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Or to quote PG's Write Like You Talk[0]: And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more informally experts speak. Partly, I think, because they have le

by octref 9y ago

Or to quote PG's Write Like You Talk[0]: And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more informally experts speak. Partly, I think, because they have less to prove, and partly because the harder the ideas you're talking about, the less you can afford to let language get in the way. Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. [0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

simplicio 9y ago
Eh, I suspect part of the reason is that once a topic crosses a certain level of difficulty, trying to convey an exact explanation for it in a reasonable amount of time becomes impossible and experts just fall back on analogies and hand-waving. I'm a physicist, and if you asked me to explain Newton's laws or classical thermodynamics to someone, I could probably give them a reasonably complete overview in a few hours. And in doing so I'd probably introduce and explain some jargon (entropy, derivatives, etc) along the way to make it easier. On the otherhand, if you asked me to explain Quantum Field Theory or General Relativity in the same time, I'd basically just give up and throw out some friendly but inexact analogies about stretched rubber sheets and the like, and hope the walked away with some vague sense of the outlines of the subject.
vacri 9y ago
Meh, that's a cop-out. "You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas." and "They don't use more complex sentences, just different words"? It's pretending that the complexity in the language lives only in the grammar, and not the jargon. Think of it this way: if spoken language gets more informal in terms of sentence structure the harder the topic, that means that the easier the topic, the more complex the sentences. I think PG has confused the informality people have when they have a common understanding with something else. Do you really think that a pair of experienced mechanics in an auto shop discussing a basic repair are going to be using more formal language? Turn one of the mechanics into an apprentice and consider the same discussion.

by octref 9y ago

simplicio 9y ago

Eh, I suspect part of the reason is that once a topic crosses a certain level of difficulty, trying to convey an exact explanation for it in a reasonable amount of time becomes impossible and experts just fall back on analogies and hand-waving. I'm a physicist, and if you asked me to explain Newton's laws or classical thermodynamics to someone, I could probably give them a reasonably complete overview in a few hours. And in doing so I'd probably introduce and explain some jargon (entropy, derivatives, etc) along the way to make it easier. On the otherhand, if you asked me to explain Quantum Field Theory or General Relativity in the same time, I'd basically just give up and throw out some friendly but inexact analogies about stretched rubber sheets and the like, and hope the walked away with some vague sense of the outlines of the subject.

vacri 9y ago

Meh, that's a cop-out. "You don't need complex sentences to express complex ideas." and "They don't use more complex sentences, just different words"? It's pretending that the complexity in the language lives only in the grammar, and not the jargon. Think of it this way: if spoken language gets more informal in terms of sentence structure the harder the topic, that means that the easier the topic, the more complex the sentences. I think PG has confused the informality people have when they have a common understanding with something else. Do you really think that a pair of experienced mechanics in an auto shop discussing a basic repair are going to be using more formal language? Turn one of the mechanics into an apprentice and consider the same discussion.