5 ms·

Jargon like that in the link makes the message less precise and more meaningless, in my view. Just simply state what you mean. Let the other person ask questi

Jargon like that in the link makes the message less precise and more meaningless, in my view. Just simply state what you mean. Let the other person ask questions if they need clarification.

mrtksn 2y ago
That's good when you explain something technical to a layman, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about explaining non-technical issue to a technical person using jargon for analogy. For example you can use P2P to explain how some gossip spread or you can say that your relationship with SO is like UDP recently.
- luke-stanley 2y ago
  So it's low latency and fast but in some contexts, firewalled?
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    It's like can't tell if she heard you
    - jonahx 2y ago
      How is "like UDP" clearer than just saying that?
      - mrtksn 2y ago
        It's not clearer, it's deeper. It implies a state and creates an image in the listeners mind. You can throw it casually when explaining something and your audience now has an image in their head so you can explain the actual thing you are after. Jargons are shortcuts to pre-agreed ideas. Just a tool.
        jonahx 2y ago
        In this case, I assure you it does not add depth, clarity, images. You're just using it as a kind of in-group joke.
        mrtksn 2y ago
        It means that you are not the intended audience because you know too much or too little about UDP. Once I had a physicist friend freak out over my use of "exponential" to loosely explain something because he instantly began thinking about edge cases and obviously using "logarithmic" would have been more precise. We were not on the same page with the jargon, but then again I guess it requires social skills too so that you can pick where the analogy starts and ends.
        InitialLastName 2y ago
        My biggest pet peeve is when people use "exponential" to describe an increase defined by two points (i.e. "Americans are anticipated to consume exponentially more cookies in 2025 than they did in 2024"). Fully meaningless.
        kelnos 2y ago
        I agree: it's absolutely an in-group joke. Maybe not joke, but a cutesy in-group way of expressing something. Certainly someone who gets it will, well, get it. But in general it seems like a lot of effort in most cases to gauge whether or not the recipient will understand at the level you hope. Even the UDP example could be misunderstood by someone who is well-versed. Unreliable? A good low-level thing to build stuff on top of? These are both plausible meanings, but would convey very different things. Better to just use clear language.
- groby_b 2y ago
  I mean, if you describe a relationship in terms of a protocol, sure, you're giving an interesting signal about the relationship, but probably not what you intended to say.
- marky1991 2y ago
  I think the udp example is a counterexample personally. "Hmm udp, so ...unreliable and...hmm...but high throughput?...hm, good to build stuff on top of?" I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, yet I know exactly what udp is. If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that?
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    It means that we are not on the same page with that and should not be used. With jargon, audience is everything. Also, you use it in context. The jargon becomes illustrative for the analogy, not precise definition. After all, human can't have UDP connection.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that? It's not. Well, if the person you're talking to happens to get the intended meaning immediately, it's a cute in-joke. To me, that's the only real (dubious) benefit.
Terr_ 2y ago
There is no single "just simply" though. All communication is based on an (inherently fallible) estimate of the recipient's mental-state, priorities, and knowledge-base. For example, "I would like one head of lettuce" is a kind of jargon-lite for "I would like one portion of the fully-grown plant known as lettuce which is found above-ground as a connected unit in nature." Which one leads to a "simpler" exchange will depend on your assumptions about the recipient.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Except that "one head of lettuce" is a widely-known "measure" that most people are going to understand. Most of this business-speak jargon is incomprehensible to people who haven't heard it before in the workplace. It seems "normal" to people like us here on HN because most of us have interacted with these sorts of business types (or are even one of them), but I would guess that most of the people who know what a head of lettuce represents would have no idea what ROI or noun-form "solve" means.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    I never said the marriage satire was normal. (Although, in that fictional world, those two fictional people seem to be surprisingly satisfied with their choices of language.) Just that "simple" is deceptive, non-universal, and sometimes contradictory.

Jargon like that in the link makes the message less precise and more meaningless, in my view. Just simply state what you mean. Let the other person ask questions if they need clarification.

mrtksn 2y ago

That's good when you explain something technical to a layman, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about explaining non-technical issue to a technical person using jargon for analogy. For example you can use P2P to explain how some gossip spread or you can say that your relationship with SO is like UDP recently.

luke-stanley 2y ago
So it's low latency and fast but in some contexts, firewalled?
- mrtksn 2y ago
  It's like can't tell if she heard you
  - jonahx 2y ago
    How is "like UDP" clearer than just saying that?
    - mrtksn 2y ago
      It's not clearer, it's deeper. It implies a state and creates an image in the listeners mind. You can throw it casually when explaining something and your audience now has an image in their head so you can explain the actual thing you are after. Jargons are shortcuts to pre-agreed ideas. Just a tool.
      - jonahx 2y ago
        In this case, I assure you it does not add depth, clarity, images. You're just using it as a kind of in-group joke.
        mrtksn 2y ago
        It means that you are not the intended audience because you know too much or too little about UDP. Once I had a physicist friend freak out over my use of "exponential" to loosely explain something because he instantly began thinking about edge cases and obviously using "logarithmic" would have been more precise. We were not on the same page with the jargon, but then again I guess it requires social skills too so that you can pick where the analogy starts and ends.
        InitialLastName 2y ago
        My biggest pet peeve is when people use "exponential" to describe an increase defined by two points (i.e. "Americans are anticipated to consume exponentially more cookies in 2025 than they did in 2024"). Fully meaningless.
        kelnos 2y ago
        I agree: it's absolutely an in-group joke. Maybe not joke, but a cutesy in-group way of expressing something. Certainly someone who gets it will, well, get it. But in general it seems like a lot of effort in most cases to gauge whether or not the recipient will understand at the level you hope. Even the UDP example could be misunderstood by someone who is well-versed. Unreliable? A good low-level thing to build stuff on top of? These are both plausible meanings, but would convey very different things. Better to just use clear language.
groby_b 2y ago
I mean, if you describe a relationship in terms of a protocol, sure, you're giving an interesting signal about the relationship, but probably not what you intended to say.
marky1991 2y ago
I think the udp example is a counterexample personally. "Hmm udp, so ...unreliable and...hmm...but high throughput?...hm, good to build stuff on top of?" I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, yet I know exactly what udp is. If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that?
- mrtksn 2y ago
  It means that we are not on the same page with that and should not be used. With jargon, audience is everything. Also, you use it in context. The jargon becomes illustrative for the analogy, not precise definition. After all, human can't have UDP connection.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > If you just meant "unreliable", how was this better than just saying that? It's not. Well, if the person you're talking to happens to get the intended meaning immediately, it's a cute in-joke. To me, that's the only real (dubious) benefit.

Terr_ 2y ago

There is no single "just simply" though. All communication is based on an (inherently fallible) estimate of the recipient's mental-state, priorities, and knowledge-base. For example, "I would like one head of lettuce" is a kind of jargon-lite for "I would like one portion of the fully-grown plant known as lettuce which is found above-ground as a connected unit in nature." Which one leads to a "simpler" exchange will depend on your assumptions about the recipient.

kelnos 2y ago
Except that "one head of lettuce" is a widely-known "measure" that most people are going to understand. Most of this business-speak jargon is incomprehensible to people who haven't heard it before in the workplace. It seems "normal" to people like us here on HN because most of us have interacted with these sorts of business types (or are even one of them), but I would guess that most of the people who know what a head of lettuce represents would have no idea what ROI or noun-form "solve" means.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  I never said the marriage satire was normal. (Although, in that fictional world, those two fictional people seem to be surprisingly satisfied with their choices of language.) Just that "simple" is deceptive, non-universal, and sometimes contradictory.