[ColinWright]

As soon as I submitted it I went back to remove it. But thanks for calling me on it anyway.

But perhaps you can find a more diplomatic way to say the same thing. When someone says something that's clearly an opinion, and wrong in my experience, and follows it with "Trust me," it's a guarantee that I will regard everything they say with suspicion.

Should that not be the case? How else should I point out the consequences of their utterance? Or should I let it pass, and not try to help them see the consequences?

I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.

[themodelplumber]

Ah, so that was a response to the commenter's "trust me" remark. Perhaps "why should I trust you over some thousands of grad students," but it's difficult to gauge the amount of thought or research the commenter puts into "trust me," which is thrown around pretty liberally in modern English. When a friend says, "trust me, don't drink the water," and clearly his experience with water was not representative, if you want to keep the friend you're probably better off addressing it as a water quality issue instead of a trust issue. I'd say let the trust subject pass, and probably also save vocabulary like "utterance" for your enemies, or people wearing sith lord halloween costumes, etc.

[ColinWright]

Noted - thx.

WRT "utterance", it's probably a hangover from my lojban days. Different cultures use language differently. In my context, "utterance" is a common term, whereas "Trust me" is taken more sriously than you imply. Awareness of such issues is valuable - I'll look out for my usages of "utterance" in the future.

Thank you.