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re: epistemic strictness You don't think HN users are capable of realizing when they are engaged in mind/future reading, even if it was an explicit rule? You
by mistermann 5y ago
re: epistemic strictness
You don't think HN users are capable of realizing when they are engaged in mind/future reading, even if it was an explicit rule? You surely know the userbase better than me, but this seems unlikely.
If you want nothing to change, so be it, but the idea that functionality changes cannot have an effect is very frustrating.
- dang 5y agoCorrect. Not only HN users but humans in general—I just don't think we work that way. The way we work is that we have our preference on X and then we propagate that preference through every edge in our mental graph of associations from X. One can imagine a user saying something like "Although I personally am against nuclear power, since this is the 'optimism' thread it isn't the best place for my counterarguments so I'll post them in the 'pessimism' thread instead". However, such people are somewhere between vanishingly rare and unicorns. Statistically they may as well not exist.
- mistermann 5y ago> Correct. Not only HN users but humans in general—I just don't think we work that way. I am curious if this is actually true (that humans are unable, with concentration, to realize they cannot read minds), but maybe I have an excess of curiosity! :)