There are a few good reasons it's useful to reference things:
1) To keep yourself separate from ideas. If they are yours, they are harder to change. Paul Graham spoke about a similar idea in an essay about keeping your identity small.
2) It helps remember them, and create a system you can iterate through. Like, "are there any ideas from economics which are helpful here?" and so on. This is an idea from Charlie Munger.
3) It lets you avoid sounding like a fraud. If I say "I have this idea that you need to practice for 10,000 hours to get good at things", or "I came up with a theory that the force applied divided by the mass will give me the acceleration", I sound like a fraud. To function in society you need people to not think you are a fraud.
> Paul Graham spoke about a similar idea in an essay about keeping your identity small.
I don't know. I follow PG on Twitter, and it doesn't seem like he keeps his identity separate from his ideas. He has some really good ideas and clearly he has thought about them for some time, but you can't budge him from his worldview. And worldviews are harder to change. [1]
George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends (a.k.a the Quakers), had a Christian variant on this, which I'll quote - because quoting things is fine, it's still not in opposition to making them your own! :
"You will say Christ saith this, and the Apostles say this, but what canst thou say?"
As he saw it, it was not acceptable to point to scripture and say you were just following orders. You were called to be a friend of Christ, who understands what your friend wants, and wants the same. (That's the point of John 15:15, though it's obviously not John 15:15 doing the calling.) So your judgements should be able to stand on their own.
1) To keep yourself separate from ideas. If they are yours, they are harder to change. Paul Graham spoke about a similar idea in an essay about keeping your identity small.
2) It helps remember them, and create a system you can iterate through. Like, "are there any ideas from economics which are helpful here?" and so on. This is an idea from Charlie Munger.
3) It lets you avoid sounding like a fraud. If I say "I have this idea that you need to practice for 10,000 hours to get good at things", or "I came up with a theory that the force applied divided by the mass will give me the acceleration", I sound like a fraud. To function in society you need people to not think you are a fraud.