41–50 of 78 posts
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Also e.g. MS Word suggests getting rid of qualifiers. With papers and especially grant applications it's ridiculous that everybody knows they are overpromising but still they don't go through of they don't overpromise.
Before i send something i make sure each paragraph has at least one it of green underline. The day that Word and I agree on grammar is the day i switch back to pencil and paper!
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I was going to write the same thing as the GP, fwiw. Look at how many public figures embrace the extreme overconfidence as a mark of tactical genius: SBF, Musk, lots of other SV figures, Trump, etc. Humbleness, humility used to be admired. Can you imagine someone saying that now?
Musk is not a figurehead of confidence, and really is nothing like SBF. In fact, he’s regularly very direct about conveying the level of uncertainty when discussing the possibility of RUDs with Starship or being optimistic about deadlines for Tesla when he’s speaking in long form and not taken out of context with a sound bite.
I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
On some level, that makes even more sense in scientific writing. You already have method sections, experimental results, .... If you haven't been overconfident in those sections then the reader really ought to have all the tools they need to appropriately examine the paper.
I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
An explanation some teachers beat into me over the years is that everyone already knows you're only stating a thing because it's your opinion. It's discourteous to waste time repeating something so basic, so such hedging language should only be used when it actually adds something to the conversation -- warning the reader of something with an unexpected level of certainty. On some level, that makes even more sense in…
This isn’t some obscure niche case either, it happens every day on HN.
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An explanation some teachers beat into me over the years is that everyone already knows you're only stating a thing because it's your opinion. It's discourteous to waste time repeating something so basic, so such hedging language should only be used when it actually adds something to the conversation -- warning the reader of something with an unexpected level of certainty. On some level, that makes even more sense in…
Huh? People sometimes state things that are the genuine facts, as far as anyone has been able to prove, but that are not entirely possible to be 100% verified. This isn’t some obscure niche case either, it happens every day on HN.
I _knew_ somebody was going to nitpick that phrase and rejected the urge to write a few extra paragraphs in the format of a HN comment expressing the idea more completely...
If we want to look at it a bit less charitably though, even things that are true "as far as anyone has been able to prove" are usually not perceived to be true for a significant fraction of the human race, so in interactions with randos (like this current thread) it's still reasonable to assume that we're talking about opinions rather than facts. Even when talking about "facts" (as you partially defined them), the core idea still holds -- your _opinion_ (maybe a very well validated opinion) is that those facts are true, and hedging language is discourteous to the reader.
I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
[particularly 13:44~]
I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
Part of it is the English language doesn't have tools to express uncertainty without adding verbosity. For example, take what I said here, my sentence length increased by 25% by saying "part of it is" to communicate uncertainty. This gets tiring quickly for both the writer and reader. It becomes boilerplate.
(Which I believe has been confirmed by Gemini):
> Yes, the sentence "If I were to start a sentence like this, I would be using the subjunctive" uses the subjunctive mood correctly. > The subjunctive mood is used to express hypothetical or unreal situations, wishes, suggestions, or demands. In this sentence, "If I were to start a sentence like this" presents a hypothetical situation, and "were" is the correct form of the verb "to be" in the subjunctive mood."
But yeah, it doesn't get at the uncertainty expressed in other languages. Is there another mood for that or how do other languages handle it?
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Agree. At least in my western country, it has become almost expected that everyone is fully confident all the time. I’m someone who likes to deliberate on thoughts, take my time, listen to opinions and assess them, then provide my opinion (which may also change over time with more information or changing circumstances). I am humble, a listener, and don’t believe I know everything. I feel a little out of place in curr…
Your account is dead but none of the posts in your history look bad. You can email hn@ycombinator.com and if there has been a mistake they'll sort it out.
I think this is a general cultural phenomenon not specific to the sciences- people are told they need to be aggressively confident to be taken seriously. Even as a kid parents and teachers will suggest to kids to edit words expressing uncertainty out of their writing. They are coached to talk like that when public speaking, at job interviews, and even dating. As a scientist- I also think papers and grant applications…
Part of it is the English language doesn't have tools to express uncertainty without adding verbosity. For example, take what I said here, my sentence length increased by 25% by saying "part of it is" to communicate uncertainty. This gets tiring quickly for both the writer and reader. It becomes boilerplate.
Well, there's always irony quotes. For example:
The new Apple lineup will "amaze".