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 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.
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 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 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.
deleted by creator
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.)