Here is what I believe happened in that referenced exchange: You wrote a comment that was difficult to comprehend, and I didn’t see how it related to my question. I explained why I asked the question, hoping for clarification. That’s a failure to communicate, not a failure to update.
My interpretation, having read this comment thread and then the original: Cyan brought up a subtle point about statistics, explained in a non-obvious way. (This comment seemed about as informative to me as the entire post.) You asked “don’t statistical procedures X and Y solve this problem?”, to which Cyan responded that they weren’t relevant, and then you repeated that they do.
Here, the takeaway I would make is that Cyan is likely a theory guy, and you’re likely an applications guy. (I got what I think Cyan’s point was on my first read, but it was a slow read and my “not my area of expertise” alarms were sounding.) It is evidence for overconfidence when people don’t know what they don’t know (heck, that might even be a good definition for overconfidence).
Say what I would have written differently if I were not overconfident.
After Cyan’s response that Gibbs and EM weren’t relevant, I would have written something like “If Gibbs and EM aren’t relevant to the ideas of this post, then I don’t think I understand the ideas of this post. Can you try to summarize those as clearly as possible?”
My interpretation, having read this comment thread and then the original: Cyan brought up a subtle point about statistics, explained in a non-obvious way. (This comment seemed about as informative to me as the entire post.) You asked “don’t statistical procedures X and Y solve this problem?”, to which Cyan responded that they weren’t relevant, and then you repeated that they do.
Here, the takeaway I would make is that Cyan is likely a theory guy, and you’re likely an applications guy. (I got what I think Cyan’s point was on my first read, but it was a slow read and my “not my area of expertise” alarms were sounding.) It is evidence for overconfidence when people don’t know what they don’t know (heck, that might even be a good definition for overconfidence).
After Cyan’s response that Gibbs and EM weren’t relevant, I would have written something like “If Gibbs and EM aren’t relevant to the ideas of this post, then I don’t think I understand the ideas of this post. Can you try to summarize those as clearly as possible?”