I will regard with utter confusion someone who doesn’t immediately think of the last place they saw something when they’ve lost it.
It’s fine to state the obvious on occasion, it’s not always obvious to everyone, and like I said in the parent comment, this post seems to be liked/held useful by a significant number of LW users. I contend that’s more of a property of said users. This does not make the post a bad thing or constitute a moral judgement!
You seem to be operating on a model that says “either something is obvious to a person, or it’s useful to remind them of it, but not both”, whereas I personally find it useful to be reminded of things that I consider obvious, and I think many others do too. Perhaps you don’t, but could it be the case that you’re underestimating the extent to which it applies to you too?
I think one way to understand it is to disambiguate ‘obvious’ a bit and distinguish what someone knows from what’s salient to them.
If someone reminds me that sleep is important and I thank them for it, you could say “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already,” but of course I did know it already—it just hadn’t been salient enough to me to have as much impact on my decision-making as I’d like it to.
I think this post is basically saying: hey, here’s a thing that might not be as salient to you as it should be.
Maybe everything is always about the right amount of salient to you already! If so you are fortunate.
I will regard with utter confusion someone who doesn’t immediately think of the last place they saw something when they’ve lost it.
It’s fine to state the obvious on occasion, it’s not always obvious to everyone, and like I said in the parent comment, this post seems to be liked/held useful by a significant number of LW users. I contend that’s more of a property of said users. This does not make the post a bad thing or constitute a moral judgement!
You seem to be operating on a model that says “either something is obvious to a person, or it’s useful to remind them of it, but not both”, whereas I personally find it useful to be reminded of things that I consider obvious, and I think many others do too. Perhaps you don’t, but could it be the case that you’re underestimating the extent to which it applies to you too?
I think one way to understand it is to disambiguate ‘obvious’ a bit and distinguish what someone knows from what’s salient to them.
If someone reminds me that sleep is important and I thank them for it, you could say “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already,” but of course I did know it already—it just hadn’t been salient enough to me to have as much impact on my decision-making as I’d like it to.
I think this post is basically saying: hey, here’s a thing that might not be as salient to you as it should be.
Maybe everything is always about the right amount of salient to you already! If so you are fortunate.