Deferral is a skill - by Alex Lawsen - Speculative Decoding
lawsen.substack.com · 556 words · saved by 2 readers
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Not everyone needs to be a researcher. But “not being a researcher” doesn’t mean “not thinking for yourself”. I think the skill involved in “secondary research” / “deferring well” / [whatever the right label is, part of the problem might be a lack of a good label] is frequently underrated. It’s easy to carve people up into “thinkers who can and should develop inside views” or “people who defer.” But the second camp is massive and heterogeneous; many tasks/jobs/roles involve “just” deferring in the sense that nearly all of the relevant facts/theories/ideas don’t need to be generated de novo…
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