It’s not at all clear that doing what the papers say is optimal. Whether or not it is an open question and depends very much on the context.
Trainers of world class olympic athletes do read papers but they also do a lot of things that aren’t yet backed up by papers or differ from what’s written in papers.
In web design the correct approach is often to run a A/B test instead of simply trusting that the solution that performed well in other contexts will perform.
Most successful artists don’t read academic papers on aesthetics. The develop their skills differently. The post argues to choose a different approach to the problem than the best experts on the topic use.
That’s not something that you should simply label as “optimal”.
The rational part is reading the papers; the optimal part is doing what the papers say.
However, reading papers is not limited to design. It is part of general rationality (virtue of scholarship).
Of course, if you search for papers on cognitive biases in web design, then they would tell you about rational design.
It’s not at all clear that doing what the papers say is optimal. Whether or not it is an open question and depends very much on the context.
Trainers of world class olympic athletes do read papers but they also do a lot of things that aren’t yet backed up by papers or differ from what’s written in papers.
In web design the correct approach is often to run a A/B test instead of simply trusting that the solution that performed well in other contexts will perform.
Most successful artists don’t read academic papers on aesthetics. The develop their skills differently. The post argues to choose a different approach to the problem than the best experts on the topic use. That’s not something that you should simply label as “optimal”.