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It's generally so that the person using the formal language can feel validated because they know it (and sometimes to signal they know it).
by devit 6y ago
It's generally so that the person using the formal language can feel validated because they know it (and sometimes to signal they know it).
- oconnor663 6y agoIf you're writing research papers, you need to distinguish between a lot of related and similar-sounding but importantly different concepts, and it makes sense to invent some technical language to make those distinctions clear. (Entropy vs enthalpy, centrifugal vs centripetal, concurrency vs parallelism, converse vs inverse vs contrapositive.) I think the problem shows up when you don't know how to "turn it off" when you're teaching the material.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoMaybe sometimes it's that, but I find most of the time, once you are comfortable with it, the formal language is just more useful. I'm beginning to think that attitudes like "they only do X this way to feel superior" are common because it lets you feel superior, but maybe that's me falling into the same trap. Personally, I do ML and stats for a living, and the notation really does make things easier, while your comment is often thrown at math notation too.