You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

billswift comments on Overcoming the Curse of Knowledge - Less Wrong Discussion

42 Post author: JesseGalef 18 October 2011 05:39PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (54)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: billswift 18 October 2011 06:20:04PM 4 points [-]

And it is "dumbing things down", since the not ignorant general understanding, that is of the well-educated, but not necessarily scientifically-educated, population has similar usages. Where do you think the scientific usages came from?

Comment author: tenshiko 21 October 2011 03:20:57AM 0 points [-]

At the very least "aerosol", "uncertainty", and "positive" have the "public" connotations even in well-educated humanities circles. There are some terms of science that simply are used differently, positive probably the most obvious.