Jargon has been an ongoing political problem for as long as I can remember. Despite scholarly theories that scientific knowledge would unify over time, different fields of endeavor have become even more disparate. It's reached the point where it's almost impossible for researchers to talk across interdisciplinary lines. It was thought that improving people's minds would solve the problem. But it didn't -- it made it worse. Jargon overlap goes down as measures of mental enhancement go up.
Two months ago Ramandeep made a comment about something quite opaque to me. Reviewing the records it was "mod 4-neuro". I asked him at the time about it and he translated it roughly as "common animal nerve model", which was very exciting to me. I would love to know about how the biochemistry mavens understood the neurology of the native life forms. So I looked up their research.
I may as well have been staring at a blank wall. Jargon modi simply don't adapt fast enough, and there may have been a lot of new coinage since we came to this planet. It was as impenetrable to me as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This was probably the main way that Pi made her reputation. In face to face meetings she assured that there were always enough experts of the right type to act as translators. It was at her parties that top researchers were able to find a way to communicate with those in related fields, or even in the same field but from a different jargon tradition. It's ironic that as science has reached a zenith of understanding we have also reached a nadir of simple talking.
I've been pestering Camil for weeks. She knows that her group needs to prepare a paper for general understanding, and yet somehow it's never quite done. It's nice to know that I'm not the only one behind schedule.
In any case, I finally have a draft of their preliminary report on "Neurological Modeling in Common Animals". It's still a bit dense, but the modi do a pretty good job with it. It opens up a lot of interesting research questions.
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