robertskmiles comments on "I don't know." - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 December 2006 06:27PM

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

Comments (16)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: robertskmiles 25 August 2015 04:12:26PM 5 points [-]

It seems to me that "I don't know" in many contexts really means "I don't know any better than you do", or "Your guess is as good as mine", or "I have no information such that sharing it would improve the accuracy of your estimate", or "We've neither of us seen the damn tree, what are you asking me for?".

This feels like a nothing response, because it kind of is, but you aren't really saying "My knowledge of this is zero", you're saying "My knowledge of this which is worth communicating is zero".