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Yeah, it’s an in-group exclusivity signifier.
Shame, math is some of the worst at this, everything is named after some guy, so there’s 0 semantic associativity, you either know exactly which Gaussian term they mean, or you are completely clueless even though they just mean noise with a normal distribution.
edit: Currently in a very inter-disciplinary field where the different mathematicians have their own language which has to be translated back into first software, then hardware. It’s so confusing at first till you spend 30 minutes on wikipedia to realize they’re just using an esoteric term to describe something you’ve used forever.
realize they’re just using an esoteric term to describe something you’ve used forever.
Programming is applied math. Mathematicians say “theory of mass service”, programmers say “schedulers”. Well, it’s “theory of mass service” in Russian, but in English it is “queue theory”.
I understood every word of that, and I hate you.
This is perfect
In defense of jargon:
coming up with new ideas and expressing them to others requires new vocabulary. You can’t simply say things in “plain English” especially when you want to communicate with peers.
This is why academia is so often refereed to as a discipline; you must train yourself in new ways of thinking. Making it accessible to the layperson is the job of scientific communicators, not scientists at large.
And it’s not like this is a unique issue with acedemia, every organization I’ve ever participated in had special vocabulary if it was necessary or not.
Jargon is only legitimate when it clarifies more than plain English. If it does, fine, use it.
inhales
Complex 1a was prepared according to well-known synthetic procedures. The reduction potential of the complex was increased due to the nephelauxetic expansion of the occupied FMOs induced by photolytic epimerization of the auxiliary tetrahydrophosphazolidine sulfide ligand to enable a strongly σ-donating dihaptic coordination mode.
translation: we made molecule 1a, we shouldn’t need to tell you how, it’s obvious, lmao, git gud. the molecule became less likely to gain extra electrons because shining light on it made one of its weird-ass totally-not-bullshit parts wiggle around a bit so that it could bind more strongly to the metal atom through two of its own adjacent atoms, making the metal atom’s relevant electrons floofier.
‘floofier’ should be standard academic jargon
I’m still pissed at being forced to write in a passive voice in university. It’s awkward and carries less information, and makes it seem like nobody had any agency, science just kind of happened on its own and you were there to observe it.
I don’t know why anyone would prefer something like “An experiment was conducted and it was found that…”
To the much better “We conducted an experiment and found…”
Remember, it’s never “your dildo,” it’s “a dildo.”
In my first year of uni, I had to write a 20 page paper, so I wrote it about how academic writing sucks.
Cheeky as hell, but I got a good grade, and my teacher liked it
It’s something that people, in least in my field of microbiology, have been recently aware of and are trying to correct. The problem is not just an in-group signifier, since everyone, even experts, finds the author insufferable and difficult to understand
If I might interject.
One word mean many thing to not same people.
Use special word for special job. Special job doers no get dizzy. All know special word mean same thing.
Special words job help make many people with not same word skill talk gooder.
I dated a girl who acted like writing / talking like that made her better / smarter than other people. She got off on the elitism. I’m no academic slouch, but my philosophy is if you can’t break it down in basic terms that anyone can understand, then you don’t understand it enough yourself.
I would go so far as to say that knowing and understanding something is only half of the issue. The other half is being able to clearly convey it to others. And that’s where a lot of people (myself included) fall short.
I think any scientist should able to convey at least the high level concepts that they’re working on at the level that a smart 12th-grader can follow. If you can’t do that, I think that’s a sign that you’re probably not thinking about your work very clearly. Being able to distill things and context-switch back to a birds-eye view of your work is critical for knowing what direction you’re heading in.
(I say this from the perspective of a climate scientist - our field has a pretty active public/lay conversation and lots of science comma, but I think the concept still applies to other sciences, and social sciences.)
I could break stuff down to you but I won’t because I have shit to do and there’s textbooks. Also your eyes would glaze over 2% of the way in. So in that sense, I can’t, because I can’t make you actually want to understand it. Best I can do is hand-wave and rely on you not understanding why my explanation falls short of actually being one, making you think you understood something.
Talking shop and obfuscation are not the same thing but are generally indistinguishable for the uninitiated. I guess what I’m mostly miffed about is the implication that’s going on in OP’s erudite thesis and your anecdote: That people who talk about stuff you don’t understand do it to exclude. Maybe, you know, stuff is just complicated and needs years of study and practice to understand. It’s not a status thing, someone with a Ph.D in chemistry will have quite a task ahead of them understanding what hair stylists are talking about when talking shop about chemicals unless they themselves happen to specialise in that area. Now try explaining conditioner chemistry to a philosopher, instead, it’s probably hopeless.
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I don’t agree, there’s a reason why we need people like Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson explaining things in simpler terms and that they’re not the people doing the research itself…
and that they’re not the people doing the research itself…
I don’t think that’s relevant. People like Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene have also done great at explaining science to the general public.
Sure, but not being able to explain it in layman’s terms doesn’t mean you don’t understand what you’re working on and in fact the majority of scientists and engineers and programmers and highly specialized individuals aren’t very good at vulgarization for the simple reason that they don’t need to do it when they’re accomplishing the work and outside of that they’re not required to explain their work to laymen since there are people specialized in doing just that.
I also disagree with the original comment you replied to. I was just responding to the part I quoted. I agree most specialists in a field don’t know how to explain things to non-specialists and I agree it’s important to have people who know how to explain things in layman terms, I jusy don’t think it’s relevant if those people are also the ones doing the research or not.
I understood all of that.
That’s what half a year of city college will get you.
The loser research paper vs the chad blog tutorial
^ literally anything related to buffer overflow attacks lol
Is there an AcademicDictionary in the vein of Urban Dictionary for all the jargon and filler patterns?
Reminds about GCC wiki.
What does reload do?
Good question. The what is still understandable. Don’t ask about the how.
This post reports that the requirement to use words like “novel” and refer to ourselves using the third-person “we” was circumvented following our transition to industry. Furthermore, the capability to write original text without using the passive voice was gained. These developments represent a significant improvement in clarity. Additional increases in the efficiency of communication may be possible as the ability to express concepts in a straightforward manner is developed further.
