To finish the author’s analogy: Blog posts are written by those who arrive first. In a weird way my mental model is: blog posts are the recon team discovering

To finish the author’s analogy: Blog posts are written by those who arrive first. In a weird way my mental model is: blog posts are the recon team discovering a new idea. They might have errors. They might be incomplete. Maybe they’re outright wrong. Stakes are lower as it took less effort to get there and less loss if a position is abandoned. Then papers are authored, often much later, and they’re the regulars coming in to fortify a newly captured idea. They provide (or at least are supposed to) rigor to the idea. A fortification of a position that we decide is worth holding. Yeah, this analogy is probably sloppy. But in my brain there’s an eternal conflict against ignorance as we keep advancing into the unknown.