I wouldn’t have minded so much if the fancy formulation had been more accurate, or even equally as accurate. But it was actually a worse choice: “you only survived because of QI / anthropic principle” is always trivially true, and conveys zero information about the unlikeliness of said survival—it applies equally to someone who just drank milk and someone who just drank motor oil.
Everyone knows that clever people use longer words.
Er, I meant to say that it’s a commonly held belief that the length and obscurity of words used increases asymptotically with intelligence.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if the fancy formulation had been more accurate, or even equally as accurate. But it was actually a worse choice: “you only survived because of QI / anthropic principle” is always trivially true, and conveys zero information about the unlikeliness of said survival—it applies equally to someone who just drank milk and someone who just drank motor oil.
PS: Was “asymptotically” the right word?
No, I suppose it wasn’t.