“The whole idea of: "Well, surely if you're going to make progress on this set of [science] puzzles, you will want to know everything everyone has done on the way there."

[But] by the time you learn everything everyone has done on the way there you will have spent a huge amount of time and made no progress. And even worse, you will be entrained. You will be entrained in the thought process that got them stuck in the first place.

And this all very counter-intuitive:
Do you want to know everything that is known before you try to add anything?
The answer is: You probably don't.
You'll ask better questions [if you don't.]
You'll ask some bad ones [too].
You'll ask some questions that other people have figured their way past, but you'll ask some good ones that nobody's asked yet and that's where the breakthroughs live.”