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When Hedging Has Nothing to Do With Uncertainty And All to Do With Risk
In Part 1, I argued that hedging is not a weakness. That I think, I believe, as far as I know are epistemic markers — they tell listeners exactly how you are holding your knowledge. That coaching them out of your speech doesn’t produce clearer communication; it produces communication that carries less information about whether you actually know.All of that stands but I promised something more uncomfortable.What that argument didn’t account for: a significant portion of hedging in professional environments has nothing to do with epistemic uncertainty. The speaker isn’t hedging because they…
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