wedrifid comments on Eight Short Studies On Excuses - Less Wrong
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I'm sorry, but I have to briefly rant about something that has annoyed me for YEARS:
"Not grading it" would be fine with me, as the student. I don't like grades in the first place!
What the teacher means is: "I will automatically assign a failing grade, no matter how good the work is." [EDIT: "...just as if you had turned nothing in at all".] That is distinct from "not grading it", and is what the teacher should say instead (if it is what he or she actually means).
There is some ambiguity in the phrase 'grade it', with the two of you using different definitions. Most teachers consider 'grading papers' to be the process of reading a paper, evaluating merits and granting symbolic value to your academic performance based on the quality of the work. Possible literal meanings are far more varied.
I think the teacher's meaning could scrape by as technically correct but it would depend on the details of how she inputs the marks. ie. If she doesn't do anything with the paper at all and the computer system defaults to either assigning 0 or outright failing you based off the lack of an entered grade then it is technically correct. If she explicitly types in a 0 then she would not be.
Even under this understanding of the term, the issue remains. Yes, if you interpret "grade" to mean "read", the teacher's statement becomes true. But then the problem is the omission of the important part: "...and papers I don't 'grade' (=read) receive a score of 0."
I think both you and I covered this technicality. It depends on how the system works. Receiving '0' isn't the same as not receiving anything. But I agree about the important part being missing.