This reminds me of refactoring. Even tiny improvements in naming, especially when they accumulate, can make the whole system more transparent. (Assuming that people can agree on which direction is an “improvement”.)
But if I may continue with the programming analogy, the real problem is pushing the commit to the remaining million users of the distributed codebase. And not just users, but also all that literature that is already written.
I like the “my model of Alice” example, because it reminds everyone in the debate of the map/territory distinction.
On the other hand, there are expressions that rub me the wrong way, for example “spoon theory”. Like, hey, it’s basically “willpower depletion”, only explained using spoons, which are just an accidental object in the story; any other object could have been used in their place, therefore it’s stupid to use this word as the identifier for the concept. (On the other hand, it helps to avoid the whole discussion about whether “willpower depletion” is a scientific concept. Hey, it may or may not exist in theory, but it definitely exists in real life.)
There are of course ways how to abuse jargon. Typical one is to redefine meanings of usual words (to borrow the old connotations for the new concept, or prevent people from having an easy way to express the old concept), or to create an impression of a vast trove of exclusive knowledge where in fact there is just a heap of old concepts (many of them controversial).
This reminds me of refactoring. Even tiny improvements in naming, especially when they accumulate, can make the whole system more transparent. (Assuming that people can agree on which direction is an “improvement”.)
But if I may continue with the programming analogy, the real problem is pushing the commit to the remaining million users of the distributed codebase. And not just users, but also all that literature that is already written.
I like the “my model of Alice” example, because it reminds everyone in the debate of the map/territory distinction.
On the other hand, there are expressions that rub me the wrong way, for example “spoon theory”. Like, hey, it’s basically “willpower depletion”, only explained using spoons, which are just an accidental object in the story; any other object could have been used in their place, therefore it’s stupid to use this word as the identifier for the concept. (On the other hand, it helps to avoid the whole discussion about whether “willpower depletion” is a scientific concept. Hey, it may or may not exist in theory, but it definitely exists in real life.)
There are of course ways how to abuse jargon. Typical one is to redefine meanings of usual words (to borrow the old connotations for the new concept, or prevent people from having an easy way to express the old concept), or to create an impression of a vast trove of exclusive knowledge where in fact there is just a heap of old concepts (many of them controversial).