I find it helpful to remember. When covid was starting to spread I worried a lot about potential exponential growth and was confused why a lot of others didn't seem so worried. While there may be many reasons, one that came to mind is that they may not have learned as much about exponential growth as I had in electrical and computer engineering and in working with startups. So it helped me to remember not everyone has the same education and experience that I do, that we're all relatively ignorant, depending on the field.

There will always be people that don't know what you know and vice versa. It's a given fact of life. It's like forgetting that the sky is blue. Haha. I.e., I agree with you, but your statement is more humble than the last.

"but your statement is more humble than the last."

It also was a different person ..

And? I know it was a different person.

You are giving an example of the very issue you complain about. You worry about this not from a background of epidemiology, but another field entirely. Some of the people who were not worried were deferring to expert opinions they have read about the matter.

The vast majority of people dont really "get" functions or plots or line fitting

They took 7th grade math, but assert that y=mx is meaningless in real life and doesn't help them understand anything they have to deal with

Yeah. Originally when those people refused to wear masks I quietly wished them death. But after awhile I got more tired of hearing educated people pretend that their intellect was keeping them alive more than their economic leverage was. Rooting for the ignorant to die of covid was a bad look. Granted, we also had a president who said he loved the uneducated, so it all took place at a moment when that line could be drawn in a certain way. In any event, the snobbish castigation of people who don't understand science or math didn't help and actually hurt the cause of getting them to protect themselves and everyone else.

> detracts from it

I think you're assigning a moral quality to certain kinds of knowledge that isn't warranted.

I don't know what that means. The statement just wasn't useful and comes across as sassy and arrogant.

the most important thing though, is that that statement is true and verifiably so.

I am one of those persons that learned something by reading that comment.

assuming arrogance and sassyness in an otherwise neutral exposition of a true fact, to me means that, as usually happens, arrogance and sassyness are in the eye of the beholder.

Is the most important thing in communication that each statement is true, or that true information is successfully conveyed? If I prefaced this comment with true facts about how bad your life in particular is, I doubt you'd be ready to read the rest of it :)

  arrogance and sassyness are in the eye of the beholder

very true - but true of all aspects of communication, I think

> Is the most important thing in communication that each statement is true, or that true information is successfully conveyed?

the former.

I, for example, am not native English speaker, so, for example, in this case should you learn Italian to the point where you are able to successfully convey the information to me, which could be "never"?

> f I prefaced this comment with true facts about how bad your life in particular is, I doubt you'd be ready to read the rest of it :)

you can try, but be ready to fail miserably. Also: I am very well aware how bad my life is, I would say that only an arrogant can think to know it better than me to the point that I will be surprised or shocked.

Do you think it's belittling to point out that someone may not have scientific knowledge? Ie, is the statement something beyond mere fact? What makes having scientific knowledge good, that you may infer that someone may think not having it is bad?

My first reading of the sentence in question was that it was patronising

In and of itself no. But in the context of responding to someone saying “your comment reminded me that some people don’t have a scientific background” can be read in a similar way to saying “your comment reminded me that not everyone on Hacker News is a genius”, even if that wasn’t the author’s intention.

I agree with you. I took it exactly the same way and thought it was unnecessary.

As a non scientific person, I took no offense. Whilst it's fine to point these things out, it's important to remember that people come from different cultures, and often the intent is unlikely to be there to offend.