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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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A central tension within the concept of communication is between efficiency and precision. Larger lexicons and more complex signifier structures are less efficient to parse, but are better able to capture fine distinctions of meaning.

Even within a given language, this trade-off may be handled differently in different contexts. Jargon--properly used--is an example of domain-specific terms that are mostly not used outside that domain (something like an optional DLC for the base language), but have high precision within the native context. (It's the mark of a corrupted field of knowledge when the 'jargon' is used to obfuscate meaning, rather than identify a relevant concept precisely.)

The other end of the spectrum would be practically undefined interjections like "dude" for a Californian surfer. Tone, volume, affect, etc. carry all of the communicative weight, but this is acceptable because the intended expression is an emotive reaction to the given context--most people find it easy to distinguish between a cheerful greeting, a surprised reaction, dismayed disbelief, or judging censure--and the finer details are either not important or may be further clarified with additional words.

Valid. Still, most communication is not on the Pareto frontier of efficiency and precision. In my experience, grammatical issues are a thing that causes communication to move away from that frontier, but not the main thing (or even that substantial compared to muddled thinking on both ends of the communication, or anti-inductive dynamics).

Or as Grugg might say, "Few word move idea only ok, but many word for sake of many word still move idea only ok. Many word done badly, less ok than few word".