This kind of defensive and dismissive response is so common we should make a name for it! Perhaps we could call it the "It Was Obvious To Me" Fallacy.

Here's one way to commit the fallacy: when someone points out a communication issue, mock them for being "too literal" or "pedantic" rather than acknowledging the ambiguity existed.

Pinker calls it "curse of knowledge".

I literally thought some unpublished book. But you shouldn't have doubled down on 'next'. Your first para was enough.

> I literally thought some unpublished book. But you shouldn't have doubled down on 'next'. Your first para was enough.

Thanks for the feedback.

To focus on "should" for a second. If I would not have written my second paragraph, I would not have made my main point: I'm trying to get people to pay attention to ambiguity more broadly and tamp down this all-too-common tendency for people to think "the way I see things is obvious and/or definitive" which pervades Hacker News like a plague. Perhaps working with computers too much has damaged our cognitive machinery: human brains are not homogeneous nor deterministic parsers of meaning.

Perhaps the second paragraph got some people thinking a little bit. We are discussing Kahnemann's life's work after all. This is a perfect place to discuss our flawed intellectual machinery and our biases. Kahnemann would be happy if people here improved their self-understanding and communication with each other.

> this all-too-common tendency for people to think "the way I see things is obvious and/or definitive“

You are an excellent poster child for this tendency in this thread.

Does it matter if it’s existing or upcoming? People who interested will search gor it and see if it’s already available.

So beside pedantic it’s unnecessary.

I'll answer in various frames:

- product development: why make someone "do one extra click" when you can make the extra click unnecessary?

- writing: respect your audience's time.

- humility: take one minute of your time to save other's time.

- databases: optimize for reading not writing

Would the extra click really be unnecessary?

The ones who don’t care about the book don‘t click anyway.

The ones who are interested click no matter if it’s an upcoming or already existing book.

Two things, in the spirit of answering your question and explaining myself.

1. The argument above is sound, but it overstretches my metaphor and sidesteps my point which is: "if there is negligible cost in helping a customer, do it." Stated another way: "if reducing ambiguity helps a customer and has negligible cost, do it." (If a one word change reduces some ambiguity for some people, that's an easy win. Copy-editors do this frequently.)

2. Another angle: broadly speaking, I'm asking the question "What is better?" not just "What is necessary?". The first motivates improvement, no matter where you are. While the latter can sometimes be pragmatic, too often aiming only for 'necessity' justifies the status quo.