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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 (so

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

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