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Yeah, maybe the outward pretense of rationality was more important in decades past.

In my experience reading scientific papers, "we conclude" is just a pretentious old-timey way to say "I think". It never actually meant anything more rigorous, it was just the norm to write more pretentiously and inflate the certainty of conclusions.

We've been greatly humbled by being wrong over and over in recent decades. Maybe that has driven people to be less confident and stop presenting their thoughts as inevitable rational conclusions.

Another illustration of the weakness of their data interpretation -- the figure shows use of the word "data" has declined in the past 20 years. Has actual use of data declined over this period? Quite the opposite, surely.

I think (haha) this last point is actually quite revealing and strongly supports the "decreasing pretension" interpretation of the paper's word use trend charts. Maybe people stopped saying "the data says" over and over in a crude attempt to box the reader into submission.

It's hard for me to appreciate an argument that we were more rational during a time of religious dominance, the last 2000 or so years.

We've been greatly humbled by being wrong over and over in recent decades. Maybe that has driven people to be less confident and stop presenting their thoughts as inevitable rational conclusions.

This resonates with me. We are more able to verify our assertions, quicker, faster, more accurately and are more hesitant to make bold claims.

I also think we have a bit of division of specialization going on, where the world keeps turning if everyone is competent in their specialty, allowing our personal, unprofessional, side to act more irrationally without as much consequence as in the past.

Ultimately it's really hard for me to believe that as we spread education and opportunity to the 8 billion people of the world, we are somehow measurably less rational then when a large swath of our population couldn't even read or write.

I think it's pretty common for an individual person to gain intellectual humility over time, especially at middle-age.

As far as historical trends, I think we'd need to start with a clear definition of "rational", and a way to measure that in present and historical societies.

The shift in language in culture as a whole has (in my own personal observation) been directly tied to the inability of the general populace to even understand basic logic. It also corresponds to a direct rejection in much of academia that there is such a thing as Truth.

If you "personally believe" something in today's context, then it is "true for you" and cannot be questioned.

Also, I'll just leave this here for fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

> In my experience reading scientific papers, "we conclude" is just a pretentious old-timey way to say "I think". It never actually meant anything more rigorous, it was just the norm to write more pretentiously and inflate the certainty of conclusions.

A person of a certain age remembers specifically being taught to obscure weak I-statements with impersonal statements that one could conclude are more rational if they do not think about them too hard.

> In my experience reading scientific papers, "we conclude" is just a pretentious old-timey way to say "I think".

My high school Philosophy teacher would argue that "I think" is a weasily way to avoid accountability and challenge. And, "I think", she would say, is implied by any first person statement.

Nobody can challenge what you think; your thoughts are your own. What they can challenge are declarations you make about the external world. What she failed to foresee is the degree of offense people would eventually claim regarding others' declarations. "I think" is indeed a way to pull your punches, but often to avoid conflict with the public's increasingly hyper-sensitive disposition than to protect one's own fragile ego.

I don't know about Philosotopia, but in the real world the difference between X and "I think X" is pretty obvious, and it's very easy to challenge what others think.

> it's very easy to challenge what others think.

Arguably it didn't used to be that way, and the current state of affairs--political divisiveness, etc--is a reflection of those rhetorical, linguistic barriers falling.

Hypothesis: We have more books authored per capita today than then, suggesting a broadening of the types and training of authors.

"In 1907 there were 9,260 books published in the United States according to the New York State Library Bookboard. ...Compare that to 2010 when there were 316,480 books published by traditional publishing companies according to Bowker." [1]

Meanwhile the U.S. population has grown from 92,228,496 in 1910 to 308,745,538 in 2010. [2]

Calculate ratios. In 1910 there was a book published per every 9,959.0 Americans. In 2010, there was a book published per every 975.5 Americans. Ratio of ratios: 10.2x in 1910 individuals per book published.

I'm not going to bother with any stat test. There has been a magnitude of change during this span. We have more authors (or publications) per capita than before, likely reflecting a broadening of the socioeconomic and educational classes of the authors.

[1] http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2012/01/31/how-many-books-w... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_Uni...

EDIT: It seems I should have started from 1980, not 1910...but now its time for work.

more stats about bbbooks: https://ourworldindata.org/books

I believe you are right!

> Interesting language analysis, but I disagree with the conclusion. Authors merely stating "conclude" or "determine" instead "believe" or "feel" doesn't prove they actually were any more or less rational or logical.

It actually does. The primary difference is first-person pronoun use versus reliance upon external factors, such as evidence of any kind. That shift indicates a trend towards narcissistic thinking and possibly isolation.

This is ridiculous. "We conclude" means you relied on evidence, "I think" doesn't? Give us a break.

If you have any experience reading scientific papers, you should know that this sort of language carries no information whatsoever on the rigor of the author's methodology.

It's not necessarily ridiculous. It depends on the sort of social norms and stigmas that are associated with those words. For instance, there could exist a certain cultural expectation of a certain level of rigour that accompanies any emphatic statements like "I conclude", and "I think" could have fewer such standards and so permit more lax claims to pass for those who are less familiar with the culture, like new scientists who have not yet absorbed those norms.

I don't think it's the most plausible explanation but it's not clearly and obviously wrong. Context what matters to make sense of this, but I'm not sure this sort of analysis could ferret that out.

It goes to intent, which is as important as the methodology. Intent is important enough that it is the second step in the scientific process. I can understand why this might be over someone's head, but it really is freshman level communication/rhetorical analysis.

> It goes to intent, which is as important as the methodology.

It's not. Especially when it's just pretension and ritualistic habit, and not even real intent.

> It's not. Especially when

The only distinction that matters in what you are arguing is level of education. Again, this is about a very basic command of the written word and at the same the subject here is academic research. Your comment is suggesting a colloquialism as an excuse for poor writing when actually colloquialisms have no business in academic writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquialism

Like I said before I can also understand why these concepts, even though they are incredibly basic, are so absolutely foreign to a community of software developers that don't frequently write or read academic research.

Speaking from experience, you vastly overstate the extent to which your "very basic" and "incredibly basic" personal stylistic expectations prevail in academia as a whole.

Regardless, I don't really care if an academic thinks they concluded something from evidence or they just think it as a matter of opinion. A lot of the time, they don't know the difference anyway. They can present their evidence and I'll decide if I believe whatever they think or conclude.

I know academics. As a class, they aren't especially rigorous, precise, or deserving of epistemic privilege. Some are, but there's far too much variance to make broad brush statements.

> Regardless, I don't really care

You do care or you wouldn't be arguing with me and sounding emotional.

Saying things that make you emotional because they hit too close to home isn't the same as saying things emotionally.

I see the current trend towards first person, and away from passive voice, as the opposite. "I preprocessed the data using algorithm X", compared to "The data was preprocessed using algorithm X", explicitly acknowledges a fallible human being at the centre of the analysis.

Perhaps, but that isn't the argument this paper is making.

I took it as a trend toward more readable style and away from unnatural hard to read sentences. As in, scientific community learning to write like humans.

It could also reflect a trend towards more precise use of language and more accurate communication of the outcomes of the author's work. You'd have to do a more in depth study of the actual work and usage to determine which is the case.