How to do deep research?

[Spiritedness]

Title pretty much says it all. How do you guys delve deeply and research whatever topic/field/discipline interests you? Beyond academic textbooks, correspondence with renowned experts in the field, scientific papers and magazines, lectures on YouTube etc. I suppose deep study means something much more than the examples I gave. What else is missing? How does one access the farthest reaches, the 'dark', obscure and sometimes forbidden territories of knowledge about a topic? I am aiming for complete and ultimate knowledge, as close to perfection as I can get! I believe there is a video on this Leo made some many years ago; I suppose now it's a bit outdated and he changed his views? Really interested to see how everyone approaches serious study and research and developing information/scientific literacy.

[Yimpa]

You want to go exceptionally deep? Derive insights about whatever it is you wish to understand from scratch. Completely original. Get comfortable being uncomfortable with this process, but also allow room for fun and curiosity.

The deeper you go, you will discover that you are the expert on your own direct experience. No one else can understand, because you are the source of understanding itself. You want to understand what fear is? You’ve got to become fear itself. 

Thank you for listening to my TEDdy Bearing talk. I hope that she eats you for dinner, because you’re so sweet.

[kavaris]

theres a point that im reaching, where i no longer feel the need to read, write, or do much outside the scope of this being and experience of myself... as i have found this thing im tryina penetrate now... suffice to say, any deep knowledge at the end came from being on the quest, trusting the process & collecting bits of this, and that, and compiling them into a sortve, written work that involved many many different methods to read, write and record, as alot of the learning involves your interpretation and interaction w/ it — to filter it down into a way that gives that understanding, right? So, theres that... But as far as specific sources, i cant say that theres many... Many were related to topics i found interesting, and that i was able to gleam or pull it into the artistic endeavors here, and spin them around into a kind of hidden knowledge (that would frankly not be found in many books...), however... Greek Mythology, and stuff like that has some good grandma cookies so to speak... You mention the word "scientific" in there, and i suppose if thats what you are into it can give you something to do for now, but im not a big science guy, and i cant say whens the last time i looked at anything science, unless it was either a quick wikipedia thing, (the concept or something seemed to be interesting) or it was related to mathematics or something, or ya know... jus whatever random thing tied into science.

 

p.s. im looking at my notes, and alot of it came from looking up random stuff, like architecture and poems, languages, runes, patterns... fractals, motifs, magic, lots of my own darkness and experiences, etc, etc.

p.s.s. another good idea is to buy a good pair of wireless headphones, cause its nice to tune out everything with a loud ocean sound or something, so you can start focusing intently on this internal, — call it, a world flipped upside down now -world.

Edited November 18 by kavaris

[The Renaissance Man]

@Spiritedness Leo's video is more on general principles on how the possible traps and self-deception that can happen in the research process. You can read the summary here.

Here's a process you may like:

1. First, develop a moderate (not just basic) understanding of the topic. Otherwise you won't be able to judge all the possible sources validly enough. This can mean months or sometimes years (depending on how much time you dedicate to it).
2. Then, once you feel like you don't get much benefit from "traditional sources" (and getting there is already a lot, but it doesn't make sense to skip this), you make a list of key words about the topic, and use Google, YouTube, PubMed, Amazon books, or whatever, to create a massive database (1.000 to 5.000) of possible sources. That's how you get to the niche stuff, possibly.
3. You then (or in the moment you collect them) make a quick evaluation, and only go deeper with the ones above a certain "score". The evaluation will be very quick by the way, don't be scared by the numbers.
4. This can be done periodically (every 3-5 years for example) to make sure you can leverage potentially new sources and developments.

In practice the process is more organic, your understanding and lack thereof may inform the direction of your research for a good while, before you really create a database like this.

This is a process I derived from stumbling randombly on very powerful but niche sources, and then asking: how could I have found this on purpose and reliably?