lincolnq's Quick takes

I avoid reading, and don't usually respond to, comments on my posts, or replies to my own comments.

The reason is that it's emotionally intense to do so: after posting something on the EA Forum, I avoid checking the forum at all for ~24h or so (for fear of noticing replies in the 'recents' area, or changes in my karma), and after that I mainly skim for people flagging major errors or omissions that need my input to be resolved.

Lizka's You Don't Have to Respond to Every Comment talks about this a bit (and was enormously helpful for me) - I am not strongly averse to posting stuff and having people read it in the abstract - I just don't like the short term emotional swings that come with individual replies to things.

I wrote up my nutrition notes here, from my first year of being vegan: http://www.lincolnquirk.com/2023/06/02/vegan_nutrition.html

"it is unclear whether" can sometimes mean "I am skeptical that" or "I don't think". It annoys me when people use it this way. Unclear already has a good and useful meaning. We shouldn't dilute it.

The proper use of "unclear" is a sentence like this: "it's still unclear if the intervention worked". A quick heuristic: if the use of "unclear" is or could be prefixed by "still" without changing the meaning, it is probably ok :). Another way to view it -- if more information is likely to come out soon, then it's probably ok.

Some examples of usages of "unclear" I'd like to see less of:

• "How do you think the willingness of key actors such as governments to tackle bio risks will change...? It's unclear whether we will see the right levels of political competence and focused engagement..." 1
• "It's unclear how significant the extrinsic, welfare-oriented value of biodiversity even is" 2
• "it is unclear how OpenPhil are comparing different causes, rather than looking out for giving opportunities across a variety of causes" 3