Outline of the style of social science research that Vipul Naik advocates

Last substantive revision: 2016-12-12

Summary

This page intends to describe the style of social science research that Vipul Naik advocates, in the most matter of fact way possible – I don’t intend to describe my own thoughts of it because they are complicated and still not well-formed. I try to convey both the theory/intuition for why the approach might make sense as well as what actually happens in practice (if it differs from the theory).

The general thrust of the approach, as I understand it, is as follows:

For inputs to research, emphasize conducting online surveys and writing quick Facebook posts to gather thoughts. De-emphasize academic papers.
During the research, do things in places that are publicly visible and where the record of changes is accessible (e.g. Git repository and Wikipedia).
For outputs of the research, separate them into tiers in terms of importance: quick notes or graphs that can fit into pre-existing work, medium-size articles that can build up general knowledge, and major articles that comprehensively argue some point. The small- and medium-size outputs are called a “paper trail” or “digital trail”.
When choosing the venue of outputs, emphasize the expected number of pageviews and how the contribution topically fits in. De-emphasize comfort and the building of a personal brand.

“My three guiding principles” by Vipul
“Sponsored Wikipedia editing” by Vipul
Vipul’s contract work repository on GitHub, which includes a comprehensive list of things he has paid to create

Background

As of December 2016, I have been working with Vipul regularly since April 2016.

Caveats

Some caveats to note about this page:

This page has not been reviewed by Vipul, so I might be mischaracterizing parts of his approach.
According to the approach, I have not yet gone through all of the steps. In other words, I am still midway in following all of the steps outlined here.

Output levels

See Vipul’s “Debugging My Apparent 2016 Stagnation” § Significant shift to producing longer and much more thoroughly researched content.

The paper trail

Although this is not a requirement, in general the “paper trail” part of the research comes in several standard forms:

Wikipedia articles about parts of the topic
Wikipedia timelines of some aspect of the history of the topic

There seems to be a psychological aspect to the paper trail beyond providing value to others: it’s motivating to see that one’s writing is getting pageviews, that there is some progress being made on difficult questions, that one’s time has not been a complete waste, and so forth.

The paper trail can have other benefits that are not as important:

It’s a way to put things out in public so others can critique your thinking.
It provides a sort of detailed outline of your thinking.

Projects that use or have used this approach

To my knowledge and recollection, two projects use this approach:

Some parts of Open Borders: The Case
My own dive into global health

Ways in which this approach differs from other approaches

Unlike writing several papers or writing several blog posts on one’s blog, this approach has more variety in publication venue.

External links

“Making Decisions Under Uncertainty”

The content on this page is licensed under the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.