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> I usually just go with the most popular, but I'm not sure this a good proxy for quality Popularity is a poor proxy for quality. I often start with Wikipedia
by JohnFen 1y ago
> I usually just go with the most popular, but I'm not sure this a good proxy for quality
Popularity is a poor proxy for quality.
I often start with Wikipedia, just to get a feel for the topic. Then I try to identify those people and works that are widely considered fundamental to the field and focus on those. For the most part, I ignore YouTube and documentaries. The signal/noise ratio in them is too low to be worthwhile.
I also avoid using genAI, because you have to have some level of expertise in the subject in order to be able to spot when genAI is misleading you, and if I'm just learning, I lack that expertise.
- donchuru 1y ago> Then I try to identify those people and works that are widely considered fundamental to the field and focus on those. How do you go about this? Reddit is fairly good for this, but also suffers from the noise problem (too many suggestions).
- JohnFen 1y agoYou follow the reference chain backwards. As you research things, take note of what the references are (if there are no references, then you can pretty safely ignore whatever you're reading). For any field, you'll find there are a core set of references that underpin almost everything.