Prismattic comments on Cargo Cult Language - Less Wrong

-1 Post author: SaidAchmiz 05 February 2012 09:32PM

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Comment author: Prismattic 06 February 2012 03:24:20AM 1 point [-]

There are many words that have different meanings in different disciplines. Complaining that people using words in a non-scientific context aren't using the definition of them that is common in the sciences is basically a status grab for scientists.

More specifically, I disagree that people use "accurate" and "precise" interchangably; they just happen to use them differently than scientists in a scientific context do.

Consider the difference between the statements:

  • The victim's description of the suspect was accurate.
  • The victim's description of the suspect was precise.

The former, to a layman, means that the description correlated well with the actual characteristics of the suspect; the latter means that the description was detailed to a high degree of granularity. This doesn't correspond to the scientific usage, and... so what?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 06 February 2012 04:25:04PM 5 points [-]

That seems to me to correspond to the scientific usage quite well.