Hmmph. If he wants to push people to do more research so that they can make statements without any such qualifiers—or to shut up when they haven’t done enough research to have anything useful to say—then I may sympathize. If he wants them to make themselves sound more certain than they are, then I oppose.
Funnily enough, just yesterday I read Steven Pinker heaping paragraph upon paragraph of scorn on writers who keep hedging with claims like “I think”.
Yeah, Pinker is specifically kinda annoyed/outgroupy at LW Rats I think.
I’d be surprised if he had LW Rats in mind when he wrote that, but it’s not impossible.
Hmmph. If he wants to push people to do more research so that they can make statements without any such qualifiers—or to shut up when they haven’t done enough research to have anything useful to say—then I may sympathize. If he wants them to make themselves sound more certain than they are, then I oppose.