Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It means you follow the laws and do what you are supposed to do, but it isn't conscience in the other senses. A soldier carrying out orders is conscientious, but his conscience might not be clean. This works for both of those definitions.


I can read, thanks. In fact, we all can. Why are you continuing to argue? The definition is right there in black and white, I'm willing to bet that no one here is interested in semantic arguments for their own sake nor for the sake of your ego so please don't continue.

Wow, arguing with the Oxford English dictionary


But in the context of the article we are talking about the definition found in psychology, and not the definition found in some lexicon. In psychology conscientiousness is only about the organized and responsible part.


If that is so, then that should have been your response. As it is, this is found in the article:

> Yasseen worked hard and he cared about his work. In Arabic, we would say Yasseen had Dhameer—“a conscience.”

That's a clue as to why conscientiouness is also listed in that dictionary defintion as a derivative - one precedes the other.

> Bringing a conscience to your work means working conscientiously—as Dr. George Simon put it, “Conscientiousness is mindfulness guided by conscience.”

That's enough of this for me.


No it doesn’t. It violates definition 2.


Generally, when people talk about conscientiousness in this sense (certainly the article), they're talking about the psychological construct (i.e. a named pattern of correlations that emerges from self report questionnaire analysis) rather than the dictionary definition.


Sure, but the two are not neatly separated.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: