True, but these pleadings usually come from people who habitually engage in the Art of Controversy. People who are really working to communicate usually don't mind adding qualifiers on request. I will put it more strongly: adding qualifiers or providing qualifiers on request is loathed by people who are just interested in swirling up controversy. It is a shame that everyone is penalized into adding unnecessary qualifiers, but, until "mind-meld" technology is perfected, it is part of the effective use of human languages.Blog posts are short and have a broad audience. One of the worst things about writing them is having to make disclaimers. Not just legal disclaimers mind you – those are only the tip of an iceberg. Writing is hard in part because words have many associations that vary among readers. Even when we use carefully choose our words to signal certain associations, we know some readers will instead hear other associations. So in addition to saying what we do mean, we sometimes have to say explicitly what we do not mean.
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Friday, June 6, 2008
Against Disclaimers - Robin Hanson
Against Disclaimers - Robin Hanson
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