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Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves. The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscr

Yes, but the scientific community has in-part brought this upon themselves. The actual research is inaccessible to the public, hidden behind paywalls in subscription-only journals, and written in a form that is very difficult if not impossible for the general public to understand. For most of the general public, the output of the scientific community is just a poorly translated and often misleading headline.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research. It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.
- kian 8y ago
  I’d argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to spend so much time bemoaning the poor state of education.
  - dnbgfher 8y ago
    I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the problem. We do have a problem with nomenclature being fractured, even within fields, never mind between them. But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you get deep enough into how things work, things just get really complex and they stop behaving in ways and patterns that humans experience the world. They end up being things that cannot be simplified down to a common human experience in any meaningful way. At best, you can take a portion of the concept and make an analogy to some limited portion of a common experience without lying too much. But they are fundamentally not the same, so you cannot use the analogy to discover anything new about the original concept. There is also a problem of the time it takes to internalize new ideas and concepts. You can't quickly and easily give someone an intuitive understanding of anything - it takes work and experience and time on their part to get there. I don't see how going and reworking nomenclatures of entire fields is going to make people more willing or able to devote their time to this. Mostly you'll have to put in incredible amount of work, convince far too many people to do things a different way because you said so, and all you'll have really done is save some (significant) annoyance from students getting their feet wet in a new field.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Yes, that's the problem exactly - at some point we can't just use common sense and spherical cows to express an idea.
    - kian 8y ago
      Sorry, I didn't see your reply to this until just now. I hope that you get a chance to see mine: I have to disagree that nomenclature being fractured is not the problem. Within any given field, it is true that as you go deep enough into how things work, it gets complicated and hectic. However, as we have done throughout the entire written history of humanity, we have a special set of tools to help us engage with those complications, and reduce them down to complexes of simple objects whose behavior we understand - mathematics. If we are unable to reach deeply enough within a single field, it is because the tools we teach are not up to the task. A large part of the issue is that the mathematics in common use in these disciplines, and at the elementary level, is in need of an upgrade. That upgrade is in the process of being performed (category theory), and as we learn to apply it in more and more fields, concepts and processes that seem deep, difficult, and essentially different turn out to be related in mathematically precise 'analogies'. This means that the same set of 'deep concepts', applied with different sets base objects and different operators that obey the same rules, will unfold into some of the main ideas in each discipline. Baez's Physics, Logic, Topology, Computation, a Rosetta stone is a good example of the beginnings of this, but googling 'applied category theory' or 'applied category theory course azimuth' ought to bring you some interesting extra links. More generally, what we see of as specific processes within a particular field, when viewed through the right lenses, I expect we will find are instead instantiations of much more general processes that are the same across most, if not all, fields of discipline. How will we convince everyone to use these different naming systems and toolsets? Because those people who do use them will perform better, and the logic of competition will pull the educational system and society along with them. If you disagree, I'd love to hear more about it. Nomenclature and Education are near and dear to me - I always jump and an opportunity to discuss with someone who does so in good faith.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

It's also become incredibly complex and utterly alien to even practitioners in the fields - I can't read computer science doctoral dissertations with any degree of understanding. That's not a failing of the language, that's an evolution of it - we're at a point now where we need years and years of education to be able to be able to speak the language required for the research. It absolutely is difficult for the general public, but that's not a failing, that's the state of the art.

kian 8y ago
I’d argue that this is, in fact, a failing of the language of description, and that going back and refactoring terms and systematizing the folk knowledge of a given field would go a long way towards fixing the public attitudes towards that field. We should give more respect to people who make existing concepts easier to understand, or simpler and cheaper to prove or demonstrate. Then maybe we wouldn’t have to spend so much time bemoaning the poor state of education.
- dnbgfher 8y ago
  I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the problem. We do have a problem with nomenclature being fractured, even within fields, never mind between them. But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you get deep enough into how things work, things just get really complex and they stop behaving in ways and patterns that humans experience the world. They end up being things that cannot be simplified down to a common human experience in any meaningful way. At best, you can take a portion of the concept and make an analogy to some limited portion of a common experience without lying too much. But they are fundamentally not the same, so you cannot use the analogy to discover anything new about the original concept. There is also a problem of the time it takes to internalize new ideas and concepts. You can't quickly and easily give someone an intuitive understanding of anything - it takes work and experience and time on their part to get there. I don't see how going and reworking nomenclatures of entire fields is going to make people more willing or able to devote their time to this. Mostly you'll have to put in incredible amount of work, convince far too many people to do things a different way because you said so, and all you'll have really done is save some (significant) annoyance from students getting their feet wet in a new field.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Yes, that's the problem exactly - at some point we can't just use common sense and spherical cows to express an idea.
  - kian 8y ago
    Sorry, I didn't see your reply to this until just now. I hope that you get a chance to see mine: I have to disagree that nomenclature being fractured is not the problem. Within any given field, it is true that as you go deep enough into how things work, it gets complicated and hectic. However, as we have done throughout the entire written history of humanity, we have a special set of tools to help us engage with those complications, and reduce them down to complexes of simple objects whose behavior we understand - mathematics. If we are unable to reach deeply enough within a single field, it is because the tools we teach are not up to the task. A large part of the issue is that the mathematics in common use in these disciplines, and at the elementary level, is in need of an upgrade. That upgrade is in the process of being performed (category theory), and as we learn to apply it in more and more fields, concepts and processes that seem deep, difficult, and essentially different turn out to be related in mathematically precise 'analogies'. This means that the same set of 'deep concepts', applied with different sets base objects and different operators that obey the same rules, will unfold into some of the main ideas in each discipline. Baez's Physics, Logic, Topology, Computation, a Rosetta stone is a good example of the beginnings of this, but googling 'applied category theory' or 'applied category theory course azimuth' ought to bring you some interesting extra links. More generally, what we see of as specific processes within a particular field, when viewed through the right lenses, I expect we will find are instead instantiations of much more general processes that are the same across most, if not all, fields of discipline. How will we convince everyone to use these different naming systems and toolsets? Because those people who do use them will perform better, and the logic of competition will pull the educational system and society along with them. If you disagree, I'd love to hear more about it. Nomenclature and Education are near and dear to me - I always jump and an opportunity to discuss with someone who does so in good faith.