The Advantages of Being Vague
And what they mean for climate predictions
Posted on 07 Dec 24
by John RidgwayIn Uncategorized
Some background
Consult any scientist, or indeed anyone who claims to be a critical thinker, and they will be only too eager to warn against the dangers of being vague. For example, if cutting the blue wire is necessary to diffuse a bomb, you are not going to be too impressed by receiving an instruction to cut the coloured one. Imprecision matters, and the uncertainty it introduces can be the source of significant risk.
From this observation you would be forgiven for concluding that vagueness should be avoided at all costs. So why isn’t it? Why, for example, is language founded upon so many words that are patently vague? Why have we allowed ourselves to develop a means of communication that renders so much of what we say open to interpretation?
To answer that question one has to appreciate the value of vagueness in general discourse. For example, words such as ‘small’ are commonly used to convey a sense of scale, but they are deliberately vague. Why? Because then you only need the one word to cover a whole range of possibilities. Furthermore, size is context-specific, and we don’t want to have to use a different word when the context changes. So, linguistic vagueness enables semantic utility, albeit at the expense of precision. You can finesse your statements by using degree adjectives such as ‘very’, but these adjectives are themselves vague for the same reason. At the end of the day, we can’t go around being totally precise unless we are prepared to use an impractically large and cumbersome lexicon.
https://cliscep.com/2024/12/07/the-advantages-of-being-vague/
