masterspace

joined 2 years ago
[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I agree with everything you're saying, but even speaking specialist to specialist, or say to a group of specialist colleagues who might not be working on exactly what you're working on, you still often simplify away the technical parts that aren't relevant to the specific conversation you're having, and use specific language on the parts that are, because that inherently helps the listener to focus on the technical aspects you want them to focus on.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 months ago

If you're communicating with another scientist about the actual work you're doing then sure there are times when you need to be specific.

If you're publishing official documentation on something or writing contracts, then yes, you also need to be extremely speciific.

But if you're just providing a description of your work to a non-specialist then no, there's always a way of simplifying it for the appropriate context. Same thing goes for most of specialist to specialist communication. There are specific sentences and times you use the precision to distinguish between two different things, but if you insist on always speaking in maximum precision and accuracy then it is simply poor communication skills where you are over providing unnecessary detail that detracts from the actual point you're trying to convey.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Their literal entire first paragraph is about scientists doing it.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

No, I'm talking about engineers and scientists communicating with project managers, designers, lawyers, business people, and the many many other people who work in the same industry but do not have technical backgrounds.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (5 children)

It is for a white collar job where most people have degrees.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca -2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (14 children)

Eh I don't really agree, depending on how simple you're talking. Bags within bags, or dumbing things down to a grade school level, then sure, there are topics that can't be described succinctly.

But if you're talking about simplifying things down to the point that anyone who took a bit of undergrad math/science can understand, then pretty much everything can be described in simple and easy to understand ways.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen many people at the top who can't, but in every case, it's not because of the topics' inherent complexity, but either because they don't actually understand the topics as well as they may seem, or because they lack the social skills (or time / effort / setting) to properly analogize and adjust for the listener.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago (16 children)

You're literally just describing this meme.

When you don't know shit you think it should be simpler, when you slightly understand it then you end up using technical terms because you know those terms apply and aren't confident enough to replace them, and then once you know enough you get confident just describing everything as bags within bags.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

Decentralized identity management / verification is still the biggest unsolved problem of the fediverse, and inherently pressures things towards centralization.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But the court rulings / precedence wouldn't care about that distinction, it just covers learning from copyrighted material in general.

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