[BuyMyBitcoins]

I wonder if there is a term for this kind of objection. I’m starting to see more and more people demand quantifiers or conditional disqualifiers on statements that shouldn’t reasonably be considered as absolutes. And, the fact that bringing up that whatever assertion is being made is not a universal absolute doesn’t really add anything to the understanding.

Which statement is better, “people don’t like the smell of skunk spray” or “the vast majority of people do not like the smell of skunk spray”? The latter is more correct, as I am sure there is probably someone out there who is an outlier. But I can’t help but feel like my communication has been made less precise and has been made subject to interpretation as a result.

[hackerlight]

I advocate for everyone to use basic declarative statements when they are not completely certain, with uncertainty left implied and up to the reader to figure out.

If the writer is certain about something or wants to make an absolute statement, then that's when the verbosity comes into play. That's when the writer can start to add all the fluff words.

That's a convention that's way better, because the large majority of statements and propositions aren't known with certainty. I am exhausted at having to read long winded prose with endless "maybe" "mostly" and so on, with the obligatory "we don't know this for sure" at the end. I don't come away thinking you're humble, I am just annoyed that you've wasted my time when it was blatantly obvious you were saying something not absolute.

[BlueDingo]

I hear you, but I'm also the type of person to admit my own uncertainty. And the people around me get way more uptake of their ideas by just leaving out those words, even when they have less or terrible foundations.

[hackerlight]

It's a cultural thing. The cultural norm in academic or technical circles is extreme precision as well as fear of being held to account by enforcers of that norm. It's a spillover of rigorous academic publishing norms into general conversation. It's a fool's errand given that speech is intrinsically imprecise, and given that everyday speech is just a communication tool and not a vehicle for perfect applied epistemology.

We should hedge statements depending on whether the context makes it self-explanatory that there's uncertainty. Any less, and we're being deceptive. Any more, and we're adding words without adding information.

You know what would be a cool? Some notation to denote the level of certainty that doesn't take up horizontal space in the sentence. Or an API to a fine tuned GPT-3 that can strip out caveats and hedges from text on a screen.

[maxbond]

I know very little about it, but it's my understanding the conlang Láadan has ways to express degrees of certainty and degrees of "handedness" to the information (first-hand, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1adan

Check out the tenses, things like, "Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally" vs "Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source".

https://laadanlanguage.com

[watwut]

Personally, I am glad that culture is moving away from rewarding confident certain statements that are simply untrue.

[LeonB]

Citation needed.

Also - relevance?

The tagline being questioned here is—

“People don't change their minds”

— the problem with which is not that it’s “simply untrue” but that it requires qualification, e.g. in the prose of the linked article it’s written:

“To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters”

[watwut]

> Citation needed.

Citation for personal preference? Or for claim that currently confidence is rewarded more then accuracy?

> the problem with which is not that it’s “simply untrue” but that

The statement is untrue, because people do change minds. People change minds also about stuff that matters. They dont do it often, but they do it.

[xapata]

> is moving away

I think the citation would be for "is moving away" as that's the most bold claim.

[watwut]

That was the premise of the comment I reacted to. It says: I’m starting to see more and more people demand quantifiers or conditional disqualifiers on statements that shouldn’t reasonably be considered as absolutes.

Seeing more and more people demand such qualifiers is culture moving away.