this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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AskBeehaw
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Unfortunately, the field is pretty brutal about just assuming you are fully caught up to everything in the field, or that you will read the references for a given statement. You often don't need to know all the math, but at least have a general idea of what some concepts are. I've been part of 'journal clubs' for the past 5 years where the only really goal is to stay abreast of the changes going on so that a new paper doesn't send me down a rabbit hole of reading a referenced paper, which also has unknown terms, and read those references, etcetcetera.
I'm not in a great position to give useful advice due to that. it might be a good approach to find a youtuber who gives a 20-30 minute review/summary of a single paper that looks interesting, and of the video makes sense, then try to read the paper, and if you get stuck, see if the YouTuber has a video on the concept that got you stuck.