Signalling doesn't have to be that straightforward. A clever individual (of which we have a few) may choose to be significantly more circumspect, and imply that a piece of knowledge is obvious by omitting it from a statement that presupposes it, or alluding to it off-hand. We do this all the time, but I'm going to say that this probably has more to do with mind projection than anything else. It often simply won't occur to us to modulate a statement to encompass the receivers.
However, I don't know if this is a ploy we can entirely defeat just by making obviousness a bad word. If anything, that just requires people trying to make such a ploy to be circumspect...
I think a better approach than doing away with the notion that obviousness is bad (because, to be honest, if something really is obvious to you, getting a detailed explanation of it can be very annoying), might simply be to explain concepts like inferential distances and mind projection to posters who don't seem to understand them. If people understand those problems of communication and others like them implicitly, they can more easily allow themselves to say something that might be obvious. At least it works that way for me. I won't explain seemingly obv...
Is this really a contextually relevant oversight? Most terms do have multiple uses, but they depend a lot on the context for their applicability. I might be missing something, but I get the impression that the post's primary purpose is to highlight the problems with using the concept of obviousness here (and could plausibly be extended to do so in other circumstances where you're dealing with an audience to whom you can't immediately measure the inferential distance).
Using the concept of obviousness to signal that you possess or anticipate a certain level...
Time to abandon cryosleep. I hope this post isn't too big.
This comparison seems to rely on too many dubious assumptions: First, that the IQ scores reported in the survey were precise for a uniform standard deviation. Second, that these scores correlate strongly with the forms of competence relevant to LessWrong. Third, that this correlation will further correlate strongly with the total Karma of a user. Fourth, it rests on an understanding of the Dunning-Kruger effect and its implications that I either don't understand or don't at all agree with.
Pertaining...
Thanks for the help. I'll see what works best for me.
I find that Lesswrong yields interesting subjects for study, as well as useful insights pertaining to said subjects, both in the articles themselves and in the attached comments.
However, because of the website format, I have a tendency to succumb to Chronic Internet Distraction Disease while browsing here. To solve this problem, I would like to devise a way to transfer articles and their associated commentary from Lesswrong to my hard drive, where I can read them without the tantalizing proximity of embedded hyperlinks.
The articles themselves can be copy-...
I've learned that people significantly more knowledgeable and intelligent than me do exist, and not just as some mythical statistical entity at the fringes of what I'll realistically encounter in my everyday life.
The internet - and indeed communications technology in general - is beneficial like that, even if it takes some searching to find a suitable domain.
One of the reasons why I took the step from lurker to user - a month or so ago - was that I thought I should reply to this comment. I subsequently forgot where to find it, and stumbled upon it again just now.
I'm 18. Whether or not that makes me qualified for whatever help you had in mind I do not know, but I'm certainly interested.
Hrm. Now someone's downvoted your question, it seems. It's all a great, sinister conspiracy.
Well, regardless... peuddO is a username I occasionally utilize on internet forums. It's "upside down" in Norwegian, written upside down in Norwegian (I'm so very clever). Even so, I know that I personally prefer to know the names people go by out-of-internet. It's a strange quirk, perhaps, but it makes me feel obligated to provide my real first name when introducing myself.
Out of curiosity...
Out of curiosity... what?
Edit: Since that seems to have earned me a downvote, I'd like to clarify that I'm just wondering as to what, specifically, you're curious about. Why I choose to call myself that? If I'm some other Sindre you know? Why my username is not Sindre? etc.
I like to call myself Sindre online. I'm just barely 18, and I go to school in Norway - which doesn't have a school system entirely similar to any other that I'm familiar with, so I'll refrain from trying to describe what sort of education I'm getting - other than to say that I'm not very impressed with how the public school system is laid out here in Norway.
I found Less Wrong through a comment on this blog, where it was mentioned as a place populated by reasonably intelligent people. Since I thought that was an intriguing endorsement, I decided to give i...
That's just not very correct. There are no external errors in measuring probability, seeing as the unit and measure comes from internal processes. Errors in perceptions of reality and errors in evaluating the strength of an argument will invariably come from oneself, or alternatively from ambiguity in the argument itself (which would make it a worse argument anyway).
Intelligent people do make bad ideas seem more believable and stupid people do make good ideas seem less believable, but you can still expect the intelligent people to be right more often. Oth... (read more)