevance, but should not exclusively devoted to contemporary concerns .

Research culminates in some output .