Oh, whoops, just added a link to a news program from 1994 on the topic. But tl;dr it’s the vocal act of raising your pitch at the end of a statement so that it sounds more like a question. Usually denoted in writing with a question mark, eg ‘John Adams was one of the best presidents?’ (that construction can also be an ordinary question, so there’s a bit of context sensitivity). It can sometimes denote things other than confidence, but that’s the most common meaning.
Ah. I have actually seen rationalists do this! And I think it works.
It’s faster than adding words like I think or may, but not much. It reads a little more oddly, but not much. So probably worth including in your vocabulary?
Tangentially, another rationalist grammatical quirk that I appreciate and have started to adopt is the use of ‘ever’ in positive statements, which I interpret to mean something like ‘yes but not often / not much’. For example: ‘I have ever met Jane Doe.’ or ‘She has ever eaten crêpes.’
Oh, whoops, just added a link to a news program from 1994 on the topic. But tl;dr it’s the vocal act of raising your pitch at the end of a statement so that it sounds more like a question. Usually denoted in writing with a question mark, eg ‘John Adams was one of the best presidents?’ (that construction can also be an ordinary question, so there’s a bit of context sensitivity). It can sometimes denote things other than confidence, but that’s the most common meaning.
Also sometimes called ‘upspeak’.
Ah. I have actually seen rationalists do this! And I think it works.
It’s faster than adding words like I think or may, but not much. It reads a little more oddly, but not much. So probably worth including in your vocabulary?
Tangentially, another rationalist grammatical quirk that I appreciate and have started to adopt is the use of ‘ever’ in positive statements, which I interpret to mean something like ‘yes but not often / not much’. For example: ‘I have ever met Jane Doe.’ or ‘She has ever eaten crêpes.’