I had an idea recently that felt both reasonable and slightly reckless. What if I tried to read a mathematics paper on arXiv from start to finish. Not skimming, not hunting for conclusions, but actually walking through it line by line. I would look up every term I did not recognize, follow references when needed, and use AI as a companion rather than a shortcut. I am not sure what I would understand at the end. Maybe very little. Maybe just the big picture. Maybe a single definition would suddenly matter in a way it never had before.
I am curious about what survives that process. What remains after the unfamiliar notation, the missing background, and the slow pace are accounted for. Is it intuition. Is it structure. Is it simply a clearer sense of what I do not yet know.
I am open to suggestions. If there are technically dense papers you think are worth struggling through at this stage, feel free to recommend them.
