What is the problem with using the word 'theory' in everyday language?

[jim mcnamara]

Theory has a clear dichotomy of meaning.

1. 95% of English speakers: I have a theory. Translation -- I just pulled this out of thin air or my posterior.
I was just in a thread where a poster did this, and I get it.

2. 5% of English speakers: Theory of Evolution. Translation -- An extensively tested, refined, and widely accepted scientific hypothesis. ...Too bad it is not the LAW of Evolution.

I avoid the word theory when posting in the science forums.

Does anyone have a word that causes them issues when not dealing with nerds?

 

[DrClaude]

Words that often make me cringe when uttered by non-scientists:

random, chaos, energy, vibration

 

[Nugatory]

Words that often make me cringe when uttered by non-scientists:

random, chaos, energy, vibration

Photon.

 

[Bystander]

Entropy.

 

[PeroK]

Quantum leap.

 

[ShayanJ]

Only once, I heard Higgs field from a chemical engineering student, which counts as a layman relative to physics, and it was completely enough for me for years! He wanted to use Higgs field in mass transfer(of course in the chemical engineering meaning)!

And once I heard something about how music reduces brain's entropy and so makes us enjoy it!oo)

And once I heard someone said how length contraction in SR can lead to cooling of the material!(I don't remember his argument)

And another time I heard from the same SR guy, how gravitational acceleration of Earth depends on temperature "according to his calculations"!

 

[Danger]

Velocity, when no vector is provided.

 

[zoki85]

Phonon

 

[Vanadium 50]

Momentum.

 

[vela]

frequency — what's the frequency of an electron?

 

[Bandersnatch]

Singularity

 

[WWGD]

Are you all just jealous of the non-chaotic random high-velocity & low-entropy quantum accounting with singular photons I have been researching? Plenty of momentum, and plenty of $$$'s in my research, after applying for funding using 37 buzz words. Besides, I am a lesbian Vietnam Vet Eskimo.

 

[phinds]

absolute movement (OK, it's a phrase, not a single word but it makes me cringe)

 

[Bandersnatch]

Are you all just jealous of the non-chaotic random high-velocity & low-entropy quantum accounting with singular photons I have been researching? Plenty of momentum, and plenty of $$$'s in my research, after applying for funding using 37 buzz words. Besides, I am a lesbian Vietnam Vet Eskimo.

That you, Deepak Chopra? Writing a new book, are we?
By the way, it won't work without a turbo-encabulator and at least one reciprocating dingle arm.

 

[WWGD]

That you, Deepak Chopra? Writing a new book, are we?
By the way, it won't work without a turbo-encabulator and at least one reciprocating dingle arm.

No problem, my son, I can always use the turbo-encabulator within. And it is Six-Pack , not Deepak.

 

[russ_watters]

I don't get the premise of this thread: why hate the word? The word didn't do anything wrong, the person who misused it did.

 

[phinds]

I don't get the premise of this thread: why hate the word? The word didn't do anything wrong, the person who misused it did.

Yeah, but some words are WAY more subject to misuse than others. I think that's the point of the thread.

 

[Bystander]

Does anyone have a word that causes them issues when not dealing with nerds?

I think most of us were taking our cues more from the text than from the thread title.

 

[Medicol]

Brown moonlight. I am scared! People saying so may have a bad eyesight.

 

[Danger]

Brown moonlight

Okay, I've absolutely never heard of that. Explain?
That is, I've never heard of it as a concept, only as a designation for a fish or mineral or suchlike.

 

[Medicol]

Okay, I've absolutely never heard of that. Explain?
That is, I've never heard of it as a concept, only as a designation for a fish or mineral or suchlike.

In my area there are people calling moonlight's color brown. I think it's bright yellow. I'll give you more detail later after a nap. I'm soo sleepy.,,,

 

[Danger]

In my area there are people calling moonlight's color brown.

Maybe they're referring to a "harvest moon", which can be quite a deep ruddy red due to atmospheric pollutants.
That nap sounds like a mighty fine idea. I think that I'll emulate you on that.

 

[Lisa!]

Yellow cake
Some people think it is delicious!:w

 

[Bandersnatch]

Yellow cake
Some people think it is delicious!:w

Are those the same people who eat yellow snow?

 

[Danger]

Are those the same people who eat yellow snow?

Of course. What would you expect them to use for icing?

 

[f95toli]

I don't get the premise of this thread: why hate the word? The word didn't do anything wrong, the person who misused it did.

But "theory" is especially bad since it effectively does have two somewhat contradictory meanings, depending on context; it is actually understandable the people get confused.

 

[Danger]

two somewhat contradictory meanings, depending on context;

Agreed. I remember that when I first heard the term "plasma" in a hospital, I wondered how the hell a body could withstand something that hot.

 

[RonL]

OK!, I usually have to be the one shoveling in the septic drain...

1, "perpetual Motion"

2, "Over Unity"

 

[jack476]

Singularity.

And this refers to everything from the kooks who think we're all going to turn into robots in 2045 and the general misunderstanding of what it actually means, that is, a place where there is some kind of asymptotic behavior in a graph of a function. A black hole is a singularity because the object forming the black hole is of a size infinitely approaching 0, but cannot actually be 0. Just like in the graph of the function 1/(x+2) there would be a singularity at x = -2 because that would result in a division by 0. I bring this up because I recently saw Interstellar and it basically seemed to make the assumption that a singularity is just the center of some kind of magical circle where you can use the power of love to change history.

As for the turning into robots thing...well, that's pretty dubious. Philosophically I agree with most transhumanist arguments and I think human immortality is something worth pursuing, but treating it like essentially the Second Coming for technology geeks because of a ramshackle interpretation of Moore's Law isn't really all that productive.

Artificial intelligence also. AI isn't skynet or the Matrix or computers that act like people, it just means machine decision-making. Speech to text, for instance, where the machine has to compare the recorded speech to a set of data to determine which letters were just used, since you can't feasibly program in recordings of every word in the dictionary in the voice of every single person.

Finally, "brain structure" in reference to personality. For instance, that there are "addictive personality brains", "criminal brains", etc. To a point, this is true because personality is something that happens as a result of processes in the brain, and that will inevitably depend on structure, and thus genetic factors do play some role. But making arguments about complicated social problems like drugs and crime based purely on brain structure, while de-emphasizing environment and personal decision-making, is really not a whole lot more productive than phrenology.

 

[WWGD]

Still, it is difficult to deny the use of equivocation, as some religious people do. As in " Evolution theory is just a theory". If you use theory in one sense, then stick to that sense and don't change in in the middle of a sentence.