Good points. I agree that what you write within parentheses is a potential problem. Indeed, it is a problem for many kinds of far-reaching norms on altruistic behaviour compliance with which is hard to observe: they might handicap conscientious people relative to less conscientious people to such an extent that the norms do more harm than good.
I also agree that individualistic solutions to collective problems have a chequered record. The point of 1)-3) was rather to indicate how you potentially could reduce hedge drift, given that you want to do that. To get scientists and others to want to reduce hedge drift is probably a harder problem.
In conversation, Ben Levinstein suggested that it is partly the editors’ role to frame articles in a way such that hedge drift doesn’t occur. There is something to that, though it is of course also true that editors often have incentives to encourage hedge drift as well.
Good points. I agree that what you write within parentheses is a potential problem. Indeed, it is a problem for many kinds of far-reaching norms on altruistic behaviour compliance with which is hard to observe: they might handicap conscientious people relative to less conscientious people to such an extent that the norms do more harm than good.
I also agree that individualistic solutions to collective problems have a chequered record. The point of 1)-3) was rather to indicate how you potentially could reduce hedge drift, given that you want to do that. To get scientists and others to want to reduce hedge drift is probably a harder problem.
In conversation, Ben Levinstein suggested that it is partly the editors’ role to frame articles in a way such that hedge drift doesn’t occur. There is something to that, though it is of course also true that editors often have incentives to encourage hedge drift as well.