Certainly. That seems to be common. But also I understand new material better when I rewrite it in my own words even without the intent to share those words with others.
This is true for me also, and the primary reason I blog. If I weren’t doing that, I’d be emailing a friend who’d be interested, or failing that, writing to my diary.
I haven’t thought about this before, but it seems like in (pretending to) communicate your assessment of the evidence, that you risk amplifying consistency bias unless you cultivate “I update on new evidence and publicly admit (and diagnose post-mortem) when I was wrong” as a cherished part of your persona.
I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else, but one thing that I’ve started that seems to be useful to me is to write down a bunch of notes about the topic before, and while, researching. I think part of this is because I’ve become used to criticism, and I find I can criticize my own thoughts better after I have written them down, or while I’m writing them down. I just use a blank text editor (using org-mode) for this. It is also helpful dumping whatever preconceptions I might have about the subject matter, before I know what to search for. It also helps me clarify when and where the research is more, or less, superficial than my own understanding. Or maybe the research is only tangential to what I was actually looking for.
You mean, you can understand it when you try to explain it to someone else?
Certainly. That seems to be common. But also I understand new material better when I rewrite it in my own words even without the intent to share those words with others.
This is true for me also, and the primary reason I blog. If I weren’t doing that, I’d be emailing a friend who’d be interested, or failing that, writing to my diary.
I haven’t thought about this before, but it seems like in (pretending to) communicate your assessment of the evidence, that you risk amplifying consistency bias unless you cultivate “I update on new evidence and publicly admit (and diagnose post-mortem) when I was wrong” as a cherished part of your persona.
I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone else, but one thing that I’ve started that seems to be useful to me is to write down a bunch of notes about the topic before, and while, researching. I think part of this is because I’ve become used to criticism, and I find I can criticize my own thoughts better after I have written them down, or while I’m writing them down. I just use a blank text editor (using org-mode) for this. It is also helpful dumping whatever preconceptions I might have about the subject matter, before I know what to search for. It also helps me clarify when and where the research is more, or less, superficial than my own understanding. Or maybe the research is only tangential to what I was actually looking for.