I’ve read the (original?) Sequences, and I definitely do not feel qualified to do work in AI Safety, game theory, or decision theory. There are many posts on Less Wrong about those topics that I don’t even understand enough to follow, much less enough to contribute or critique them. So yes, I think most people would have to read textbooks on the subject or otherwise do a lot more learning work to significantly contribute. This is not too surprising; enough people have been doing enough work on those topics for enough years that I should not expect to be able to jump into it without some effort to cover what they’ve done and catch up.
I’ve read the (original?) Sequences, and I definitely do not feel qualified to do work in AI Safety, game theory, or decision theory. There are many posts on Less Wrong about those topics that I don’t even understand enough to follow, much less enough to contribute or critique them. So yes, I think most people would have to read textbooks on the subject or otherwise do a lot more learning work to significantly contribute. This is not too surprising; enough people have been doing enough work on those topics for enough years that I should not expect to be able to jump into it without some effort to cover what they’ve done and catch up.