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68 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
68 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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lastmod: "2021-09-12T22:47:44.0000000+01:00"
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author: patrick
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categories:
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- psychology
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comments: true
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date: "2016-06-13T00:00:00Z"
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aliases:
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- /the-use-of-jargon/
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title: The use of jargon
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summary: "Why jargon is a really useful thing to have and use."
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---
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I was recently having a late-night argument with someone about the following thesis:
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> If you can't explain something in a simple way, you don't understand it.
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They were using this to argue something like the following:
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> Jargon is unhelpful because it sets a very high barrier for entry into any field.
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My reply, as something of a mathematician, is as follows.
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While there are certainly more accessible parts of physics and maths which can be well-explained by analogies and imprecise language
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(and, indeed, we often use them to students, and Brian Cox tries to use them in e.g. documentaries),
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it has led to the horrible nightmare which is everyone thinking wrongly that they understand quantum mechanics [QM] because they heard some cool analogies.
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QM has very little in common with its analogies;
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the analogies are basically just there to give an idea that "things are weird, classical intuition will fail".
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It's the flip side to "if you use abstruse language then you create an environment where you must pass the initiation tests to take part":
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> If you use imprecise language then you create an environment where everyone thinks they understand but they're all wrong.
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Both approaches have merits, and boringly the correct answer is probably "use a mixture of the two, with the ratio depending on appropriateness to the subject".
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However, physics is increasingly a subfield of maths since the advent of QM and general relativity (which are purely mathematical frameworks),
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and in maths we find the precise language *extremely* important because we strive for total rigour in this, the only subject where it's actually possible.
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Most people start doing maths without access to the language,
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and they often find lots of interesting stuff
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([Ramanujan] is a particular example of such a mathematician,
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who did a lot of great work before ever interacting with Western mathematicians),
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but once you know the language, the language creates a framework which goes some way to guaranteeing the correctness of your results and which can help you spot connections/see more patterns.
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From a maths point of view, documentaries are there to get people interested in playing around for themselves,
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rather than to actually impart mathematical knowledge.
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In an ideal world, I think we'd let people discover loads of maths on their own,
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and then show them the precise framework and language it fits into,
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but there just isn't time,
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so we teach it by shoving the framework down students' throats until they either give up maths or become divinely inspired and start playing with it for themselves.
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Additionally a lot of the maths I study [though this might be historical accident,
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derived from our tradition of using jargon] consists of the study of objects which have very few properties, so they defy analogy.
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Sometimes it turns out that a certain collection of "very few properties",
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like the collection by which we define the objects we call [groups],
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happen to capture a certain intuition
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(in this case, the idea of "symmetry" [turns out in a deep way][Cayley's theorem] to be precisely captured by groups).
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However, that seems like being the exception rather than the rule,
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and a general collection of "few properties" won't have a neat accessible analogy that anyone has been able to find.
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Especially when you study metamathematics, as well,
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some very deep theorems turn out to hinge on *exactly* what you mean by "the integers" or "the real numbers" or whatever.
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In such fringe cases it is absolutely necessary to be totally precise that we mean "the integers" in a specific technical sense rather than "the integers" as a fuzzy concept,
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or else one will almost certainly go wrong.
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So there are definitely cases where the "stupid jargon" is necessary to maintain clarity of thought.
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(Some such theorems do actually impinge on reality, too! Usually via computer science.)
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[Ramanujan]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
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[groups]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_(mathematics)
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[Cayley's theorem]: https://arbital.com/p/cayley_theorem_symmetric_groups/
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