Be a tourist in our own city 

We spend a lot of time and money in other cities. Others spend a lot of time and money in our city. If others are willing to spend so much in our city, probably it is worthwhile for us to spend some time, and a little bit money, to explore our own city.

We spent some time in downtown. When we walk around, we find Vancouver is a lot smaller than we thought. We went from Chinatown to Yaletown. If we take SkyTrain, which is what we usually do, we would have to take Expo Line first and then switch to Canada Line. Yaletown seems far away from Chinatown. But when we walk, it only takes us several minutes to reach there. When we start to walk, the whole Vancouver downtown is a very small place.

When we drive into downtown, Vancouver has horrible traffic. Now we take SkyTrain to downtown and then we walk around. Many downtown roads don’t have traffic lights. They have stop signs. These roads are practically impossible to drive through. As a result, most traffic jam into major roads. This makes driving terrible in downtown. At the same time, most smaller streets are very quiet. Walking on these streets is very pleasant. Residents on these streets can live a quiet and relaxed life. Vancouver is a hell to drivers. It is also a heaven for its residents and whoever walking around.

It occurs to me that there are some parallels with research. Research fields are divided into science and social science. Within science and social science, each is subdivided into many areas, mathematics, physics, chemistry and so on. People in one area feel that other areas are very different, very distant. This is because we take the sort of SkyTrain in our research. SkyTrain is self contained, without interaction with other kinds of traffic. It is the key to its swiftness. Similarly, the key to high output in research is to confine ourselves in a narrow area, without interacting with other kinds of research. But it makes our vision very narrow. 

If we relax a little bit and browse other areas of research in leisure, we will find different research fields are actually very close to each other. The whole world follows the same physical laws. The whole biological and economic systems follow the same economical principle that only systems with positive returns can survive over long term. We will find that many problems we are struggling to look for answers have already been resolved for a long time, by researchers in other fields.

But don’t expect other researchers welcome your new discoveries. When there are one thousand research fields, there are five top experts in each field, enjoying all the perks of  being experts. Now someone from nowhere shows you the answers that the experts in your field have been seeking for decades or centuries. How those experts would feel? Every expert in every field will feel the same insecurity. Instinctively, they will unite together to repulse any invasion from outsiders.