I’ve noticed less and less posts include explicit Acknowledgments or Epistemic Status.
This could indicate that the average post has less work put into it: it hasn’t gone through an explicit round of feedback from people you’ll have to acknowledge. Although this could also be explained by the average poster being more isolated.
If it’s true less work is put into the average post, it seems likely this means that kind of work and discussion has just shifted to private channels like Slack, or more established venues like academia.
I’d guess the LW team have their ways to measure or hypothesize about how much work is put into posts.
It could also be related to the average reader wanting to skim many things fast, as opposed to read a few deeply.
My feeling is that now we all assume by default that the epistemic status is tentative (except in obvious cases like papers).
It could also be that some discourse has become more polarized, and people are less likely to explicitly hedge their position through an epistemic status.
Or that the average reader being less isolated and thus more contextualized, and not as in need of epistemic hedges.
Or simply that less posts nowadays are structured around a central idea or claim, and thus different parts of the post have different epistemic statuses to be written at the top.
It could also be that post types have become more standardized, and each has their reason not to include these sections. For example:
Papers already have acknowledgments, and the epistemic status is diluted through the paper.
Stories or emotion-driven posts don’t want to break the mood with acknowledgments (and don’t warrant epistemic status).
I’ve noticed less and less posts include explicit Acknowledgments or Epistemic Status.
This could indicate that the average post has less work put into it: it hasn’t gone through an explicit round of feedback from people you’ll have to acknowledge. Although this could also be explained by the average poster being more isolated.
If it’s true less work is put into the average post, it seems likely this means that kind of work and discussion has just shifted to private channels like Slack, or more established venues like academia.
I’d guess the LW team have their ways to measure or hypothesize about how much work is put into posts.
It could also be related to the average reader wanting to skim many things fast, as opposed to read a few deeply.
My feeling is that now we all assume by default that the epistemic status is tentative (except in obvious cases like papers).
It could also be that some discourse has become more polarized, and people are less likely to explicitly hedge their position through an epistemic status.
Or that the average reader being less isolated and thus more contextualized, and not as in need of epistemic hedges.
Or simply that less posts nowadays are structured around a central idea or claim, and thus different parts of the post have different epistemic statuses to be written at the top.
It could also be that post types have become more standardized, and each has their reason not to include these sections. For example:
Papers already have acknowledgments, and the epistemic status is diluted through the paper.
Stories or emotion-driven posts don’t want to break the mood with acknowledgments (and don’t warrant epistemic status).