4 ms·

interesting article, when I visit doctor I have similar feelings, same thing applies to law, finance and other specialized fields. But my energies permit me kno

by khrist 13y ago

interesting article, when I visit doctor I have similar feelings, same thing applies to law, finance and other specialized fields. But my energies permit me know only so much. So its essential we watch out for jargon abuse. Most of the times when someone is heavily using the technical bits, they are trying to hide their incompetence. If a person knows about something well and is explaining to a layman, they will do their best to explain it as plainly as possible. Gobbledegook signifies something festering underneath

dataisfun 13y ago
Not sure if the comparison with finance is apt. Financial sophistry layered complexity on complexity without a robust understanding of principles (i.e., housing prices don't always go up, hiding debt and ownership in millions of small pieces spread around will create a mess), whereas computing grows intelligently (most of the time) from real world problems that need addressing.
- JanezStupar 13y ago
  Oh they understand principles pretty well (I get comission x% and I don't fucking care about everything else). The layering of sophistry is there so they can obfuscate them from you. They also use it for maintaining plausible deniability.
sergiosgc 13y ago
The comparison with doctors is apt. Most of the time, I don't know enough about what my doctor is talking about to require more than generic explanation. If it is a simple problem, fine by me and I'm basically delegating my health into his competence. However, critically, if it is anything serious, I go and study it, enough to at least be able to talk about the subject. When I had lasik done, I knew as much domain specific jargon as my surgeon. The same applies to IT and company boards. For daily operations, hire a good IT exec and let him work. If, however, you are treating an exception, go learn enough IT to talk to the "doctors". Or get an IT guy on the board...

by khrist 13y ago

dataisfun 13y ago

Not sure if the comparison with finance is apt. Financial sophistry layered complexity on complexity without a robust understanding of principles (i.e., housing prices don't always go up, hiding debt and ownership in millions of small pieces spread around will create a mess), whereas computing grows intelligently (most of the time) from real world problems that need addressing.

JanezStupar 13y ago
Oh they understand principles pretty well (I get comission x% and I don't fucking care about everything else). The layering of sophistry is there so they can obfuscate them from you. They also use it for maintaining plausible deniability.

sergiosgc 13y ago

The comparison with doctors is apt. Most of the time, I don't know enough about what my doctor is talking about to require more than generic explanation. If it is a simple problem, fine by me and I'm basically delegating my health into his competence. However, critically, if it is anything serious, I go and study it, enough to at least be able to talk about the subject. When I had lasik done, I knew as much domain specific jargon as my surgeon. The same applies to IT and company boards. For daily operations, hire a good IT exec and let him work. If, however, you are treating an exception, go learn enough IT to talk to the "doctors". Or get an IT guy on the board...