BenLowell comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 05 November 2011 11:06AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1529)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: BenLowell 02 November 2011 06:53:57AM *  2 points [-]

Luke also has the advantage of that this is his job.

It is not uncommon for research articles to have 50+ references, and review articles often have over 300 references.

Edit: Luke's articles do have way more than the usual number of references. This article has approximately 120 sentences, with 37 notes and about 150 references, which doesn't make sense the way that I am familiar with. I am used to references referring to cited sources, and am not sure how Luke is using it. If it is a list of works consulted that makes sense.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 03 November 2011 07:07:49AM *  13 points [-]

I would presume that most papers will include a number of references to sources that the authors have only briefly skimmed, only read the abstract, or not actually read at all.

I saw an article somewhere (I wish I'd remembere where) about a widely-read paper making a mistake when it cited one of its sources, claiming that the source said something which it didn't. A number of later papers by other authors then repeated this mistaken claim, presumably because their authors didn't bother checking whether the prestigious paper was correct in its cite.

I'm about .90 confident that Luke hasn't actually read all of his cites in entirety.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 03 November 2011 11:41:02AM *  5 points [-]

I think it is not rare for errors in citing to be repeated because no-one bothers to go back to the original source.

Not reading the paper at all can be dangerous. I once read a paper in which the authors had unwittingly rediscovered, but in inferior form, mathematical results that were already proved in one of the papers they cited. Fortunately for the authors, I was refereeing their paper, and had read the paper they cited, so I was able to save them the embarrassment of publication.

Comment author: lukeprog 03 November 2011 07:51:37AM 12 points [-]

I'm about .90 confident that Luke hasn't actually read all of his cites in entirety.

Correct. You win some Bayes points.

Comment author: Plasmon 03 November 2011 07:21:08AM 4 points [-]

"source X claims/proves statement Y" - the author should have read source X carefully

"For general background information on subject A, see e.g. source B" - the author tries to make the paper more accessible to people from other fields by providing some context, but they do not need to have read source B in detail. Not reading all of your sources is not necessarily evil

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 03 November 2011 07:33:14AM 1 point [-]

This is quite true, and I didn't mean to imply that it was evil.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 November 2011 08:24:28PM 0 points [-]

Also, and especially in the physical sciences - "Other techniques for achieving similar goals include..." or "A complementary measurement of the same quantity..." In these cases knowing what they're doing/trying to do is sufficient.

Of course, the more relevant it is, the more important it is to actually read it. By the time you get to things that you claim actually support your argument, you had better have read them several times carefully.

Comment author: lukeprog 02 November 2011 07:13:51AM 4 points [-]

Luke also has the advantage of that this is his job.

Though, this particular post was actually written before I was hired by SIAI at the beginning of September.

Comment author: jasonmcdowell 03 November 2011 05:52:03AM 0 points [-]

I assume you're using software to collect references as you research / write? And then you have the software disgorge your collection of references at the end? What software are you using?

Comment author: lukeprog 03 November 2011 06:57:36AM 2 points [-]

Nope. It's still all a manual process because all the programs I've tried aren't good enough, and don't sufficiently improve my workflow. (You may also notice that my preferred format for references is my own, instead of one of the standards that I have to use when writing for peer-review.)

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 November 2011 09:10:03AM 0 points [-]

You don't even use something like OttoBib?

Comment author: lukeprog 03 November 2011 10:13:35AM 0 points [-]

That might help a little, but mostly I cite papers not books. Do you know of one that doesn't suck, for papers?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 November 2011 08:26:43PM 0 points [-]

Endnote doesn't suck at all; it just doesn't do the things you were demanding like deduce citation from pdf.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 03 November 2011 10:15:58AM 0 points [-]

Negative.

Comment author: falenas108 02 November 2011 01:42:52PM 0 points [-]

Well, a huge part of it is the section with the bullet poins where literally every sentence needed a citation to back it up.