Eugine_Nier comments on How do you notice when you're rationalizing? - Less Wrong

12 Post author: AnnaSalamon 02 March 2012 07:28AM

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Comment author: GuySrinivasan 02 March 2012 08:34:33PM 3 points [-]

Cue: I say the word "clearly", "hopefully", or "obviously".

This definitely doesn't always indicate rationalization, but I say one of those words (and probably some others that I haven't explicitly noticed) with much greater probability if I'm rationalizing than if I'm not, and saying them fairly reliably kicks off an "ORLY" process.

Comment author: fiddlemath 29 March 2012 04:19:43AM *  0 points [-]

Oooh, I just realized: if you can pick out words like this when you're writing, and you can code in your text editor, then your computer can catch this cue for you. (like writegood-mode in emacs). I've had this prevent ugly sentences in technical writing, but catching "rationalization words" in written sentences would also be useful when, say, writing a journal, or writing down an argument.

More awesomely, the highlighting is immediate in that mode, so you get tight feedback about the sentences you're typing.