Confidence tags
Gwern's site tags many claims with confidence levels — log, likely, speculative, etc. The tag is inline, almost casual. It changes how you read the surrounding sentence.
I've half-adopted this. On notes that are factual claims, I now write a small parenthetical confidence at the end: (speculative), (strong). On essays I don't — the form is different and the confidence is implicit in the tone.
Two things I noticed once I started:
- Most claims I make are weaker than my prose suggests. Forcing the tag exposes it.
- The reader trusts the unmarked claims more, because they know I would have flagged them otherwise.
The tag system is small but it's done more for my honesty than any abstract resolution would have.
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