#and yeah you don’t ‘need’ to understand specialist jargon for a field you don’t study | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

britcision · 1 year ago

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The trick is making those words and their meanings accessible for everyone

Young kids learn all the words for snow in their cultures

Most adults in the western world never learn exactly what quantum physics describes, or the names of half the tools in a standard toolbox

Good scientists build a glossary appropriate to the understanding of their audiences

(They use words you’ll understand when speaking to you)

The takeaway is: scientists are not doing it on purpose, the government is by making it hard for you to learn what those words mean without spending a lot of money

If someone can persuade you that people who use technical terms look down on you for not knowing them, you’re less likely to believe those people if they say something that someone doesn’t want you to know

Like that climate change is real

It is intentional, deliberate anti-intellectualism to make you trust anyone but the experts

We combat this by learning what those specific terms mean, and by teaching our scientists communication tools and not denigrating the humanities

The whole “scientists use big words on purpose to be exclusive” is such a bunch of anti-intellectual bullshit. Specific and concise language exists for a reason; you need the right words to convey the right meaning, and explaining stuff right is a hugely important part of science. Cultures that live around loads of snow have loads of words to describe different types of snow; cultures that live in deserts have loads of words to describe different types of sand. Complex language is needed for complex meaning.

#science #jargon is useful but only if it is accessible #being able to explain a concept to an amateur is a super good test for your own understanding #such as:#time dilation #relative differences in velocity (how fast it is moving compared to you) affects the perception of time #a clock moving much faster than you will appear to tick slower than an identical clock in your hand #this also happens with gravity!#being close to sufficiently massive (real big) objects means you experience time faster than something far from that object #special relativity is the speed one (things going faster experience time slower)#general relativity is the gravity one (being on planet means experiencing time faster than in space)#if people don’t specify they usually mean special relativity (it has more to do with space travel & decreasing time perceived by passengers)#note: differences in time are all relative #because there is no universal constant of time #what with there being lots of planets and stars and super massive objects and shit going real fast #at the speeds we can go now the time dilation is teeny tiny tho #we can about measure it but it amounts to thousandths of a second over months #so no going into space will not keep you young #but if we yeet musk outta the atmosphere real real real fast #the planet could get away before he gets back to find out if we have all aged faster than him #‘velocity’ is more accurate than ‘speed’…. but only if your audience knows what ‘velocity’ means #if they have no idea but they understand speed speed is the word to use #and yeah you don’t ‘need’ to understand specialist jargon for a field you don’t study #but if it’s hard for anyone else to know what you’re talking about your field is not accessible #i haven’t taken physics since high school #but i can access university level lectures from places like Great Courses #because we have a shared family library and physics is tasty

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