Comment by beyarkay
(author here) I agree that novices have an advantage in that they have few assumptions:
> Something you can do independently (and possibly it’s best done without expert supervision), is exploration of the field. You know nothing, and have no biases about what may or may not be useful. Any time you come across something that feels like it has some depth to it, such as a well-written essay series or a deep technical dive, you need to invest heavily into it. As a novice, your one advantage is that everything is new and nobody expects you to be fast. Because of this, you can afford to spend the time to learn as much as possible.
I'm not sure that it's correct to characterise an expert by the lack of this though. I think it's correlated, but not all experts are so rigid.