The Mïghty Kräcken

Dear Physicists,

Please make up new words instead of recycling common words as jargon for complex concepts. You are confusing the general public and giving ammo to con artists.

The most recent and possibly most egregious example is this whole mess about the universe not being locally real. Yes, we are all very happy that you are making big strides in your field of study, but regular folks don't know you are speaking in code and think you mean we live in The Matrix.

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Dec 24, 2022 at 3:17pmMastodon for Android
Show threadThe Mïghty KräckenDec 24, 2022

All of this could have been avoided if you did not recycle common words that WE ARE ALREADY USING.

Sincerely,

Everyone Else

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Show threadBruce ElrickDec 24, 2022
@Klaxun Ok energy-force-field people!
Show threadGraydonDec 24, 2022

@Klaxun Making up new words makes the whole process more difficult and they're struggling with it as it is, right out there at the limits of comprehension.

On the rare occasions this doesn't happen, we get quark, and it's not immediately clear quarks are a help to comprehension as nomenclature.

Show threadThe Mïghty KräckenDec 24, 2022
@graydon I would say that muon, all things being equal, is a more useful term than The God Particle.
Show threadGraydonDec 24, 2022

@Klaxun I would agree with that.

One difference there is that they had muons and had only hypothesized Higgs Bosons (for decades, which encourages sarcasm.)

Biologists give names to an hypothesis all the time, which is how we got whippomorpha. It's not obvious that's more comprehensible, either. Hominins versus hominini is regular and systematic and confusing if you haven't being taught some stuff.

Show threadLinebyline→mastoart.socialJan 10, 2023
@Klaxun Amen. And can we also CC the psychologists on this? Because that has similar problems, plus you sometimes get scolded for being ableist when you use words to mean what they normally mean.
Show threadMrs. Buck TurgidsonDec 24, 2022
@Klaxun This is like how the word “observation” was used in quantum mechanics to mean a process of essentially hitting one particle with another, but then led to several generations of crackpots to claim that “quantum mechanics happens because a person is looking at it. the human mind controls reality.”
Show thread➡ [email protected]Dec 24, 2022
@Klaxun agree. I think Sabine Hossenfelder does a good job with this. She often calls out other physicists for attaching language to the math in ways that aren't necessary or clear. The problem is that explaining the underlying concept usually requires learning the math, so it's hard to do that as a science communicator.