3 ms·

You mean post quantum, theoretical physics. Up to 19th and early 20th, physicists somehow knew how to name things. It is possible that the nature of the beast i

You mean post quantum, theoretical physics. Up to 19th and early 20th, physicists somehow knew how to name things. It is possible that the nature of the beast itself has changed and it attracts a different kind of mindsets ...

amelius 5mo ago
Maybe it is easier to get funding with catchy and/or mysterious names?
wvbdmp 5mo ago
Maybe Greek and Latin vocabulary is just overextended at some point? I don’t really see the issue with Snap, Crackle and Pop. The potential confusion around Magic seems much greater, although when you consider the vastly more common opposite effect, where specific scientific terms become popular and quickly gain wholly different colloquial meanings, perhaps it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps Magic is even so ridiculous that it’s immune to co-option by charlatans. After all, they choose sciency words to lend an air of credibility. OTOH the perceived ridiculousness could also change rather quickly. It’s just the nature of language use…
- izucken 5mo ago
  Should call the next big physics thing doubtscumbagium...
- yubblegum 4mo ago
  > Maybe Greek and Latin vocabulary is just overextended at some point? I don’t really see the issue with Snap, Crackle and Pop. What is "overextended" imho is an actual understanding of what these phenomena really are. Previously, we had some sense of what we meant by e.g. field or atom or electron, quantum, ... So yea, if we don't know enough about the thing we're naming, we might as well pull random strings out of a hat and in that case "pop, snap, crackle, strange, charm, fifi, doodoo, woof, & meow" (note these latter 4 are my contributions to advancements of human understanding btw /g) are good enough!
tsimionescu 5mo ago
Color charge and the strange and charm quarks are not post-quantum theoretical physics, are they? There's also other areas where a current of picking simple names instead of greek/latin terms was popular for a while at least - Shannon named the smallest unit of information a "bit" after all.
- yubblegum 5mo ago
  That stuff is after Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr. When I mentioned quantum mechanics, these are the physicists I had in mind.

amelius 5mo ago

Maybe it is easier to get funding with catchy and/or mysterious names?

wvbdmp 5mo ago

Maybe Greek and Latin vocabulary is just overextended at some point? I don’t really see the issue with Snap, Crackle and Pop. The potential confusion around Magic seems much greater, although when you consider the vastly more common opposite effect, where specific scientific terms become popular and quickly gain wholly different colloquial meanings, perhaps it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps Magic is even so ridiculous that it’s immune to co-option by charlatans. After all, they choose sciency words to lend an air of credibility. OTOH the perceived ridiculousness could also change rather quickly. It’s just the nature of language use…

izucken 5mo ago
Should call the next big physics thing doubtscumbagium...
yubblegum 4mo ago
> Maybe Greek and Latin vocabulary is just overextended at some point? I don’t really see the issue with Snap, Crackle and Pop. What is "overextended" imho is an actual understanding of what these phenomena really are. Previously, we had some sense of what we meant by e.g. field or atom or electron, quantum, ... So yea, if we don't know enough about the thing we're naming, we might as well pull random strings out of a hat and in that case "pop, snap, crackle, strange, charm, fifi, doodoo, woof, & meow" (note these latter 4 are my contributions to advancements of human understanding btw /g) are good enough!

tsimionescu 5mo ago

Color charge and the strange and charm quarks are not post-quantum theoretical physics, are they? There's also other areas where a current of picking simple names instead of greek/latin terms was popular for a while at least - Shannon named the smallest unit of information a "bit" after all.

yubblegum 5mo ago
That stuff is after Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr. When I mentioned quantum mechanics, these are the physicists I had in mind.