I don't think it was meant as an absolutist assertion.
...does that change your mind? ;)
> To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters.
> Let's start from the main domains where we know people don't change their minds — politics or religion.
Perhaps people familiar with his work interpret his statements differently. It's also understandable if this was a lecture for peers. But I'm a layperson whose only context is this article and the things he says sound absolute.
It's already an era of misinformation and low attention. We don't need content published in a way that may add to it. If there are conditions and nuances involved here, I think writers, especially scientists and professionals, and editors should include them and avoid saying anything that risks misinterpretation.
Which statement is better, “people don’t like the smell of skunk spray” or “the vast majority of people do not like the smell of skunk spray”? The latter is more correct, as I am sure there is probably someone out there who is an outlier. But I can’t help but feel like my communication has been made less precise and has been made subject to interpretation as a result.
If the writer is certain about something or wants to make an absolute statement, then that's when the verbosity comes into play. That's when the writer can start to add all the fluff words.
That's a convention that's way better, because the large majority of statements and propositions aren't known with certainty. I am exhausted at having to read long winded prose with endless "maybe" "mostly" and so on, with the obligatory "we don't know this for sure" at the end. I don't come away thinking you're humble, I am just annoyed that you've wasted my time when it was blatantly obvious you were saying something not absolute.
We should hedge statements depending on whether the context makes it self-explanatory that there's uncertainty. Any less, and we're being deceptive. Any more, and we're adding words without adding information.
You know what would be a cool? Some notation to denote the level of certainty that doesn't take up horizontal space in the sentence. Or an API to a fine tuned GPT-3 that can strip out caveats and hedges from text on a screen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1adan
Check out the tenses, things like, "Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally" vs "Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source".
Also - relevance?
The tagline being questioned here is—
“People don't change their minds”
— the problem with which is not that it’s “simply untrue” but that it requires qualification, e.g. in the prose of the linked article it’s written:
“To a good first approximation, people simply don't change their minds about anything that matters”
Citation for personal preference? Or for claim that currently confidence is rewarded more then accuracy?
> the problem with which is not that it’s “simply untrue” but that
The statement is untrue, because people do change minds. People change minds also about stuff that matters. They dont do it often, but they do it.
I think the citation would be for "is moving away" as that's the most bold claim.
Seeing more and more people demand such qualifiers is culture moving away.
If the response to every title should be "You shouldn't judge us on the title, everyone knows titles are bullshit", then maybe folks should stop making bullshit titles, or else not feign innocence when they are judged on them.
(Note I understand the submitted title is not the title of the article, which I think is a valid defense in this instance, but my general point still stands)