First of all, not every ICO has a whitepaper, but surely if this is the case, it is better to stay away from the project. As for whitepapers, I don't read them, but I do skim them to get the main plot, sort of. Understanding the details of how icos work is mainly too hard for me, as I am not even a programmer. Oh. and the article on Medium explains that they are written in such a complicated manner on purpose.
I think that diving into the details of the whitepaper is not only hard, but also useless, since most of people will or will not invest in the project without this knowledge, so you knowing more than top investors wouldn't be of much help with analyzing the project's economic potential.