3 ms·

"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".

javajosh 4y ago
Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.
- buggy6257 4y ago
  Claims to know*
- kgwgk 4y ago
  Maybe I don’t have the required level of literacy but I understand « The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally » as the union of the « know personally » and « aware of generally » sets.
  - nightpool 4y ago
    In most understandings of English, "and" is used as the conjunction operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction (set intersection). If you were expressing a disjunction (a union), you'd use "or" or "as well as" or something similar. Obviously it's possible to eventually puzzle out from context what OP meant, but I made the same mistake as the person you're replying to when reading the comment quickly.
    - kgwgk 4y ago
      Is it so? What about “I want to thank both you and the original article author”? Should it be “or” instead of “and”?
    - digging 4y ago
      > In most understandings of English This seems a reach to me. I think your confusion is not unfounded and is not uncommon, but I think it's also extremely (and moreso?) common to read the sentence as the author intended. It took me 0ms to puzzle out the meaning because the intended meaning was the natural assumption of my brain. Besides that, it seems a bit absurd to me to say that "and" and "as well as" have entirely distinct meanings. They're not totally interchangeable, but there is overlap.
  - ckemere 4y ago
    Thanks! This is the sense in which I had intended the sentence. I wish that I knew Terrence Tao and Ed Witten! The smart people I know personally I wanted to keep anonymous....

javajosh 4y ago

Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.

buggy6257 4y ago
Claims to know*
kgwgk 4y ago
Maybe I don’t have the required level of literacy but I understand « The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally » as the union of the « know personally » and « aware of generally » sets.
- nightpool 4y ago
  In most understandings of English, "and" is used as the conjunction operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_conjunction (set intersection). If you were expressing a disjunction (a union), you'd use "or" or "as well as" or something similar. Obviously it's possible to eventually puzzle out from context what OP meant, but I made the same mistake as the person you're replying to when reading the comment quickly.
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    Is it so? What about “I want to thank both you and the original article author”? Should it be “or” instead of “and”?
  - digging 4y ago
    > In most understandings of English This seems a reach to me. I think your confusion is not unfounded and is not uncommon, but I think it's also extremely (and moreso?) common to read the sentence as the author intended. It took me 0ms to puzzle out the meaning because the intended meaning was the natural assumption of my brain. Besides that, it seems a bit absurd to me to say that "and" and "as well as" have entirely distinct meanings. They're not totally interchangeable, but there is overlap.
- ckemere 4y ago
  Thanks! This is the sense in which I had intended the sentence. I wish that I knew Terrence Tao and Ed Witten! The smart people I know personally I wanted to keep anonymous....