We do better at philosophy when we have a more precise and careful history of philosophy. If the standard picture of someone’s views is oversimplified or misleading, then people who hear the standard picture and reject it will lose out on the actual subtleties of those views.

If someone holds false views about parts of a philosopher's thinking, they may be misled into believing that the system the philosopher built on those parts is self-contradictory or untenable. If we want to judge Adam Smith's philosophy as a whole we need to make sure we're properly understanding him in the details.

Contemporary philosophy (at least the US university domain) can be almost entirely divided into two barely related and non-overlapping categories:

• Analytic philosophy: logicians who wish they were mathematicians or AI programmers

• Everything else: pedants who can do very little except endlessly reconsider what historical philosophers wrote and attempt to logically categorize their thoughts in an effort to derive a better system than analytic philosophy.

There are occasional exceptions, like Chalmers, who qualify as the historical philosophers the second group tries to dissect, except for the incidental fact they aren't dead yet. It takes a great amount of brilliance to be a Chalmers, and working (and hobbyist) philosophers need something to do that doesn't require that much fortune of talent.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.