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It is from this video. It is at 6 minute and 12 second. Here is the context:

Dosage is incredibly important. I guess cancer patients would know that dosage is important because when you are getting irradiated in order to target something like tumour, you are not getting enough radiation to be harmful to your entire body.

I am confused because there are no any conditional sentences, but would was still used. Does the speaker mean the paients probably know or that they probably will know that...?

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  • You're right, the author is guessing that cancer patients know the importance of the dosage, but he's not 100% sure about it. Jun 14, 2018 at 12:56
  • 3
    Please don't answer in comments, it bypasses the voting (up and down) system that the site is based on.
    – James K
    Jun 14, 2018 at 13:09

1 Answer 1

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I believe the condition is implicit in this case. It's not 100% clear what condition is implied, but there are a few possibilities that are all similar. For example:

I guess (if you asked cancer patients whether dosage is important) [they] would know that dosage is important because...

or

I guess (if cancer patients thought about whether dosage is important) [they] would know that dosage is important because...

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