6 ms·

Exactly the reason we don't have nuclear powered aircraft. Disasters would be magnified exponentially.

tormeh 6y ago
>Disasters would be magnified exponentially. Exponentially with what? The ability of the English language to mush up words is truly astounding. And this is not even my pet peeve.
- catalogia 6y ago
  I think they mean the severity of a nuclear plane crash is greater than the severity of a regular plane crash. Incidentally, some models of civil airplanes (some 747s for instance) contain depleted uranium trimming weights, which can be hazardous if burned in a plane wreck. This is far from a plane reactor accident though, and use of these weights has been discontinued for years (I'm unsure if any are still flying.)
  - tormeh 6y ago
    > I think they mean the severity of a nuclear plane crash is greater than the severity of a regular plane crash. Yeah, I know, it's just... There are already existing words for that. Words that were in use before "exponentially" became the cool word of the week. I guess I should just accept it, that "exponentially" is going to mean the same thing as "truly", "very" and "really". At some point some newscaster is going to describe a patient's outlook as "it's not looking exponentially good". Although maybe the word has too many syllables. One can hope.
    - VectorLock 6y ago
      It doesn't just mean "very." It is defined as "increasing rapidly by a large amount" in several dictionaries. Sometimes we have different words for varying degrees of things, and most people seem to accept thats perfectly cromulent.
      - jjk166 6y ago
        "Increasing rapidly by a large amount" is reasonable usage. does the sentence "Disasters would be magnified increasing rapidly by a large amount" make sense though? With a little word shuffling you can get something that at least comes out as coherent, but can you make it convey an idea more complex or more clearly than "disasters would be a lot worse"? Nuanced word selection can add clarity that would be difficult to achieve with more basic vocabulary, but too often people use wordgasms to confuddle the person they are trying to communicate with and make an otherwise vacuous statement appear more legitimate.
        astronautjones 6y ago
        This is low-key pedantic
- psychometry 6y ago
  Evolving word definitions is not the exclusive domain of the English language. That's just how human language works.
  - mtgp1000 6y ago
    It's driven primarily by ignorance and it muddies communication, especially over time. We should maintain some degree of pressure against such unnecessary change.
    - peterbraden 6y ago
      That ship sailed a thousand years ago.
      - jsight 6y ago
        I think it was orders of magnitude longer ago. (Just a joke, it was actually exponentially longer ago)
        tapia 6y ago
        We all know that time is linear... except if you are traveling pretty fast :P
        ithkuil 6y ago
        Time is linear except when you watch water waiting it to boil.
    - psychometry 6y ago
      It always amazes me how even smart, educated people can hold such ignorant views on linguistics. Go ahead, try and be a prescriptivist. You will lose 100% of the time.
      - mtgp1000 6y ago
- ricardobeat 6y ago
  Exponentially as the opposite of logarithmic. It's just a figure of speech like 'orders of magnitude'. What's fuzzy about that concept?
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Thank the American media for their unrelenting sensationalism, that drives them on their neverending quest to find bigger and better words to describe meaningless events. Once a word is too "lit", it's discarded and the next one comes along.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  Hyperbole isn't exactly a new phenomenon nor is it limited to English.
- boomlinde 6y ago
  With the radius of the resulting explosion maybe
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wongarsu 6y ago
We don't have nuclear powered aircraft because the required shielding was too heavy. Both the US and the USSR tried in the 1950s and 1960s, but the only "successful" program was the Soviet Tu-95LAL which got around the problem by simply omitting most of the shielding, irradiating the crew. Then the ICBM made the strategic bomber obsolete, and there was no incentive to sink any more money into nuclear-powered aircraft. Concern for safety had little to do with it, especially if you compare it to other occurrences at the time [1]. Now we can build autonomous vehicles that don't care about radiation and can make use of all that power, and that's exactly what Russia is doing. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents#1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

>Disasters would be magnified exponentially. Exponentially with what? The ability of the English language to mush up words is truly astounding. And this is not even my pet peeve.

catalogia 6y ago
I think they mean the severity of a nuclear plane crash is greater than the severity of a regular plane crash. Incidentally, some models of civil airplanes (some 747s for instance) contain depleted uranium trimming weights, which can be hazardous if burned in a plane wreck. This is far from a plane reactor accident though, and use of these weights has been discontinued for years (I'm unsure if any are still flying.)
- tormeh 6y ago
  > I think they mean the severity of a nuclear plane crash is greater than the severity of a regular plane crash. Yeah, I know, it's just... There are already existing words for that. Words that were in use before "exponentially" became the cool word of the week. I guess I should just accept it, that "exponentially" is going to mean the same thing as "truly", "very" and "really". At some point some newscaster is going to describe a patient's outlook as "it's not looking exponentially good". Although maybe the word has too many syllables. One can hope.
  - VectorLock 6y ago
    It doesn't just mean "very." It is defined as "increasing rapidly by a large amount" in several dictionaries. Sometimes we have different words for varying degrees of things, and most people seem to accept thats perfectly cromulent.
    - jjk166 6y ago
      "Increasing rapidly by a large amount" is reasonable usage. does the sentence "Disasters would be magnified increasing rapidly by a large amount" make sense though? With a little word shuffling you can get something that at least comes out as coherent, but can you make it convey an idea more complex or more clearly than "disasters would be a lot worse"? Nuanced word selection can add clarity that would be difficult to achieve with more basic vocabulary, but too often people use wordgasms to confuddle the person they are trying to communicate with and make an otherwise vacuous statement appear more legitimate.
      - astronautjones 6y ago
        This is low-key pedantic
psychometry 6y ago
Evolving word definitions is not the exclusive domain of the English language. That's just how human language works.
- mtgp1000 6y ago
  It's driven primarily by ignorance and it muddies communication, especially over time. We should maintain some degree of pressure against such unnecessary change.
  - peterbraden 6y ago
    That ship sailed a thousand years ago.
    - jsight 6y ago
      I think it was orders of magnitude longer ago. (Just a joke, it was actually exponentially longer ago)
      - tapia 6y ago
        We all know that time is linear... except if you are traveling pretty fast :P
        ithkuil 6y ago
        Time is linear except when you watch water waiting it to boil.
  - psychometry 6y ago
    It always amazes me how even smart, educated people can hold such ignorant views on linguistics. Go ahead, try and be a prescriptivist. You will lose 100% of the time.
    - mtgp1000 6y ago
ricardobeat 6y ago
Exponentially as the opposite of logarithmic. It's just a figure of speech like 'orders of magnitude'. What's fuzzy about that concept?
LockAndLol 6y ago
Thank the American media for their unrelenting sensationalism, that drives them on their neverending quest to find bigger and better words to describe meaningless events. Once a word is too "lit", it's discarded and the next one comes along.
zdragnar 6y ago
Hyperbole isn't exactly a new phenomenon nor is it limited to English.
boomlinde 6y ago
With the radius of the resulting explosion maybe

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wongarsu 6y ago

We don't have nuclear powered aircraft because the required shielding was too heavy. Both the US and the USSR tried in the 1950s and 1960s, but the only "successful" program was the Soviet Tu-95LAL which got around the problem by simply omitting most of the shielding, irradiating the crew. Then the ICBM made the strategic bomber obsolete, and there was no incentive to sink any more money into nuclear-powered aircraft. Concern for safety had little to do with it, especially if you compare it to other occurrences at the time [1]. Now we can build autonomous vehicles that don't care about radiation and can make use of all that power, and that's exactly what Russia is doing. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents#1950s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...