I love this post. I have been one who has perceived your comments as potentially combative before. I have a hunch that it was an impression you were implicitly asserting “no, I should be the one who is trusted!” that set off alarm bells—and this post unambiguously communicates the opposite. In particular:
I think we have failed, thus far. I’m sad about that. When I began posting in 2018, I assumed that the community was careful and trustworthy. Not easily would undeserved connotations sneak into our work and discourse. I no longer believe that and no longer hold that trust.
I agree, and I generally think this has been a problem for a long time. I will believe it is possible to avoid this problem at scale when I meet a group of people who have empirically demonstrated themselves to have scaled it, and at the moment I don’t know off the top of my head how I’d recognize that other than a years-long track record. Fields of mathematics? I suppose there are fields of science that seem to do at least acceptably. But I don’t know of anyone doing really well without the help of mathematically precise definitions, and some more stuff besides. In the meantime,
… well, wait, hold on—I find myself not quite sure how to echo the sentiment I see in this post in a way I can agree I should implement for myself. Perhaps something along the lines of, I could return to my intermittent habit of avoiding words that have been heavily used. But perhaps more important than that is sticking to words whose meaning I can construct mathematically, in the sense of constructivist logic? I’m actually not sure the takeaway here is obvious in the first place now. Hmm.
I love this post. I have been one who has perceived your comments as potentially combative before. I have a hunch that it was an impression you were implicitly asserting “no, I should be the one who is trusted!” that set off alarm bells—and this post unambiguously communicates the opposite. In particular:
I agree, and I generally think this has been a problem for a long time. I will believe it is possible to avoid this problem at scale when I meet a group of people who have empirically demonstrated themselves to have scaled it, and at the moment I don’t know off the top of my head how I’d recognize that other than a years-long track record. Fields of mathematics? I suppose there are fields of science that seem to do at least acceptably. But I don’t know of anyone doing really well without the help of mathematically precise definitions, and some more stuff besides. In the meantime,
… well, wait, hold on—I find myself not quite sure how to echo the sentiment I see in this post in a way I can agree I should implement for myself. Perhaps something along the lines of, I could return to my intermittent habit of avoiding words that have been heavily used. But perhaps more important than that is sticking to words whose meaning I can construct mathematically, in the sense of constructivist logic? I’m actually not sure the takeaway here is obvious in the first place now. Hmm.