“The hard part isn’t noticing when papers are bad, it’s deciding what to do afterwards” by LawrenceC

Written (very) quickly for the Inkhaven Residency. I used to hate the classic management adage of “bring me solutions, not problems”. After all, identifying problems is the first step of solving them, and clearly understanding a problem is often a substantial part of the difficulty of solving it. (It also doesn’t help that I’ve sat in on many modern management classes where this adage was treated as obviously wrong and outdated.) But over time, I’ve realized the adage contains some amount of wisdom, at least in the context of research. The interesting question is rarely if a thing is bad, but instead about how bad it really is, and what to do afterwards. When I was in middle and high school, I loved memorizing logical fallacies, and spotting them in the arguments made by others. “That's an appeal to authority!”, I’d think in my head. “Dismissed!” (Yes, I was indeed an annoying debate kid.) Thankfully, as I grew up, I realized that it often matters to figure out what is actually true, rather than scoring points against imagined or real debate opponents. The interesting question in debates is often what is actually true, and not how hard you [...] --- First published: April 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qcJ7eWQtREyKwwGEk/the-hard-part-isn-t-noticing-when-papers-are-bad-it-s --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.