- [<] Status Log - created:: 2021-09-13 - status-updated:: 2022-03-22 - current-status:: #articleseed wall of text dump that needs to be cleaned up but is mostly coherent. - [S] Marketing - purpose:: be my definitive statement on why "only trust primary sources" is bullshit. See also [[countercultural advice is valuable]] & [[How to Evaluate References]] Conventional wisdom says that you should rely on primary sources. Link to the Codex future tweet about this. Frankly, this is a great example of a time that I like to cut corners, I have not read off a mile to continue on their auto follow science prize 695 on the website and I have not read the full, whatever it is that Tiago forte is selling, I have not, and I don't want to. And I don't get to, so I'm not going to because, Secondary sources are fantastic at distilling information, and while it is key to go back and confirm that a secondary source is in fact accurately representing a primary source. The fact of the matter. Take the Maryland 648 north exit toward Glen Burnie, the fact of the matter is a lot of the times laymen, do not have the expertise to evaluate that. Let's take Mesopotamian history for example, if I am looking at a primary source about Mesopotamian history, I am basically looking at a sculpture that history had been translated, that's automatically a secondary source rightly, that's a translation. So, in order to treat a primary source from ancient Mesopotamia, I need to first learn how to speak, like in ancient Mesopotamia, that's, I don't know, three, four years of my life to just learn the language, and then I need to learn the fullness of the entire context which, by the way is almost by definition going to be coming from a secondary source, unless I am somehow supposed to make all of these inferences independently from primary sources. I suppose I could read all of the journal articles that come directly from academics doing archeological digs, but you know I think it would be a lot faster and more efficient only lose a tiny bit of truth, if I take the Maryland 648 north exit toward Glen Burnie, if I read a textbook or attend a lecture that summarizes all of that information for me so that I can actually interact with it without losing five years of my life to getting a PhD. Let's take off people on their 648 north exit. Primary sources for laws, but, you know, as an actual person who a quarter mile merge onto Maryland 648 North Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard and studied a whole bunch of laws. Common Law is finicky, in a way that not everybody realizes because the plain text of law does not actually always mean what you think it means. The dean at my law school, during the introductory period where a whole bunch of incoming freshmen were evaluating which law school to go to a parent asked what major was best for law school and you know what he said it wasn't political science, it wasn't philosophy. It was wait for it, wait for it, linguistics, it was a language, because 648 North for one mile is basically what blot is law is learning a second language because all of the words don't mean what you think they mean there is so much jargon that isn't jargon because it's some crazy technical term, it's jargon because of hundreds of years of common law twisting the meaning of a word. Negligence is a very specific definition that is not obvious on the face of it, because it has been defined through years and years and years of evolution of case law. And you know what if you try to figure that out, just reading case law on your own, you're never going to understand the law. Sometimes you need secondary and tertiary sources. I would argue that starting with a secondary or tertiary source, like Wikipedia is actually the most logical and sensible starting place, because then you are getting a rational overview of the state of play and you can decide intelligently, how to spend your time and whether or not to chase it all the way down to primary sources. Here I wrote an article explaining when I think you should do that. As a teacher, I have witnessed the shift from teaching kids how to pass multiple choice tests to teaching kids how to get graded on analyzing primary sources, and let me tell you the stuff they come up with, without the sufficient background context to understand what they're actually reading is bonkers wrong just absolutely insane how wrong they are about what a particular passage means in the broader context of Rome, if you give somebody a primary source that is a snippet of text and expect them to come up with something that makes sense, instead of a tertiary source that has actually like been evaluated from a position of expertise. They're going to be viable quarter mile, turn right. Even if it's not taken out of context, even if it is the entire entirety of Hummer Robeez code, they lack the context to comprehend its value, its meaning and its implications on the strong, then turn left of quality, secondary and tertiary sources.