>>13653208All citations inevitably lead to a source that either has no references or makes the former self-referential. This is a consequence of basic graph theory by the way.
Academia's obsession around citations has to do with the following.
The obsession of academics with getting their papers referenced by others because this is apparently a good metric of how much of a good scientist someone is aka rampant academic narcissism.
Making sure that people don't enter unchartered lands, aka no wrongthink.
Because knowledge can be copyrighted and is a material to consume, buy and sell like everything else aka reducing science to a capitalist tool.
