&gt;I find this tendency pretty counter-productive to learning anything at all.<p>It can also be counter-productive to setup strawman arguments which you tear down at a later point.<p>It takes time for anyone to read something and no one has enough time to read everything. Further, most people have read lots of things that setup strawman arguments and never tear them down. Often, people will then conclude that the author actually believes such strawmen and may avoid further reading the author.<p>If I read to completion every piece of text that came before my eyes I would have died a long time ago.