Communication of Science

Reply to dan0mac I think if someone's writing is dense with specialist language, it's probably hiding a thin argument. That said, a) posts have to be fairly concise, b) threads are conversational, c) everyone on here has an internet connection. For those reasons it's justified to make assumptions about your interlocutor's knowledge based on the subject they wish to discuss, their ability to ask for clarification, and their ability to look words and concepts up they're unfamiliar with.

Absolutely. I guess my question is less about the site, and more about communication in general. I just used the site as an example of heady wording getting in the way of communicating something important.
I can concede that it might just be the way that some people (myself included- I made a sperate aside to make this note) communicate, but there is a serious issue in science communication- it seems to me that people either don't understand or choose not to understand based on language. So how is good science communicated well?

Reply to dan0mac

One needs to find a balance between precision and accessibility. The more obscure and technical the topic, the more precise the language generally needs to be, without being so abstruse that it cannot be understood by the intended audience. If the intended audience is more general, then accessibility will generally win out, especially if the consequences of misunderstanding or not communicating the ideas incredibly precisely is not too important. But if the audience is general and the consequences of not communicating the ideas precisely is great, people should just do the requisite reading to understand the language imo.

Yes, some people hide behind specialized language and wordiness to appear like they know what they are talking about. But to also be fair, sometimes a person is working through the idea, and have not reached the mastery level of being able to convey an idea that is simple, clear, and concise. And then there are the instances in which a person is so learned in a particular specialized topic, that for those who understand the topic, the use of those words conveys the idea that is simple, clear, and concise.

Do not be intimidated by unfamiliar words or phrasing. Feel free to ask people to detail confusing or unclear parts of their post. An honest person who is genuinely interested in discussion and conveying their idea to you, will gladly attempt to do so. Someone who becomes offended or resists, is likely a pretender and not worth your time.

Quoting Philosophim

Yes, some people hide behind specialized language and wordiness to appear like they know what they are talking about. But to also be fair, sometimes a person is working through the idea, and have not reached the mastery level of being able to convey an idea that is simple, clear, and concise. And then there are the instances in which a person is so learned in a particular specialized topic, that for those who understand the topic, the use of those words conveys the idea that is simple, clear, and concise.

I cast my vote for this explanation. Having experience and skill in some particular area is not automatically the same thing as having skill at translating advanced understandings in to widely accessible language.

It takes a special person to explain an advanced concept to a layman. I had a friend, a physicist, who worked with high school students in an impoverished region in the deep south. He would carry an old cigar box full of coins stacked neatly, that he would show. Then he'd ask a student to shake it up and take a look inside. "That's entropy", he would explain.

He recruited several students to his college who went on the earn PhDs.

Reply to dan0mac To the extent that I'm aware, a lot of subjects, not just science, and including philosophy, have, for reasons that are obvious, developed their own specialized language, consisting of precising and stipulative definitions. This situation arises out of necessity ("...for reasons that are obvious...") and not choice as the concepts involved need to be clear, clear as possible to avoid confusion. That being the case, the challenge for a science communicator is to find the most appropriate words in the vernacular for words part of the technical jargon of whatever branch of science fae is part of. This, I believe, is no easy task and either by force of habit or the lack of corresponding words in colloquial speech, a science educator will employ words that are, well, incomprehensible to a lay audience.

That said, I'll leave you with a quote by Albert Einstein and it goes...

[quote=Albert Einstein]If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough[/quote]

Quoting dan0mac

I am a big believer in science communication (as if people arent- see the above questions)- it is important that people just... Understand science. So- political grossness aside- what is the problem?

There is also bias and cultural/environmental background -- no matter how well the communicator of science has laid down the points, the ideas, or the subject matter in every conceivable arrangements of strings of words and sentences; no matter how many authoritative citations and substantiation are put forth for fact-checking and clarification, the targeted audience will misunderstand it. A lot of times it's willful misunderstanding.

[quote=dan0mac]I have noticed that on this site, people who are well versed in philosophy and/or science often revert to speech that could be (or is) inaccessible to others...[/quote]

All subjects have specialist terminology that only a subset of general speakers of the language (English in our case) will understand without further research. If the terminology is standard enough, and is being used in a standard enough sense by the writer that it can easily be looked up by the reader, I see no problem. For the sake of brevity, and avoiding unnecessarily bloated posts containing lots of explanations that are direct duplicates of other easily accessible sources, I think this kind of accurate use of specialist terminology is useful.

As a philosophy student I completely agree with the original post. I find many of our assigned readings enormously hard to understand simply due to the way it's communicated, the basic underlying idea is often relatively simple. When writing essays our lecturers always say that writing philosophy is not about literary elegance, but about expressing the argument in the clearest way possible. And I think one of the best things about philosophy is the ability to engage in conversation even with others outside of philosophy. Many of the deep questions and debates we discuss can be developed just through pure conversation without knowing the relevant technical terms. That said, I think one of the purposes of philosophy is to take what initially seems like a simple concept and break it down revealing its complexity. I think many of the posts on here are not intended to be as refined or concise as say a journal article would be which makes it less accessible to newcomers like me and others not previously educated in philosophy.

Reply to dan0mac What is the problem?

The problem is that people don't understand scientific method, or the truth value of the knowledge established thereby. This is based on a 400 year old mistake; that is, Galileo's trial for heresy, for proving Earth orbits the sun. As a consequence of that trial, science has never been recognised as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality/Creation, nor accorded any moral worth or authority; but decried as a heresy, has been reduced to a mere tool - employed in service to the ideological ends of military and industrial power, but otherwise ignored.

A scientific understanding of reality is externalised by the ideological conceptions of reality; religion, nation state, capitalism, by which people parse the world, and from which people draw their identities and purposes.

Those who understand science, philosophically, methodologically, and meaningfully, are speaking a different language to the ideologically indoctrinated, superstitious masses. I'm not talking here about scientific jargon, but the underlying conceptual philosophy.

Consider for example, the concept of entropy - as it relates to sustainability, and the apparent plan to power the modern world with windmills. Entropy implies that any designed structure, like civilisation, requires the expenditure of energy to maintain it, or it will inevitably fall apart. And yet the plan is to have considerably less energy to spend. How could anyone who values a scientific understanding of reality appropriately, think that's a good idea? People just don't think in terms of a scientific understanding of reality. They're ideologues.