knb comments on Honesty: Beyond Internal Truth - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 June 2009 02:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (85)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: knb 06 June 2009 05:43:21AM *  8 points [-]

I have noticed that, in addition to being honest, rationalists (or those striving toward rationality) seem to also speak very precisely (although not necessarily accurately) . This is a trait that they seem to share in common with philosophers, lawyers, programmers, etc.

I suspect this is because these people recognize the confusion caused by the vagueness of language.

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 June 2009 07:10:17AM 4 points [-]

I think the ideal here is to speak with a level of precision that matches your confidence in your accuracy. For example, I would say that an event is probable to indicate I have a vague impression it is more likely to occur than not, if I say it has a probability of .62, that means I have done an explicit mathematical analysis of my uncertainty.