Hypocrisy is one of the most reviled of human faults in today’s world; it sometimes seems that even mass murderers receive less condemnation than hypocrites. But in a way the hypocrite can be seen as doing us all a favor, by advocating an idea or position which might otherwise not see much support. And the hypocrite can perform this service while still following the majority in ignoring the position in practice.

Many of us have expressed the concern that if we had greater conformity, while only advocating sincerely held beliefs, we would see a diminished social discourse and less diversity in our intellectual culture. Hypocrisy may be a solution to this quandary. I have long felt that our society has made a fetish of intolerance for hypocrisy and has elevated its importance excessively. This is another argument for being more forgiving of hypocrites and recognizing the positive contribution they make to society.

In other words, the existence of hypocrisy is not necessarily a reason to dismiss the words of the hypocrites out of hand.

It would probably make sense only to use this kind of circumlocution in certain situations. One case would be where the listener would care about whether you are just echoing other views or making a concerted effort to offer your own independent input, such as in group estimation situations. Occasionally panelists are all asked to make estimates of when or whether something will happen, and while we might assume or at least hope that they will offer independent information, there might nevertheless be a degree of influence, especially if they are not aware of this distinction. If someone makes it clear that they are offering one or the other flavor of estimate then that helps the audience (and in fact I have occasionally seen this happen).

Another case would be if you want to proselytize for bias-awareness. Saying you’d believe X if not for the fact that everyone else believes Y, so you’re going along with the crowd, will no doubt trigger questions, possibly hostile (as we have seen expressed here occasionally). This can open up an opportunity to talk about some of the issues we discuss here.

Actually, “Independent component” also has merit, but I still think “uncorrected impression” might work better socially.

Let’s apply your insight here to crime. Since crime comes in different degrees, let’s just come up with one word for it and then use the modifiers which English has “evolved” to talk about degrees. So, crime is now all “rape and murder”. All criminals are rapists and murderers, only some are “slightly” rapists and murderers, and others are “very much” rapists and murderers.

Doesn’t work very well. So, sometimes, ignoring the details until after you come up with a name and relying on the “evolved” degree words to do the heavy lifting doesn’t work.

“Before correcting for for [what other people think / overconfidence bias / some other factor], my impression is ___”.

As Constant points out, there are multiple kinds of impressions that might usefully be tracked and reported. In addition to finding vocabulary, we should discuss what kinds of impressions are worth naming.