I think it has other problems besides abstraction and technical language. Example 1: “for the continuous of character” doesn’t appear to be grammatically correct and it’s not clear what you actually mean by it (is one of the words an autocorrect error for something else?). Example 2: when you ask “is there [a] name for this?” it’s not clear what “this” actually refers to.
(Also: the key virtue of technical language is its ability to capture certain concepts precisely. In cases where it fails to do this, you should at least seriously consider abandoning technical language.)
It seems like the point of your answer to Bryan-san is to say that your intended audience won’t need to expend time and effort decoding what you wrote. I think you are wrong unless the intended audience is empty.
Since you apparently don’t value your readers’ time enough to make your meaning clearer, I’ll have a go. I may well fail, for exactly the same reason as it seems like a paraphrase might be useful.
People often have attitudes towards particular classes of things (e.g., someone might think that trees are dangerous, or that men are sexy). Our ideas of those classes are often based on “typical” examples we’ve encountered (the oak tree in the neighbour’s garden; Brad Pitt). So suppose something comes along that kinda fits one of these classes but differs from those typical examplars in some way (e.g., a blade of grass is a bit like a tree but much smaller; Maggie Smith is a bit like Brad Pitt but older and female). Should we expect that difference to change those attitudes?
If something like that is the question you’re trying to answer, I think it’s obvious that the answer is: The question is much too vague to be answerable, in the same way as “Suppose I’m thinking of a number. Is it an odd number?”. Some differences affect (or should affect, or could reasonably be expected to affect) some attitudes. Some don’t. Without more information there’s nothing more to say.
(Note: I do not myself generally consider trees dangerous or men sexy. Hypothetical examples are hypothetical.)
I think your paraphrase makes sense if Clarity was accidentally using the term effect instead of affect (in it’s “feeling or emotion” definition). But that doesn’t really fit with the last use of effect, so I would translate Clarity’s use of effect as “property” or “trait”. My paraphrase would be:
Suppose that our understanding of the properties of objects is entirely binary, they either have a property or not. Assume objects are categorized into groups based on their observed properties (this isn’t stated in the original, adding that for clarity). In general, should we assume that if we see a new object which shares some but not all properties with a group, that it shares other properties as yet unobserved?
I would say that if this is the intended meaning, you should assume that it shares other properties, even though it differs, strictly speaking. Mostly this is because we are coding all properties in strictly binary terms rather than as probabilities. If you had extensively studied dangerous trees, then someone showed you grass, and then they asked you binary questions about its properties, you’ll be correct in assuming the answer to the questions was identical for the tree and the grass. You’d get some of them wrong, but the vast majority you’d get right. Trees and grass are much more closely related than grass and petroleum, or grass and love, or grass and President Obama.
We do this in the real world. Most cleaning supplies are toxic, but none of them are carbonated. If someone handed you a bottle of some novel cleaning supply, and you saw it was carbonated and milky white, you’d be right to assume it was toxic even though it clearly has some properties different from all the other cleaning supplies you’ve seen. Of course it would be better to have a probability distribution about whether it’s toxic.
I think it has other problems besides abstraction and technical language. Example 1: “for the continuous of character” doesn’t appear to be grammatically correct and it’s not clear what you actually mean by it (is one of the words an autocorrect error for something else?). Example 2: when you ask “is there [a] name for this?” it’s not clear what “this” actually refers to.
(Also: the key virtue of technical language is its ability to capture certain concepts precisely. In cases where it fails to do this, you should at least seriously consider abandoning technical language.)
It seems like the point of your answer to Bryan-san is to say that your intended audience won’t need to expend time and effort decoding what you wrote. I think you are wrong unless the intended audience is empty.
Since you apparently don’t value your readers’ time enough to make your meaning clearer, I’ll have a go. I may well fail, for exactly the same reason as it seems like a paraphrase might be useful.
If something like that is the question you’re trying to answer, I think it’s obvious that the answer is: The question is much too vague to be answerable, in the same way as “Suppose I’m thinking of a number. Is it an odd number?”. Some differences affect (or should affect, or could reasonably be expected to affect) some attitudes. Some don’t. Without more information there’s nothing more to say.
(Note: I do not myself generally consider trees dangerous or men sexy. Hypothetical examples are hypothetical.)
I think your paraphrase makes sense if Clarity was accidentally using the term effect instead of affect (in it’s “feeling or emotion” definition). But that doesn’t really fit with the last use of effect, so I would translate Clarity’s use of effect as “property” or “trait”. My paraphrase would be:
I would say that if this is the intended meaning, you should assume that it shares other properties, even though it differs, strictly speaking. Mostly this is because we are coding all properties in strictly binary terms rather than as probabilities. If you had extensively studied dangerous trees, then someone showed you grass, and then they asked you binary questions about its properties, you’ll be correct in assuming the answer to the questions was identical for the tree and the grass. You’d get some of them wrong, but the vast majority you’d get right. Trees and grass are much more closely related than grass and petroleum, or grass and love, or grass and President Obama.
We do this in the real world. Most cleaning supplies are toxic, but none of them are carbonated. If someone handed you a bottle of some novel cleaning supply, and you saw it was carbonated and milky white, you’d be right to assume it was toxic even though it clearly has some properties different from all the other cleaning supplies you’ve seen. Of course it would be better to have a probability distribution about whether it’s toxic.