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Hansenista comments on On Saying the Obvious - Less Wrong Discussion

82 Post author: Grognor 02 February 2012 05:13AM

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Comment author: Hansenista 03 February 2012 04:43:33AM *  0 points [-]

There is no reason an action like this can't have a compound cause. I would guess that, in the hypothetical, the person is not actually thinking "Okay, I'll preface this with 'obviously' so that I look good." However, it is likely that, since saying "obviously" is high status, they wouldn't think too hard about whether the thing is in fact obvious - certainly not as hard as if they were about to say something low status.