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Jiro comments on Linguistic mechanisms for less wrong cognition - Less Wrong Discussion
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In English every sentence ends in ".", "?" or "!". You can't simply omit those because otherwise a new sentence won't start. I think it's good for evidentials to end sentence's in the same way.
Recently I develed a bit into radical honesty. Radical honesty proclaims that you say what's on your mind. However instead of saying: "You are angry", you can say "I imagine you are angry". The usage of "I imagine" makes the conversation much nicer. It's part of what stops people practicing radical honesty from being assholes. At the same time "I imagine" costs four syllables. The direct translation into German is even more clumsy: "Ich stelle mir vor, dass". It would be much nicer if the language integrates evidentials by default.
Is it consistent on this? For instance, does "you are my friend" work this way as well? And if you think your car is running out of gas, do you say "I conclude that my car is running out of gas"? (There's some nonzero probability that your gas gauge malfunctions, after all).
When speaking about radical honesty I used "can say" because you nothing in radical honesty forces you to use evidentials.
As far as my wish for an ideal language goes I think it's good if the language requires evidentials. When it comes to "I conclude that my car is running out of gas" it's useful to distinguish the fact that you conclude based on reason, your intuition or because an authority told you so.
"You are my friend" can also mean many things. You can say it to mean: "I hereby declare that you are my friend". You can mean "my intuition tells me your my friend. You can mean "based on reasoning I conclude that you are my friend". You can mean "I hereby promise you that I will treat you as a friend in the future". The fact that English often leaves that unspecified can lead to a lot of misunderstandings.
"You are angry" can also mean similar things (based on reasoning I conclude that you are angry, I promise that I am treating you as though you are angry, etc.) So that doesn't really answer the question of whether the language is consistent on this between "you are angry" and "you are my friend".
You didn't specify which language you mean. I spoke about an example from Radical Honesty. That's not really a conlang but simply a way to use the English language and not even one that requires you to use certain phrases to express yourself. If you mean my conlang draft every sentence should end in a evidential and that goes for both of those sentences. Apart from that I don't think that "you are angry" is a good construction. I wouldn't want to have "to be" involved in that construction.
Sorry, I misunderstood. But I think the same question can be asked even if it isn't a language. "You are angry" must be expressed using words that recognize that you are making a conclusion about someone's anger. Must similar sentences about other conclusions be expressed that way? Or does this requirement apply only to "you are angry" while there is no requirement for "I conclude my car is out of gas" or "I deduce that you are motivated by friendship"?
I have read about radical honesty multiple times on the internet and didn't saw the point of it. I only saw the point when I meet a person who actually lives according to the philosophy, even when that means that it makes certain situations more challenging.
The core rule of radical honesty isn't: You have to say "I imagine", "I conclude" or "I deduce". The core rule is that you speak the truth and when you judge another person you don't hold the judgement back but speak it out. Empirically that's easier when the statement is softened by "I imagine".
If I remember correctly, Japanese allows "I want X" but not "You/He wants X," only "It seems that you/he wants X," the reasoning being that the speaker can't read other people's heads and can't know what they want, only the external signs that suggest so. Is that how you language handles "You are angry"?
No, I have no problem with people saying that they know that someone else is angry.
I however would want to have a distinction between whether the claim is that the person has the feeling, the emotion or the moot of anger.
Serious psychology distinguishes those from each other and as a result I would want the language to reflect that distinction and not simply use "you are".
I think the information transmitted at minimum would be: "I have the knowledge that you have the feeling of anger." Currently that should take four sylables with 10 to 12 letters.
But it should be also possible with using an additional letter to instead say: "My intuition tells me that you have the feeling of anger."
My goal isn't that language forces people to use a phrase like "I imagine" but that it makes it easier. I think that makes it easier to communicate with Radical Honesty without people feeling insulted.