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I have a close friend who is doing a postdoc in these areas. I've reviewed a lot of text and talked a lot about the concepts. The language may sometimes use lo

I have a close friend who is doing a postdoc in these areas. I've reviewed a lot of text and talked a lot about the concepts. The language may sometimes use long and obscure words, but it is for a reason, and it it precision. The thoughts and philosophical underpinnings are very nuanced and precise. Synonyms exist in most languages, and english has a lot of them, and their only motivation is to express nuances.

guitarbill 10y ago
Language will always have some vagueness associated with it, logic or maths don't. But logic and maths aren't great at expressing thoughts. (Maybe art is, but I'm not ready to make that argument here.) I believe long words are a poor substitute for carefully chosen words. It's possible you think long words mean carefully chosen, that's usually not the case in my experience. Very few people actually bother to look up the exact meaning, but use those long words how they think what they mean. So length buys you nothing. Along those lines, are you sure you mean precision and not accuracy? As long as descriptions of your thoughts are accurate, though not precise, that should suffice to convey them accurately and "truly" after a few tries - papers are long enough for some repetition :) EDIT: And that's the most charitable interpretation. Using long or uncommon words to either obscure meaning or try and appear more eloquent are real dangers (c.f. "autoethnographic"). After all, why use "verbose" when you could use "sesquipedalianism"? I will admit that long words are fun, but in the same way insect collecting is - not appropriate or even interesting for everywhere and everyone.
- algesten 10y ago
  Well. I'm not english native, I think I mean precision. :) For me great writing is to convey a specific thought succinctly. A lot of the writers mentioned here aren't expressing something radically new like Plato or Descartes, but rather taking a small step describing nuances from a previous thought – hence precision. Also, like computer science, I believe the field is entitled to a language describing concepts that aren't directly available without further studies.

guitarbill 10y ago

Language will always have some vagueness associated with it, logic or maths don't. But logic and maths aren't great at expressing thoughts. (Maybe art is, but I'm not ready to make that argument here.) I believe long words are a poor substitute for carefully chosen words. It's possible you think long words mean carefully chosen, that's usually not the case in my experience. Very few people actually bother to look up the exact meaning, but use those long words how they think what they mean. So length buys you nothing. Along those lines, are you sure you mean precision and not accuracy? As long as descriptions of your thoughts are accurate, though not precise, that should suffice to convey them accurately and "truly" after a few tries - papers are long enough for some repetition :) EDIT: And that's the most charitable interpretation. Using long or uncommon words to either obscure meaning or try and appear more eloquent are real dangers (c.f. "autoethnographic"). After all, why use "verbose" when you could use "sesquipedalianism"? I will admit that long words are fun, but in the same way insect collecting is - not appropriate or even interesting for everywhere and everyone.

algesten 10y ago
Well. I'm not english native, I think I mean precision. :) For me great writing is to convey a specific thought succinctly. A lot of the writers mentioned here aren't expressing something radically new like Plato or Descartes, but rather taking a small step describing nuances from a previous thought – hence precision. Also, like computer science, I believe the field is entitled to a language describing concepts that aren't directly available without further studies.