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Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking. Grey thinking is obviously good, ignoring the merits of the other side is just waste

Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking. Grey thinking is obviously good, ignoring the merits of the other side is just wasteful and ignoring the demerits of your own side is dangerous. It is just that every good advice will get misused by people who don't understand it. There is no piece of advice that can help such people, they will just turn it around and use it to defend their current way of thinking. Teach them about logical fallacies and they will use it to "poke holes" in perfectly fine arguments, etc.

abernard1 7y ago
> Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking. Who actually believes that they have all the answers? Everybody except truly deluded people make claims without having to put asterisks on everything they say. Imagine how burdensome it would be to qualify everything with confidence intervals all day long. Which is really the problem with this article: it's attacking a straw man. Nobody actually believes contrary. The only reason I can imagine they'd attack that particular straw man is to imply that they or their readers are of this class of people who engage in grey thinking, and therefore are somehow better. This is where the laziness/arrogance comes in in my opinion. Saying that things in the world are a "grey area" provides no useful information. It's the equivalent of saying: "something might happen, somewhere between multiple extremes." At best, it's a form of laziness. At worst, it shows lack of courage to attempt to explain something, even if it's wrong.
- nradov 7y ago
  Professional intelligence analysts qualify everything with confidence intervals. When conducting formal business or technical communications we ought to follow their example. It would greatly reduce errors and misunderstandings.

abernard1 7y ago

> Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking. Who actually believes that they have all the answers? Everybody except truly deluded people make claims without having to put asterisks on everything they say. Imagine how burdensome it would be to qualify everything with confidence intervals all day long. Which is really the problem with this article: it's attacking a straw man. Nobody actually believes contrary. The only reason I can imagine they'd attack that particular straw man is to imply that they or their readers are of this class of people who engage in grey thinking, and therefore are somehow better. This is where the laziness/arrogance comes in in my opinion. Saying that things in the world are a "grey area" provides no useful information. It's the equivalent of saying: "something might happen, somewhere between multiple extremes." At best, it's a form of laziness. At worst, it shows lack of courage to attempt to explain something, even if it's wrong.

nradov 7y ago
Professional intelligence analysts qualify everything with confidence intervals. When conducting formal business or technical communications we ought to follow their example. It would greatly reduce errors and misunderstandings.