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Academic papers are terrible at knowledge transfer. A more casually spoken blog post is 100% more effective at communicating ideas imho.

Academia is a weird and broken place.

Disclaimer: work in a research lab full of awesome PhDs who largely agree with me!






I think papers make good references. I think of it more like the equivalent of a "datasheet" for an electronic part, say. Once you understand the intricacies, it's a valuable reference but more often than not, it's not very good and conveying motivation or intuition.

They're usually not very good as a reference either - they miss out key steps due to oversight or lack of time.

Great way to see it, papers should not be your first point of contact.

> Academic papers are terrible at knowledge transfer.

Well, at least they are better than patents.




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