The Antidisciplinarathon

Learning at the edge of curiosity, ignorance, and fear…

We all have an obsessive interest in a particular topic. At least I want to believe we do. That’s why one of my favorite questions to ask is: “What has kept you curious lately?” People will come up with all sorts of answers. My youngest sister, Isa, would probably talk about living abroad. My middle sister, Dani, would talk about African palm. Fer would talk about synthesizers. Dad would talk about sustainable livestock farming (or volleyball).

I like asking this question first, because 99% of the time, it makes people’s eyes light up. And second, because I usually learn something that I had no idea about.

Today’s dispatch starts with another question (somehow related), by Katherine Ye: “What happens when you pair thirty-five strangers with deep expertise in disciplines ranging from Classical Chinese literature to biophysics, give them ninety minutes to make something strange, bold, and new, and ask them to present the results?”

The answer was an event they called the antidisciplinarathon. And that’s the format we’re exploring today.

📰 What’s the format?

An antidisciplinarathon. This format takes inspiration from the MIT Media Lab antidisciplinary manifesto. Joi Ito, who served as Director from 2011 to 2019, described it like this:

An antidisciplinary project isn't a sum of a bunch of disciplines but something entirely new […] what it means to me is someone or something that doesn't fit within traditional academic discipline­­­ -a field of study with its own particular words, frameworks, and methods...

An antidisciplinarathon pairs people who have complementary disciplines and antidisciplines to see what they can create. “A discipline is an area of comfort and expertise; an antidiscipline is an area of curiosity, ignorance, boredom, or fear”, Katherine explains.

In this event, a co-director of Khan Academy Long-Term Research and an entrepreneur with deep learning expertise pitched a book proposal: they wanted to help people see in the ways that machines see. A math teacher and a game designer and programmer presented a mockup of a game to help learners explore mathematical rules. A bioengineering PhD student and an ethnomusicologist, proposed to create an app that would use machine learning to help people learn to play music. A researcher at Y Combinator and an MD-PhD student in biology who was also a dancer, proposed to create a theme park for science…

During an antidisciplinarathon, participants are encouraged to create work in any format: a paper abstract, a drawing, a proof, installation art, performance art, a dance, a real experiment, a tiny tool, a zine, or a prototype…

💡 Why is it effective for learning?

After reading a detailed documentation of how this antidisciplinarathon event went, my first thought was that being paired with a very smart stranger can be intimidating at first. Specially when there’s jargon involved. To be able to create something together, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the other, carefully listen to them, and try to understand their perspective. Empathy plays a key role in this process, as it allows participants to genuinely integrate others' ideas with your own, rather than simply layering them together.

An antidisciplinarathon forces participants to step outside their comfort zones and tackle unfamiliar challenges, helping them develop the flexibility and resilience needed to navigate uncertainty.

The format also helps participants become more comfortable with ambiguity. In a traditional academic or professional setting, problems are often well-defined with clear solutions. In an antidisciplinarathon, the open-ended nature of the tasks means there may be no obvious path forward…

🎛️ What are the features?

The event I cited above used a few principles to organize their antidisciplinarathon:

• Creating something with a stranger

• Depth over breadth

• Exploratory work

• Time constraints

Here are some of the prompts they used for the event:

• What questions in your field have been bothering you lately?

• What small problems were you struggling with yesterday?

• What are you really good at? What immediately comes to mind when naïvely combining your skills? Try iterating on that.

• What are some of your favorite papers or pieces of art? Why?

• What is your “list of ten problems” (à la Hamming) that you carry around in your head, that you really wish you could solve?

• What really scares or surprises you about your partner’s field?

• What’s one implicit methodology or mindset in your field that you could use or challenge?

• What insights form the core of your discipline?

You don’t need to be an academic expert to be part of an antidisciplinarathon. You only need to have an obsessive interest in a particular topic. (Paul Graham calls this The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius).

If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters.

Once you’ve identified that interest, what can you create with someone who’s completely obsessed with something else?

💌 An Invitation

Today, my first invitation is to give a shot to answer this question (also borrowed from Paul Graham): If you could take a year off to work on something that probably wouldn't be important but would be really interesting, what would it be?

And here’s a second invitation: why not bring that spark to life with others? Gather a few friends, colleagues, or learners, and organize your own antidisciplinarathon. Start small. Pick a day, pair up with someone who has a different passion, and see what you can create together in just a few hours. The magic happens when different minds come together to build something entirely new.

Who knows? You might just stumble upon an idea that changes everything. Or, at the very least, you’ll have a great story to tell…

🏷 Summary

• An antidisciplinarathon pairs people from different disciplines to create something new, bold, and strange in a short amount of time.

• The format encourages participants to step out of their comfort zones, embrace ambiguity, and collaborate with empathy to integrate diverse ideas.

• Participants create work in various formats, from papers to art installations, using their unique blend of expertise and curiosity.

📚 Further Readings/References

• Seven on Seven pairs seven leading artists with seven visionary technologists, and challenges them to make something new.

• Bjork’s Biophilia album is a great example of antidisciplinary collaboration that redefined how music, technology, and education can intertwine.

👉 Coming Up Next

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