It helped that the first person I explained this to at a conference was explicitly working on deconstructing models of the origin of complex life that imply that it's slow and unlikely that have been uncritically accepted in a lot of circles without actual evidence, and he was already confused about why following the chain of citations bottomed out at weird economist named Robin Hanson and why his naive model was ever taken seriously... oh MAN we had a fun evening.
Amusingly enough, something much like this has happened to me twice two years apart. The scientists deconstructing this stuff are always the most interesting people too.