JustinCEO Topic

I judge it by if I write something that I feel uncertain or confused about vs something I don’t. If I have doubts over what I’ve written then I’m confused/guessing/acting on an idea which I have criticisms of.

Otherwise I have certainty and the error is a result of some mistake in knowledge or problem solving taking place. Maybe making mistakes in skimming. Maybe making mistakes in remembering what each word can be used as, which I think is not uncommon as I’ve never tried to study words seriously before so I approximately know a lot of words but don’t know their classifications without stopping to think about it.

I was thinking of the debt as a property of Italy like if you used “has” instead of “owes.” You might be right that “owes” is not a linking verb, it means more than “has” and establishes some sort of a relationship.

I don’t think I’ve come across a list of linking verbs before. I looked for some after your comment and found a bunch of different lists in different articles (they all seem to miss some things that other lists have.) Do you have a good list of them? Otherwise I’ll compile a list from the sources I found to have a more comprehensive list.

You skipped over my question “Can you define the difference?” without giving a yes or no. This is relevant, because then you proceeded to make what I think is an error based on an implied definition of what a careless guess is.

One definition of “careless” is “not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoiding harm or errors.” You seem to be saying that you judge something to be a careless guess if you write something when you feel confused or uncertain. If I were to come up with a definition of a careless guess based on what you said, it might be “claiming something is true when one is uncertain or confused.” While ignoring warning signs like that reflects a type of carelessness, defining a careless guess in such a way defines it too narrowly, because it excludes other examples of careless guesses from the scope of what counts as a careless guess.

One important category of careless guesses is guesses resulting from using a bad method, or failing to use a good method, when one should have known better. Using a bad method would be an example of “not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoiding harm or errors”, since if one had given the matter sufficient thought or attention, one would have not used the method. You said:

Looking for examples of concepts you are studying is a pretty well known method. Looking for lists of linking verbs is a case of looking for examples of a concept. It sounds like you failed to do that here before I suggested it. I would suggest that this failure was an example of carelessness, and that guesses which resulted from the failure would be careless guesses. (Another alternative is that you’re very new to learning things, but I don’t think you’re very young, so I don’t think that applies).

I think that mistakes “in knowledge or problem solving” could count as careless if they involve “not giving sufficient attention or thought to avoiding harm or errors.”

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I like lists like this one because they group linking verbs together conceptually rather than just dumping them into a big disordered pile of a list:

Permanent linking verbs

  • be
  • become
  • seem

Sensory linking verbs

  • appear
  • feel
  • look
  • smell
  • sound
  • taste

Conditional linking verbs

  • act
  • constitute
  • come
  • equal
  • fall
  • get
  • go
  • grow
  • keep
  • prove
  • remain
  • stay
  • turn
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A post was merged into an existing topic: MC studies more grammar (Peikoff course)

I think your interpretation of my usage is accurate. This is the usage I intended when I wrote the project goal. This may have been a mistake and I may have unwittingly failed my project goal by setting it incorrectly.

Here is a very clear conclusion “goalpost”: If I am convinced that my usage of careless guesses listed here is too narrow and there are other forms of careless guesses which I made that it does not cover, I will concede that I failed my project goal.

To me you seem to be saying that every time someone uses a bad method that means they have not given it sufficient thought or attention. I don’t think this is true; I don’t think there is any amount of thought and attention that can result in never using a bad method.

I misspoke, I should have said “a complete list” rather than just “a list”. I had seen some lists before but didn’t know if you had one really good/definitive one.

It’s true that I did not check a list of linking verbs with my decision of how to class owes. I don’t think I remembered at the time that linking verbs are a very select list, and decided classification based on how I thought the word was being used.

I would agree that this kind of failure would be an example of carelessness and guesses resulting from it would be careless guesses. But that doesn’t mean that all errors that result from this failure would count as guesses. Errors in this situation could just be carelessness.

Agreed that they could count as careless, however this also does not connect to them being guesses.

I think there is a problem of diminishing returns in practising and it’s better to just do the practise with my best current ideas rather than doing a ton of extra study first to try for 100% every time, I do this knowing that I could give more thought or attention which might reduce my error rate. I would consider it an error to spend time doing extra study first to get more correct answers in an exercise, so I don’t consider this careless. Would you call this careless?

Continuing the discussion from MC studies more grammar (Peikoff course):

I think that’s an unreasonable interpretation. I don’t see a purpose to adopting that interpretation other than to dismiss/not engage with/rationalize hostility towards anonymous86. Anonymous86 complained about you showing “no interest in” engaging with what they said. I think they would have been fine with you showing some interest piecemeal. That might be the best approach anyways, since if you did a whole big reply at once you might go off the rails in some way, so it’d be better to try smaller chunks first and course correct as needed. They also complained about a lack of your appreciation for pointing out potential errors, which I thought was fair. Maybe go read their post again and try to look at it more objectively and less in a combative framework.

If you were disinterested in replying now, what would change later?

I think I figured out what’s going on here. You are interpreting anonymous86 as being needy for a detailed reply from you, really curious about what was going on in your reply, and so on. You’re viewing anonymous86’s posts from the perspective of a second-hander. But what anonymous86 was actually doing was offering some objective, dispassionate commentary on some bad stuff you were doing. You were causing a problem on the forum by being hostile and disengaged, and anonymous86 was calling it out. They weren’t actually “so interested” in your bad reply, per se (IMHO).

If you aren’t open to even trying out people’s suggestions from this forum, why are you posting your homework on this forum?

If you think spending time replying to stuff here is a roll of the dice, why pretend to be interested in participating in the forum?

Did you read what I wrote? I talked about trying to examine one example. I even emphasized the “one”. And you reply with “Do you think it’s reasonable to expect me to reply to everything someone says all at once?” (emphasis added). This is not engaging with the literal words I wrote. You are ignoring them. I’m not sure what the point of writing them is if you’re going to do that.

You’re now foisting your inappropriate and unreasonable interpretation of anonymous86’s words onto me as well. You want to pretend you’re being asked to make an unreasonable commitment of energy and time in order to rationalize disregarding criticism. This is irrational.

Yes.

I was careful to include a qualifier with my statement, which is “when one should have known better.” You seem to be criticizing my statement as if those words were not present. If any use of a bad method resulted in careless guesses, then, given human fallibility, every guess might be a careless guess, since there could always be a better method one has yet failed to dsicover. That’s not what I was saying or implying.

This is one of the most important facts about them, especially for purposes of identification.

I think a failure to use reasonable methods is problematic. So is a failure to engage with criticism when errors are pointed out. You should correct all the errors you do or reasonably should know about. Failing to do that is wasting time and energy (and your life).

This is similar to the other thread where you tried to frame things as people asking you to do giant replies all at once in order to rationalize not replying at all. Here, you’re trying to rationalize using bad/broken methods by bringing up the specter of having to be some super studious striver who’s afraid to make a mistake. False dichotomy.

FWIW, Peikoff’s logic course has a whole section on dealing with definitions and whether they’re too narrow, too wide, have other problems etc, was one of my favorite parts of course.

There’s a lot going on in this issue and I’m not able to process it all at once. I’m going to reply to this part for now because as far as I can tell it’s central and resolving it may allow a lot of other things to fall into place.

This is my initial reply to anon86:

I looked at what anon86 said. I picked a part that I was interested in replying to at that time. I explained a problem with it.

I have absolutely no idea why you think that my initial reply was hostile and disengaged. Which part was hostile? Which part was disengaged?

I feel like I’ve already responded extensively regarding lack of engagement point. You didn’t even try looking at a single example anonymous86, and you still haven’t. You offered some poor rationalizations for doing that. You are expressly treating this forum as a place where you expect low-quality, ignorant criticism. And you set unreasonably high barriers for replying that nobody asked you to do; they exist only in your own head, and not in any text anyone wrote.

EDIT: The lack of even attempting to engage with a single example was the problem with this initial post. The other stuff I mentioned happened later on, though it’s consistent with the theme of not wanting to engage, rationalizing that lack of engagement, etc.

I didn’t see the hostility at first in this post. I still don’t see it radiantly clearly. The hostility in your cargo culting/entitlement accusation post was quite clear to me, though. But given that you soon started tossing around accusations of entitlement and cargo culting after this post, hostility seems like a plausible reading on this post too. I don’t think it is likely that you went from total equanimity to extremely hostile. I’m just not that good at detecting such hostility early on. It’s possible other forum members might be able to help you more here. Unfortunately, you are not giving people incentives to reply to you, and are actively looking for reasons to disregard criticism you get on here, so you’ll probably have to change that attitude to get productive, helpful replies from other people.

One definition of hostile is “unfriendly, antagonistic”. I don’t think your reply was friendly, and you were definitely trying to oppose/argue with the implied criticism you received, so that seems antagonistic. Another definition is “marked by resistance especially to new ideas”. You were definitely resisting the new (to you) idea that the examples pointed out might have involved careless guesses.

One way to thing of it might be: in what ways did your reply fail to be a model of friendly curiosity? If we set the standard that high, perhaps that makes it easier to see warning signs of hostility.

minor typo:

https://www.learnobjectivism.com/atlas-shrugged-chapter-2

That’s not really journalism. It’s vague, half-deniably smearing which doesn’t provide useful information to readers.

should be “half-deniable”

minor typos

She has difficulty finding decent people to hire or promote for jobs that involving thinking.

should be “that involve thinking”

Dagny’s understanding of life, morality, etc., is enough of a thorough, integrated, ever-present part of her thinking that looking at the status is sufficient for her to know what it means.

should be “statue”

I re-read the first three chapters of Atlas Shrugged and have been reading Elliot’s close readings after each chapter. I’ve been through Elliot’s close readings before, and I have read AS many times, but I noticed myself missing certain things that Elliot noticed, despite having the benefit of these prior readings. Here’s one small example:

https://www.learnobjectivism.com/atlas-shrugged-chapter-2

“In fact, that’s what I came here to tell you.”

Larkin finally tells the truth, but Hank doesn’t notice it contradicts some of Larkin’s previous statements.

I didn’t notice this contradiction either, I think partially because I read Larkin’s statement "“But no, no special trouble this time. I just thought I’d drop in to see you.” in social mode as opposed to in literal mode. People very commonly deny they have a particular motivation for seeing someone when they do, so I just assumed he was doing standard lying and didn’t notice when he contradicted himself. Another part of the story is I’m not great at keeping track of discussion context. Anyways, just thought it was interesting.

A post was merged into an existing topic: Thiamin, Vitamins and Derrick Lonsdale

A post was merged into an existing topic: Thiamin, Vitamins and Derrick Lonsdale

A post was merged into an existing topic: Thiamin, Vitamins and Derrick Lonsdale

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Thiamin, Vitamins and Derrick Lonsdale