João Batalha: Paper authors often make poor annotators due to internalized knowledge
João Batalha · Fermat's Library Cofounders João Batalha and Luís Batalha · Y Combinator · Jul 6, 2018 · at 49:35
João Batalha, co-founder of paper annotation platform Fermat's Library, explains why third-party annotations can be clearer than author annotations, citing his exchange with Vitalik Buterin on the Ethereum whitepaper.
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“What's interesting is that well, the authors of the paper sometimes, you know, they are not going to know where people are going to struggle understanding the paper, oftentimes. I remember when I was annotating the Ethereum white paper, right? Written by Vitalik. I went through it and then I emailed them And it's super quick to reply, and you reply back with some of the questions that he gets the most about Ethereum. And then, but when you're writing it, you have no clue, you know, for you, you've worked it out in your mind, some steps you might skip because you just have internalized them by so much. So you only get you only know where people are going to struggle once you put it out there and you start getting questions. And so yeah. So sometimes the authors are not the best.”
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