Outside of postmodernism, people are almost never deliberately vague: they think they’re over specifying, in painfully elaborate detail, but thank to the magic of inferential distance it comes across as less information than necessary to the listener. The listener then, of course, also expects short inferential distance, and assumes that the speaker is deliberately being vague, instead of noticing that actually there’s just a lot more to explain.
Yes, and this is why I asked in the first place. To be more exact, I’m confused as to why Eliezer does not post a step-by-step detailing how he reached the particular confidence he currently holds as opposed to say, expecting it to be quite obvious.
I believe people like Holden especially would appreciate this; he gives an over 90% confidence to an unfavorable outcome, but doesn’t explicitly state the concrete steps he took to reach such a confidence.
Maybe Holden had a gut feeling and threw a number, if so, isn’t it more beneficial for Eliezer to detail how he personally reached the confidence level he has for a FAI scenario occurring than to bash Holden for being unclear?
I don’t believe I can answer these questions correctly (as I’m not Eliezer and these questions are very much specific to him); I was already reaching a fair bit with my previous post.
Outside of postmodernism, people are almost never deliberately vague: they think they’re over specifying, in painfully elaborate detail, but thank to the magic of inferential distance it comes across as less information than necessary to the listener. The listener then, of course, also expects short inferential distance, and assumes that the speaker is deliberately being vague, instead of noticing that actually there’s just a lot more to explain.
Yes, and this is why I asked in the first place. To be more exact, I’m confused as to why Eliezer does not post a step-by-step detailing how he reached the particular confidence he currently holds as opposed to say, expecting it to be quite obvious.
I believe people like Holden especially would appreciate this; he gives an over 90% confidence to an unfavorable outcome, but doesn’t explicitly state the concrete steps he took to reach such a confidence.
Maybe Holden had a gut feeling and threw a number, if so, isn’t it more beneficial for Eliezer to detail how he personally reached the confidence level he has for a FAI scenario occurring than to bash Holden for being unclear?
I don’t believe I can answer these questions correctly (as I’m not Eliezer and these questions are very much specific to him); I was already reaching a fair bit with my previous post.
I’m happy you asked, I did need to make my argument more specific.
Aren’t they? Lots of non-postmodern poets are sometimes deliberately vague. I am often deliberately vague.
That clearly shows postmodernist influence. ;)