You know, it isn’t actually any more descriptive to write out what ACC and DLPFC stand for, since if people know anything about them they already know their acronyms, but writing them out signals that I know that most people don’t know what ACC and DLPFC stand for and am penitent that I’m not bothering to link to their respective Wikipedia articles. I hate having to constantly jump through such stupid signalling hoops.
I can tell from “anterior cingulate cortext” that you are talking about a part of the brain, even though I haven’t heard of that part before. (I may have been able to tell from context that much about “ACC”, but it would have been more work, and I would have been less confident.)
And compare the Google searches for ACC and anterior cingulate cortext. It is nice to get a more relevant first search result than “Atlantic Coast Conference Official Athletic Site”.
It’s rare that people bother to learn new things on their own whereas it’s common for them to punish people that make it trivially more difficult for them to counterfactually do so, even though they wouldn’t even have been primed to want to do so if that person hadn’t brought up the subject. That’s the thing I’m complaining about. (bla bla marginal cost something bla opportunity costs b;’dja. disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.)
This might make you feel better: There is a part of every reader that cares about the subjective experience of reading. If you propitiate that part by writing things that are a pleasure to read, they’ll be more likely to read what you say.
FWIW, I have a passing familiarity from long ago with both terms, and none with the acronyms. I would have been mystified if you’d written ACC and probably would not have been able to figure out what you’re talking about, given some quick googling. Though DLPFC could probably have gotten me there after googling that.
It’s certainly easier to look up terms instead of abbreviations, and even moreso years later. People using abbreviations that have since fallen out of use is one of my pet peeves when reading older papers.
Right, but “a passing familiarity from long ago” != “knowing anything about them” in my mind. (Obviously I should have used a less hyperbolic phrase.) OTOH I wasn’t aware of the phenomenon where abbreviations often fall out of use. I think the DLPFC was only carved out of conceptspace in the last decade, both the idea and its abbreviation, which does indicate that the inverse problem might be common for quickly advancing fields like neuroscience. (ETA: So, I was wrong to see this as an example of the thing I was complaining about. (I don’t think I was wrong to complain about that thing but only in a deontological sense; in a consequentialist sense I was wrong there too.))
You know, it isn’t actually any more descriptive to write out what ACC and DLPFC stand for, since if people know anything about them they already know their acronyms, but writing them out signals that I know that most people don’t know what ACC and DLPFC stand for and am penitent that I’m not bothering to link to their respective Wikipedia articles. I hate having to constantly jump through such stupid signalling hoops.
I can tell from “anterior cingulate cortext” that you are talking about a part of the brain, even though I haven’t heard of that part before. (I may have been able to tell from context that much about “ACC”, but it would have been more work, and I would have been less confident.)
And compare the Google searches for ACC and anterior cingulate cortext. It is nice to get a more relevant first search result than “Atlantic Coast Conference Official Athletic Site”.
It’s rare that people bother to learn new things on their own whereas it’s common for them to punish people that make it trivially more difficult for them to counterfactually do so, even though they wouldn’t even have been primed to want to do so if that person hadn’t brought up the subject. That’s the thing I’m complaining about. (bla bla marginal cost something bla opportunity costs b;’dja. disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.)
This might make you feel better: There is a part of every reader that cares about the subjective experience of reading. If you propitiate that part by writing things that are a pleasure to read, they’ll be more likely to read what you say.
Very helpful advice in only two sentences. Appeals to aesthetics are my favorite. Thank you.
FWIW, I have a passing familiarity from long ago with both terms, and none with the acronyms. I would have been mystified if you’d written ACC and probably would not have been able to figure out what you’re talking about, given some quick googling. Though DLPFC could probably have gotten me there after googling that.
It’s certainly easier to look up terms instead of abbreviations, and even moreso years later. People using abbreviations that have since fallen out of use is one of my pet peeves when reading older papers.
Right, but “a passing familiarity from long ago” != “knowing anything about them” in my mind. (Obviously I should have used a less hyperbolic phrase.) OTOH I wasn’t aware of the phenomenon where abbreviations often fall out of use. I think the DLPFC was only carved out of conceptspace in the last decade, both the idea and its abbreviation, which does indicate that the inverse problem might be common for quickly advancing fields like neuroscience. (ETA: So, I was wrong to see this as an example of the thing I was complaining about. (I don’t think I was wrong to complain about that thing but only in a deontological sense; in a consequentialist sense I was wrong there too.))