Science & You...

[SckizoBoy]

With a mild 'spike' (shall we say) of science related threads, I thought... why not?

Statement (in a purely academic context): it is easier for a non-scientist to converse amongst scientists than it is for a scientist to converse among non-scientists.

Discuss (and please keep it civil).

Spoiler

BTW just so certain people don't rage at me, no, I don't agree with the statement

 

[Cheesus333]

I suppose it's easier to make the effort to understand what people are saying than it is to over-simplify for the sake of coherence, and compromise your accuracy in the process. So I suppose, in some ways, the statement is true. But if there's no will to understand the topic being discussed, then the 'non-scientist' will have a very hard time of it.

 

[DefunctTheory]

It depends on the subject.

A lot of science is nothing more then common sense with numbers. For instance - Gravity. Does anyone really believe that no human being in existence was aware of gravity before Isaac Newton explained it? Of course they were. Old Newton merely did the math. The same goes for things like engineering and mathematics - Even an idiot's brain is quite capable of understanding most of these concepts, because from day one of existence our brains have been learning and using such things on what could be called an instinctual, or automatic manner.

Now, start throwing quantum theory around, and things will get bad. Fast.

 

[Dyme]

To prove OP:

Spoiler

 

[Anezay]

It shouldn't be hard for either side to converse. Most conversations don't really go into great depth on matters of personal expertise. Some do, most don't.

 

[azukar]

It shouldn't be hard for either side to converse. Most conversations don't really go into great depth on matters of personal expertise. Some do, most don't.

This; it's about people's communication skills, not necessarily whether or not their field is jargon-loaded. Primary school teachers have plenty of technical language in our professional discourse, but we can still talk to parents with no specialist knowledge.

Or, in layman's terms, "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out".

 

[Anezay]

It shouldn't be hard for either side to converse. Most conversations don't really go into great depth on matters of personal expertise. Some do, most don't.

This; it's about people's communication skills, not necessarily whether or not their field is jargon-loaded. Primary school teachers have plenty of technical language in our professional discourse, but we can still talk to parents with no specialist knowledge.

Or, in layman's terms, "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out".

Interestingly enough, that actually describes my job quite well.

 

[azukar]

Interestingly enough, that actually describes my job quite well.

Which bit? The jargon decoding, or the Portal reference?

 

[Communist partisan]

I have no idea, it's pretty much like this in my world:

 

[MassiveGeek]

It depends on the subject.

A lot of science is nothing more then common sense with numbers. For instance - Gravity. Does anyone really believe that no human being in existence was aware of gravity before Isaac Newton explained it? Of course they were. Old Newton merely did the math. The same goes for things like engineering and mathematics - Even an idiot's brain is quite capable of understanding most of these concepts, because from day one of existence our brains have been learning and using such things on what could be called an instinctual, or automatic manner.

Now, start throwing quantum theory around, and things will get bad. Fast.

This.

Although it's, for me, a complete waste of time to ever try to talk about scientific theories or even the scientific method with pretty much all my friends. Not to insult their intelligence, but they have no interest for it and that makes them constantly throw "but it doesn't mean it's true" in my face when I talk about it. >_> (I hate philisophical discussions with my friends.)

 

[Nudu]

What I've noticed is that a lot of people talk about things they don't understand. Quantum mechanics seems to be a particularly common victim of this. QUANTUM MECHANICS DOES NOT EQUAL MAGIC!

 

[Anezay]

Interestingly enough, that actually describes my job quite well.

Which bit? The jargon decoding, or the Portal reference?

"Speedy thing go in, speedy thing comes out."
United States Marine Corps infantry. Bullets are speedy things. The bigger ones come out the other side.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Statement (in a purely academic context): it is easier for a non-scientist to converse amongst scientists than it is for a scientist to converse among non-scientists.

This is necessarily true. Those who do not know the jargon can still be understood by those who do know the jargon, but the same does not apply visa-versa.

The only real difficulty comes from those who do know the jargon being unable to describe things in regular English, but they must be able to do that at some level because that's what they had to do in order to learn the jargon.

Having said that, it'd be quite difficult for an economist to really explain things to a regular person because, rather than words being made up, lots of words are co-opted out of regular parlance and attributed different meanings (investment, savings, etc...), which leads to confusion . On top of that, many of the processes are rather counter-intuitive or laborious (like how trade can always be mutually beneficial, or working out the full impact of a policy change). I contrast this with the natural sciences where new words were created to describe things, so there's less conflicting definitions, and everything is pretty common-sense until you get into quantum theory.

 

[JohnTomorrow]

I think this statement is true, because ignorance breeds confidence, whereas knowledge is arresting in certain situations, especially in a social situation.

Lets say you go to the pub, and you have three mates who are all biologists. You start discussing, i dunno, some type of phlegm you coughed up that morning, and a conversation starts. You are more likely to earn their respect by talking about their field then they would be if they were in the reversed situation, because you are a layman trying to learn, and i think scientists, by trade, accept people who are willing to learn more openly then others.

Lets flip it. You're a biologist and you go to the pub with a bunch of your non-scientist mates. Are you going to tell them about that phlegm you coughed up that morning? Nooo, because they'll say you're being gross. They wont understand the processes that go into it - they just wanna get pissed and talk about footy.

It all depends on the people. Are your friends receptive to your line of work/hobbies? I know i can bore my mates shitless with horticulture talk, same as my pilot friend can send me to sleep telling me about weather patterns and flight checks.