This is very related to something my friend pointed out a couple weeks ago. Jargon doesn't just make us less able to communicate with people from outside groups - it makes us less willing to communicate with them.

As truth-seeking rationalists, we should be interested in communicating with people who make good arguments, consider points carefully, etc. But I think we often judge someone's rationality based on jargon instead of the content of their message. If someone uses a lot of LessWrong jargon, it gives a prior that they are rational, which may bias us in favor of their arguments. If someone doesn't use any LW jargon (or worse, uses jargon from some other unrelated community), then it might give a prior that they're irrational, or won't have acquired the background concepts necessary for rational discussion. Then we'll be biased against their arguments. This contributes to LW becoming a filter bubble.

I think this is a very important bias to combat. Shared jargon reflects a shared conceptual system, and our conceptual systems constrain the sort of ideas that we can come up with. One of the best ways to get new ideas is to try understanding a different worldview, with a different collection of concepts and jargon. That worldview might be full of incorrect ideas, but it still broadens the range of ideas you can think about.

So, thanks for this post. =) I hope you will discuss the results of your attempt to speak without jargon.