I’d guess this varies by field? I think this would be bad advice in mech interp—there’s a lot of concepts and existing mech interp theory that you need to understand a bunch of good projects, and people new to the field are often bad at explaining these (and, importantly, I think I have decent judgement about whether a project is any good). But I’d guess this is decent advice in some areas of alignment.
I’d guess this varies by field? I think this would be bad advice in mech interp—there’s a lot of concepts and existing mech interp theory that you need to understand a bunch of good projects, and people new to the field are often bad at explaining these (and, importantly, I think I have decent judgement about whether a project is any good). But I’d guess this is decent advice in some areas of alignment.