Epistemic status

See commonplace.doubleloop.net/epistemic-disclosure

As of [2022-09-05 Mon], I prefer to express confidences as odds instead of percentages, may be more intuitive; the difference between 80% and 99.5% seems not as clear to non-numerate readers as the difference between 4:1 and 500:1. Also benefits me the writer, who may struggle with whether to assign 99% or 98% or 97% whereas it's easier to compare 100:1 vs 50:1 vs 32:1.

Also with the right style of writing, you may not need to express an epistemic status. While it's useful to supplement opinions and impressions (like "it's my understanding that…"), when you walk through all the reasoning you use, the reader can follow that and arrive at whatever confidence level is appropriate for them. I use epistemic status as a tool for exploring my own beliefs, which has sometimes humbled me about them, but I don't know how much readers benefit.

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Created (3 years ago)