FYI, this is a good example of a case where rot13ing doesn’t help at all. The instant I glanced at gwern’s comment I got what was being said, simply from length considerations. In this case it’s more or less OK, as it’s not a major spoiler point and one would need to unrot13 Morendil’s comment in order to actually get what you were saying “Lrf” about, but had gwern written the comment unrot13ed, I would have gotten exactly the same information from glancing at it.
(But maybe other people would not automatically infer the message from, say, the length? For me, it was something perfectly natural that my brain did automatically, but who knows, that might just be my brain. I am curious: do other people’s brains also automatically react like that in situations like this?)
Lrf.
FYI, this is a good example of a case where rot13ing doesn’t help at all. The instant I glanced at gwern’s comment I got what was being said, simply from length considerations. In this case it’s more or less OK, as it’s not a major spoiler point and one would need to unrot13 Morendil’s comment in order to actually get what you were saying “Lrf” about, but had gwern written the comment unrot13ed, I would have gotten exactly the same information from glancing at it.
(But maybe other people would not automatically infer the message from, say, the length? For me, it was something perfectly natural that my brain did automatically, but who knows, that might just be my brain. I am curious: do other people’s brains also automatically react like that in situations like this?)
Yes, and as you might have intentionally hinted, there are ways of expressing the same sentiment with less letters—or the opposite with more.