Everything I’ve read to “do the background reading” immediately exposed that >80% of the discussion was by third-hand readers. Sometimes I bring this up, but it really harshes the vibe to say “Hey clearly all of you didn’t read this book / didn’t research this news story beyond posts Twitter surfaced to you / didn’t try to interpret this graph at all, you just took the commentary at face value”. Locally famous example: LessWrongers use “steelman” wrong almost constantly, saying things like “steelman me” (!?)
It feels like Gell-man Amnesia. Everyone likes to have a “take”, only a few people like to do the reading.
Everything I’ve read to “do the background reading” immediately exposed that >80% of the discussion was by third-hand readers. Sometimes I bring this up, but it really harshes the vibe to say “Hey clearly all of you didn’t read this book / didn’t research this news story beyond posts Twitter surfaced to you / didn’t try to interpret this graph at all, you just took the commentary at face value”. Locally famous example: LessWrongers use “steelman” wrong almost constantly, saying things like “steelman me” (!?)
It feels like Gell-man Amnesia. Everyone likes to have a “take”, only a few people like to do the reading.