People (especially people who object-level disagree with me) often get mad at me for how unreasonably confident I might sound on surprising claims. But imo it’d be more performatively dishonest for me to add qualifiers when I don’t believe in them!
It seems generally very doable to me to not overly hedge when you’re confident and also state your true beliefs at the same time. For example, instead of saying “My best guess is that the encylical written by AI, but I am not sure” (which is hedging too much), its possible to say something like “This will probably sound surprising, but I believe I have amassed significant evidence that the encylical was written by LLM. Judge for yourself”[1]. I also think this is not too time-consuming once you notice that something might sound overly confident.
In general, I think there’s a false tradeoff between honesty and persuasiveness and that its generally possible to be both if you phrase things well. But I do agree with your other point about hedging too much: it’s often hard to be honest about your unconfident views but also be easily readable.
For this example in particular you may have done the second phrasing, I don’t remember the post. I think the point stands regardless. I use this example only because you mention it.
This was interesting, thanks!
It seems generally very doable to me to not overly hedge when you’re confident and also state your true beliefs at the same time. For example, instead of saying “My best guess is that the encylical written by AI, but I am not sure” (which is hedging too much), its possible to say something like “This will probably sound surprising, but I believe I have amassed significant evidence that the encylical was written by LLM. Judge for yourself”[1]. I also think this is not too time-consuming once you notice that something might sound overly confident.
In general, I think there’s a false tradeoff between honesty and persuasiveness and that its generally possible to be both if you phrase things well. But I do agree with your other point about hedging too much: it’s often hard to be honest about your unconfident views but also be easily readable.
For this example in particular you may have done the second phrasing, I don’t remember the post. I think the point stands regardless. I use this example only because you mention it.
Also true for honesty and kindness