Jokes aside, once you get into the nitty gritty of a subject you're deeply interested in, and whose grandest and most fundamental questions you want to attempt to understand or even answer, you learn very quickly to never trust other people's misunderstandings, and to instead go directly to the purest sources of information. Simple application of knowledge is usually resistant to minor confusions or imperfect analysis, but a grand and sweeping overview of a discipline needs you to be absolutely clear-eyed about everything.