I've expressed this before on multiple occasions, but why are finance people and cybersecurity people allowed to use technical jargon as if we all should know what they mean but scientists aren't?
@drmambobob maybe they're not but they're just bad at making their subject accessible to non-specialists... a bit like… most scientists :-)
@steveroyle I actually think that's an outdated and inaccurate stereotype about scientists to be honest. Scientists are one of the most passionate people on the planet that are also patient enough to spend a lot of time explaining difficult concepts. Finance types on the other hand treat you like you're stupid if you don't understand all their silly made up products.
Plus, no one criticises finance people because everyone's scared of being the one that doesn't understand money.
@drmambobob one exercise I do with a class I teach is to pull a “lay summary" from the funded UKRI grant database and get the students to assess how accessibly it's written. The average one is hard to understand, so I think scientists can improve here too. I agree that communication skills have improved in science and that finance people do plenty of smoke-and-mirrors.
@steveroyle Sure - I'm not saying scientists are perfect, but we're constantly forced to and trained to communicate in an accessible way as possible - but some concepts are difficult to get this right. I think finance or cybersecurity are also very complicated topics...
@drmambobob the problem is that if you try to explain in words people understand, halfway in they realise all they really care about is that it works and stop listening
@drmambobob 1/2
the cybersecurity industry has spent decades heaping shame on everyone who admits to not understanding any of the jargon.
Similarly, the finance industry has spent centuries heaping shame on everyone who admits to not understanding any of the jargon.
@drmambobob 2/2
Both have gained their positions of respect by the social brutalization of every admission of ignorance or error. Since neither ignorance nor error can be addressed without admission, both industries remain in states of ever worsening disaster. But at least they're respected.
@llewelly I've only really come across one financial advisor that was patient enough to explain the product to me but only after multiple conversations and meetings. Other advisors usually dodge answering my questions saying it depends on individual case so they can't generalise it. I mean, if they can't generalise what their products do then they must be selling things they don't understand...
@llewelly Even if I say things like "give me a hypothetical situation using some fixed value" they refuse to give me an explanation of what happens. They're really scared of taking responsibility over what they advise, even in a purely hypothetical case just to work through the math! Only conclusion I get is that they actually can't work out the math!