Student Question: Master Chi, you once said in your community: “Be wary of the various case analyses circulating online — most of that content is unreliable, and you shouldn’t let it influence you. Ignorance isn’t the real danger; having your thinking led astray by others is.”
My understanding is this: “You must personally record and break down cases yourself. Don’t absorb others’ analysis processes and reasoning wholesale — approach everything with a critical eye, or simply don’t look at it at all.” Is that the right way to understand it?
Master Chi’s Response:
More or less.
If you come across a case and can’t quite make sense of it, just leave it alone.
Forcing an interpretation will only lead you down the wrong path.
Every case exists within a web of causes and consequences — the right timing, the right conditions, the right people, a confluence of many factors. The full picture is something outsiders rarely have access to.
When you blindly trust unreliable judgments from outside sources, you end up making faulty attributions.
Say a particular outcome succeeded because of factors A, B, C, and D. But an observer only noticed D, and concludes: “It worked because they chose D.” If you believe that, you’ll start missing critical pieces in your own work without even realizing it.
This is exactly why I always encourage everyone to read textbook-level books in their professional field. These books have stood the test of time and survived the scrutiny of countless readers. When your own skill level isn’t there yet, reading these foundational works will serve you far better than consuming endless industry case studies.
Once your skills develop and you accumulate real experience, you’ll naturally build your own judgment.
At that point, it won’t matter much what you read — because most ordinary content won’t be able to mislead you anyway.