byrnema comments on Personal examples of semantic stopsigns - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Alexei 06 December 2013 02:12AM

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Comment author: byrnema 06 December 2013 04:52:43PM 0 points [-]

If you and I have a discussing about how I eat too much chocolate, and I say, "You are right, I should eat less chocolate," the conversation will basically end there. But 99 times out of a 100 nothing will actually come out of it. I try to taboo the word "should" from my vocabulary, so instead I will say something like, "You are right, I will not purchase any chocolate this month." This is a concrete actionable statement.

I expected you would suggest listing a reason why you shouldn't eat chocolate (one step before doing something about it). I was just surprised. Is there a specific reason you went with the actionable statement?