I applaud the intention in this, and would like to encourage everyone on the forum to either explain jargon like this, or drop it altogether and leave just the clear-English part.
Edit: I specifically suggest “how much I’m sure of this:”.
But ‘epistemic status’ and ‘trustworthiness’ are not the same thing! A well written investigation into a very speculative area that adequately explained its uncertainty could have weak epistemic status but be very trustworthy; an dogmatic piece of rhetoric could be written by a zealot whose epistemic status was one of complete confidence, but for whom third parties should not trust at all.
In a shallow search, I haven’t managed to find a definition for “epistemic status”. Could you define it?
The impression I’ve gotten over my time on the forum is that authors use it to indicate to the readers how much thought, research etc. has gone into the post, in order to inform their credibility assesments of its contents.
The epistemic status is a short disclaimer at the top of a post that explains how confident the author is in the contents of the post, how much reputation the author is willing to stake on it, what sorts of tests the thesis has passed.
Agreed. The trend of writing “Epistemic status” as one of the first things in a post without a definition or explanation (kudos to Lizka for including one) has bothered me for some time. It immediately and unnecessarily alienates readers by making them feel like they need to be familiar with the esoteric word “epistemic”, which usually has nothing to do with the rest of the post.
Would be happy to see this frequent jargon replaced with something like “How much you should trust me”, “Author confidence” or “Post status” (maybe there’s a better phrase, just some examples that come to mind).
I applaud the intention in this, and would like to encourage everyone on the forum to either explain jargon like this, or drop it altogether and leave just the clear-English part.
Edit: I specifically suggest “how much I’m sure of this:”.
But ‘epistemic status’ and ‘trustworthiness’ are not the same thing! A well written investigation into a very speculative area that adequately explained its uncertainty could have weak epistemic status but be very trustworthy; an dogmatic piece of rhetoric could be written by a zealot whose epistemic status was one of complete confidence, but for whom third parties should not trust at all.
In a shallow search, I haven’t managed to find a definition for “epistemic status”. Could you define it?
The impression I’ve gotten over my time on the forum is that authors use it to indicate to the readers how much thought, research etc. has gone into the post, in order to inform their credibility assesments of its contents.
I am shocked that the first good definition I found is on Urban Dictionary: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Epistemic%20Status
This seems like “how much I’m sure of this” then, isn’t it?
Yes, I agree that’s very close
Agreed. The trend of writing “Epistemic status” as one of the first things in a post without a definition or explanation (kudos to Lizka for including one) has bothered me for some time. It immediately and unnecessarily alienates readers by making them feel like they need to be familiar with the esoteric word “epistemic”, which usually has nothing to do with the rest of the post.
Would be happy to see this frequent jargon replaced with something like “How much you should trust me”, “Author confidence” or “Post status” (maybe there’s a better phrase, just some examples that come to mind).