ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Comments (212)
To me that sentence seems cryptic.
Do you mean probability instead of probably?
Maybe the reviewer considered
“flips”as too casual. I think the paper might be easier to read if you either would writeflipsdirectly without quotes or choose another word.What the difference between
otherwise not have been a caseandnon-case?If the reviwers don't succeed in understanding what you are saying you might have explained yourself in casual language but still failed.
Yes. Thanks for noticing. I changed that sentence after I got the rejection letter (in order to correct a minor error that the reviewers correctly pointed out), and the error was introduced at that time. So that is not what they were referring to.
I agree, but I am puzzled by why they would have misunderstood. I spent a lot of effort over several months trying to be as clear as possible. Moreover, the ideas are very simple: The definitions are the only real innovation: Once you have the definitions, the proofs are trivial and could have been written by a high school student. If the reviewers don't understand the basic idea, I will have to substantially update my beliefs about the quality of my writing. This is upsetting because being a bad writer will make it a lot harder to succeed in academia. The primary alternative hypotheses for why they misunderstood are either (1) that they are missing some key fundamental assumption that I take for granted or (2) that they just don't want to understand.
What kind of audience would you expect to understand your article?