It’s well studied that number of people who actually read an article before commenting on it is less than 1%.
Just going off a post I made on hacker news that had a few hundred comments from this blog.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29827582
Half the comments are off topic, but they at least read the title. 10% directly contradicts info in the post or in the comments. I’m blown away by how few people read the posts or even other comments before posting something.
I was well aware some people skim things and pretend to read but I had no idea how prevalent it is.
When I look at people I met and know I would say less than 5 actually read things in their entirety before responding. Most will just glance and continue with the conversation.
If someone even reads a link I send them, I am blown away. To be fair, I look and read all links sent to me but I have to filter out people or it would become unmanageable.
Heck, I’ve been coding for over 18 years and never bothered to read the full documentation for Python, Django, Javascript – anything I regularly use.
The benefits can be enormous
I uncovered corruption in the State of Florida’s revenue department by reading through their sales taxes.
Similarly, I won a lawsuit against my former Chairman by reading through the Hong Kong laws.
One of my friends made his retirement money by reading technical patents every day for years to inform his unicorn startup.
There was a SQUID token that literally said you can not withdraw any money in their white paper and people still put in 3.4 million dollars without reading that and walked away with nothing.
Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger read company 10-Ks before investing. At least 145 Million Americans invest in the stock market. How many really have read any 10-K at all? 1,000 maybe?