I’ve read a lot of textbooks over the years. Far more scientific papers. Loads of books, articles, and other errata.

I remember maybe 1%. But even better than remembering, ingesting that much material gets you a sense of things. And having a sense of things means you can read some “expert” or other claim and fairly reliably think, “Huh, that sounds like complete bullshit” and be right pretty often. Then you can do the research.

There’s no way I’d have this BS detector if I hadn’t done the prep work — even if technically I remember almost nothing of what I’ve read in specific detail.