> who are stunningly ignorant of some of the things they talk about

what interests me is that you say "some of" (I have had the same experience). where I struggle is trying to pay attention when these people actually know what they are talking about. it becomes so difficult to know what is bullshit and what is real, and I often miss out on valuable insight because I can't trust what they say 50% of the time.

Exactly.

There's an old school programmer at work who founded the company, created his own programming language a big application is running on and is widely considered to be a programmer guru.

He has some really strong opinions about programming, some I agree with and others I find difficult to swallow, but he's also firmly against vaccines, believes his kung fu is superior to the MMA in UFC and is generally very positive to pseudo medicine of different kinds.

I find it very difficult to take his programming advice seriously when he follows by saying vaccines are anti science.

Wasn't there a very respected gentleman who has passed on in the past decade, who ran a large company we've all heard of, and who also just happened to believe greatly in pseudo medicine (maybe not vaccines in particular) and odd diets?

What I'm saying is, it takes all kinds to make a village. The person you're talking about's beliefs on vaccines are unlikely to affect many. His genius at programming, however, is.

I know you probably can't say who it is but I am bursting with curiosity.

I find common sense and skepticism usually works. I mean say someone is an extremely accomplished operating systems programmer. There's no reason to believe they are any kind of authority on programming language design, or that their ideas on programming language design are noteworthy or well thought-out.

I noticed during a very anxious time in my life that my thoughts (and speech to a certain extent) were most often overly tentative and full of qualifications. (I even wrote a very short story related to the idea which makes use of a similar tack as your first sentence: https://gdoc.pub/doc/1w2Fxd41ptoqD-Qv7NKNK7Yg9pfdE2dg5_ncHmm...)

The way it seemed to me was that I was in a mode where I needed to be very careful about not messing up (and it seemed likely that I would), so I constantly over-analyzed, with the typical result that I found all sorts of ways things technically could go wrong.

I'm guessing an element of paranoia is typically involved as well when you find this pattern of speech/thought.

Did it dissipate naturally or did you start editing yourself to strip those sorts of speech patterns out of your writing and talking?

I noticed in the last year or two that I was abusing absolutist words in written text and have been working to self-correct through heavy editing. It's challenging, these words are what naturally flow from my fingers when I type. Of course, I do have my own personal struggles with anxiety, too, which go back well over a decade. Also, I agree with your thoughts re: over analysis and paranoia, I see that in myself.

I didn't do anything on the level of speech. I figure it's a form of 'treating the symptom'—of course I'm not a medical professional, though :)

One thing that did seem to help was just changing my values about how much proof one should have in order to act with certainty. I was reading some William James and he talked about the tradeoff between one's ability to act and one's choice to continue contemplating possibilities. I had previously viewed it as without tradeoff to continue analyzing possibilities, never fully committing to one viewpoint—it was just a good thing, an expression of my capabilities as an analytical thinker. I don't see it that way anymore.

I still have some anxiety issues but they don't run my life anymore. I think the biggest thing was regaining trust in the non-conscious parts of myself—seemed like I was living an extended Centipede's Dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Centipede%27s_Dilemma). Meditation seems to have helped also (partly in relation to regaining trust). Learning to see anxiety as okay or at least totally beyond one's control, rather than trying to fight it, has also helped.

> I noticed during a very anxious time in my life that my thoughts (and speech to a certain extent) were most often overly tentative and full of qualifications.

Yes that's definitely a thing. Which is probably why the findings in the article are so surprising (that online among their peers, depressed and anxious people talk much more strongly).

It really puts you at a disadvantage in life too, which is a nasty cycle.

One of the lessons I try to remember from Strunk and White is that "vigorous writing is concise."

It takes more mental energy to parse a sentence that's full of qualifiers, so there is less energy left to understand what is being said.

Likewise it takes more mental energy to parse accented speech, and if both an accent and a lot of extra words are in play, forget about it.

Omit qualifiers. Unless you really need them.

What’s interesting is how ignorant your comment comes off to me

I know a lot of people that speak to crowds about technical topics.

But they don’t come out swinging with jargon, and rely on analogy and metaphor. Since not everyone will get the jargon

It’s almost as if you maybe just don’t know why they talk that way, rather than the extent of their knowledge and skills?

Well I'm honoured what I said inspired you to create an account. Welcome to hacker news.

I don't have a real problem with analogy or metaphor, and that wasn't the point of what I wrote. My issue is with famous people holding forth on areas they're clearly quite ignorant of. I'm trying very hard not to name names to keep my message clear.