Qiaochu_Yuan comments on A Little Puzzle about Termination - Less Wrong
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Comments (36)
Was that "Uhm..." really necessary?
You imply that there's a good reason for not using that "uhm...". What reason would that be?
Politeness? profunda's entire comment strikes me as quite rude and removing the beginning would at least be a step in the right direction.
The "uhm" didn't come across to me as rudeness; it came across as hesitance, which I interpreted as fear of coming across as rude. I admit that "sounds like you've never heard of X" is less polite than "have you heard of X?", and the latter seems like a good substitute. "I invite you to look into that" doesn't seem rude at all to me.
I interpreted it as sarcastic. YMMV. It is of course very hard to make sure stuff like this isn't misinterpreted on the internet.
Warringal correctly interpreted what I was trying to convey and even summed up my afterthoughts on how I could've been more tactful, however, 'uhm' does assume negative connotations in online discussions -- according to urban dictionary, but unbeknown to me at the time.