[ModernMech]

The grandmothering complaint misses what I think is the main purpose of the introduction section of a paper: to orient the reader. I’m hoping it tells me something I already know, because how else am I going to build a bridge to the new knowledge the paper promises?

Moreover, it’s really not telling me what I know — it’s telling me what the author knows. If the author has a strange perspective on things I think I know, then it’s going to make understanding the rest of the paper much harder; how can I trust this author about unknown subjects when we can’t agree on topics of which we ostensibly share a common understanding? Such context is especially important when we are talking about the far edges of knowledge.