Geek Speak
Professions have jargon. Abbreviations and lingo seem necessary - we get too tied up in lengthy and technical phrases otherwise. It'd be impossible to get any work done if we spent all of our time enunciating the proper or plainspeak names for the concepts we spend so much of our time discussing.
Of course, that same lingo describes to the outside world what you do by association...
HTML, JSP, ASP, kernel, O/S, MB, priority queue, virtual machine, polymorphism, asynchronous transfer mechanism, Steiner Trees, NP-complete, Runtime analysis... you're clearly talking tech.
Tortfeasor, Res Ipsa Loquitur, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc, Malum In Se, Replevin, Adjudication, Mens Rea, Prima Facie, Quid Pro Quo, In Forma Pauperis, summary judgment, vicarious liability, then you're talking law.
GDP, MPC, I, X, M, externality, PPF, indifference curve, present discounted value, marginal cost, Ceteris Paribus, oligopolistic competition, competitive advantage, inelasticity, utility function... econ.
It distinguishes the profession. It's one of many traits. It leaves some onlookers in awe - it leaves others in disgust. It sets you apart in a good way - it's a campaign ribbon that speaks to the world and to your peers where you've been in a professional sense. It sets you apart in a bad way - only geeks talk like this. Sometimes, people ride the coattails of jargon, pretending erudition through mimicked command of outwardly mysterious and indecipherable terminology.
And sometimes it confuses you. Let's just say that JSP and ASP appear to mean different things in law school than they do in the CS department. And that 'pi' and 'delta' are functionally overloaded in law school for anyone who has a background in math or science. This confuses me frequently...
The internal division is harder to maintain than I might have once thought.
Monday, September 30, 2002
Edgy Perspective
Looking down the blade of a two-edged sword.
That's what it means to have a blessing, or a curse. Everyone has blessings of a sort, but every blessing, no matter what kind, seems to have some effect on your psyche. It definitely colors the way you look at the world. The way you see things. The joys you take, the needs you have... all these things make up who you are in a very real way, I think. Your wishes - the things you want, but don't or can't have - are as much a part of your constituency as anything you do indeed have. It's not always about the simple idea of greed, either... your dreams, your longings, the things you reach for but can't attain - those strivings, futile or not, move you through many days in your life. I suppose that, depending on who you are, you could disagree with me; that's all good. That's your life, perhaps - but I can only speak for what's been the case for me, and for a lot of people I've known and met, be they content with their lives or not.
One of the most well-known platitudes is this: "Ignorance is bliss." Even ignorant people have heard that one before... and the very saying seems to carry with it a certain absurdity. It shouldn't be true, but it is. By comparison, the search for knowledge is supposed to leave you fulfilled, but the learned are often accosted by another cliche: "The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know."
But put aside those generalizations for the moment. I'm willing to bet that if you took a more immediate, concrete, well-defined thread running through your life, you'll see it for the mixed blessing that it is... that for better or worse, it colors who you are and moves your thoughts every day. Sometimes it's only there for a few moments at a time, the light of consideration glinting off that particular tile in your mosaic depending on how the sun's shining that particular day. And sometimes, the spotlight of your consciousness comes to rest on that one tile at an annoying angle, reflecting a searing, piercing lance of brilliance straight into your dominant thoughts, making you wish you could just turn your head and look away.
Too abstract? Too ambiguously philosophical? Too inarticulately incoherent? If you think so, I don't blame you... I've just finished a long day of reading and I'm posting at past 1am. So I'll illustrate with but one example from my life... perhaps it'll make more sense with a specific example.
"Mean people suck." Not exactly profound... it's plastered on bumper stickers all over the place. But as a child, I was the runt in my classroom. Always the smallest, always the strangest. The least loved, and in so many ways. You know the little kid who always got picked on? Called names? Chosen last when the captains picked their teams in P.E.? That was me. A common enough story... it's amazing how many of us there are, considering that there's only supposed to be one in any classroom full of kids, but there you go. I was kind of an unlikeable person, though - thinking back on it, I know I wouldn't have liked myself much either, so it's not like I could have blamed them. Between them being kids, and me being me, it seemed the only outcome possible.
That was nothing compared to college, though. You'd think that this sort of thing got better with age, but as it turns out, all the stuff that I really resented as a kid - that was just part and parcel of the hell that is American Childhood. Particularly, it seems, if you happen to be Asian American, male, and shorter than a pygmy hedgehog. But in college, I learned about real malice, and genuine spite. I learned about people who weren't physical bullies so much as emotional ones - the wounded, inadequate-feeling souls who can only staunch the ichor dripping from their own wounds by opening up more gaping ones in the people around them. I had always been something of a cynic, but people like these finally gave that cynicism a target of merit.
So it left me a rather bitter person. I've met a few people who just can't fathom the meanness that I'm talking about. Some people have *never* had people be mean to them on quite the same level - they may read today's post, figure that I must be exaggerating everything, and dismiss this as the ramblings of just another bitter person. That's ok - I don't blame them. If they've never known what I'm talking about, so much the better - life can be lived without understanding it.
But it's not just about being bitter - just being bitter means being broken, like a pack mule. Like any good little defiant, raging misfit, I decided for myself that meanness of this kind was simply an evil thing, and that I'd move against it by living my life in a different way. I could tell that some people were just mean, because they were cursed with certain problems and that this is how they dealt with it. What was scary, though, was the fact that many of their problems weren't so far removed from mine, or the people I called my friends. So the way I ended up seeing it, is that it's all about how you deal with them.
I did put my foot down, at least where I was concerned. I did act on a determination not to be just another self-interested bastard. I learned to teach classes, I helped found a martial arts club, and I put in a conscious effort to be a helpful and thoughtful person in general. Especially in the beginning, it was just a charade. I didn't feel any of it in any genuine way - it was just me giving voice to my distaste for wantonly mean people. Not wanting to become one of them, I made an effort to act in the opposite way - not out of heart, but out of principle. It was just the way I saw things. Gradually, I let that become a greater part of being who I am - or at least, who I think I am. And now I can honestly say that it *feels* like a part of my heart now, and not just a set of motions I go through on ideological grounds.
But what's the difference, then? The difference remains in the perspective. Put me in a roomful of 'nice' people (especially when I'm in a good mood - and believe it or not, that happens. You probably wouldn't know it from my posts, though) and on the surface, we'll all seem the same. Put one mean person in there, though, and you can see the difference in perspective. Some people would just be annoyed by this person. Others would be hurt. I would be royally pissed off, gnashing and cursing and just begging that the cosmos would see fit to hand that person a painful and violent death. The difference is all in the history that mean people and I have had with each other. A history that, quite possibly, I have yet to fully come to terms with.
But it's not just an attitude. It's not just a holding, a feeling, or even a conviction. It's something upon which I act; not in the sense that I go around plotting the downfall of mean people, no. But rather, in the fact that I'm very, very conscious of the way that I act towards people and the things I've chosen to do with my life. It's never more than a few layers down in my thoughts. It's that coloration that's a part of what really makes the things that I do, unique to me. In a sense, it really does define in part who I am.
It's not quite a curse or a blessing. It's a curse in that it has made me a pretty fundamentally unhappy person, since these unpleasant musings are always running in the background, often keeping me from fully appreciating all the other good things I've got in my life. It's a blessing in that it makes me consciously avoid become a generally selfish person wholly heedless to the needs of others, as I've seen happen to more than a few other people, either through malicious intention or just a simple and very forgivable lack of awareness. I had a tendency to be very selfish when I was much younger; I might well have turned out much more badly if not for a mixed blessing like this.
Hopefully you'll have a more happy example than that for yourself. But take, for a moment, a sense or a feeling you've had all your life, about who you've been, and see how that's guided who you are and what you do. Why you understand certain viewpoints and perspectives unique to you which you believe no one else can really understand.
The truth is, it's more than likely that, for any given thread you pick, there *is* someone out there who'll see it the same way you do, who'll understand what you mean. The part that makes it feel lonely, is that sometimes it seems like the people who you most want to understand it are the ones who'll never quite get it. And it's only because they haven't been through what you have, whether it happens to be a blessing, a curse, or both. It's why they are who they are - and why, for better or worse, they will never be you.
Looking down the blade of a two-edged sword.
That's what it means to have a blessing, or a curse. Everyone has blessings of a sort, but every blessing, no matter what kind, seems to have some effect on your psyche. It definitely colors the way you look at the world. The way you see things. The joys you take, the needs you have... all these things make up who you are in a very real way, I think. Your wishes - the things you want, but don't or can't have - are as much a part of your constituency as anything you do indeed have. It's not always about the simple idea of greed, either... your dreams, your longings, the things you reach for but can't attain - those strivings, futile or not, move you through many days in your life. I suppose that, depending on who you are, you could disagree with me; that's all good. That's your life, perhaps - but I can only speak for what's been the case for me, and for a lot of people I've known and met, be they content with their lives or not.
One of the most well-known platitudes is this: "Ignorance is bliss." Even ignorant people have heard that one before... and the very saying seems to carry with it a certain absurdity. It shouldn't be true, but it is. By comparison, the search for knowledge is supposed to leave you fulfilled, but the learned are often accosted by another cliche: "The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know."
But put aside those generalizations for the moment. I'm willing to bet that if you took a more immediate, concrete, well-defined thread running through your life, you'll see it for the mixed blessing that it is... that for better or worse, it colors who you are and moves your thoughts every day. Sometimes it's only there for a few moments at a time, the light of consideration glinting off that particular tile in your mosaic depending on how the sun's shining that particular day. And sometimes, the spotlight of your consciousness comes to rest on that one tile at an annoying angle, reflecting a searing, piercing lance of brilliance straight into your dominant thoughts, making you wish you could just turn your head and look away.
Too abstract? Too ambiguously philosophical? Too inarticulately incoherent? If you think so, I don't blame you... I've just finished a long day of reading and I'm posting at past 1am. So I'll illustrate with but one example from my life... perhaps it'll make more sense with a specific example.
"Mean people suck." Not exactly profound... it's plastered on bumper stickers all over the place. But as a child, I was the runt in my classroom. Always the smallest, always the strangest. The least loved, and in so many ways. You know the little kid who always got picked on? Called names? Chosen last when the captains picked their teams in P.E.? That was me. A common enough story... it's amazing how many of us there are, considering that there's only supposed to be one in any classroom full of kids, but there you go. I was kind of an unlikeable person, though - thinking back on it, I know I wouldn't have liked myself much either, so it's not like I could have blamed them. Between them being kids, and me being me, it seemed the only outcome possible.
That was nothing compared to college, though. You'd think that this sort of thing got better with age, but as it turns out, all the stuff that I really resented as a kid - that was just part and parcel of the hell that is American Childhood. Particularly, it seems, if you happen to be Asian American, male, and shorter than a pygmy hedgehog. But in college, I learned about real malice, and genuine spite. I learned about people who weren't physical bullies so much as emotional ones - the wounded, inadequate-feeling souls who can only staunch the ichor dripping from their own wounds by opening up more gaping ones in the people around them. I had always been something of a cynic, but people like these finally gave that cynicism a target of merit.
So it left me a rather bitter person. I've met a few people who just can't fathom the meanness that I'm talking about. Some people have *never* had people be mean to them on quite the same level - they may read today's post, figure that I must be exaggerating everything, and dismiss this as the ramblings of just another bitter person. That's ok - I don't blame them. If they've never known what I'm talking about, so much the better - life can be lived without understanding it.
But it's not just about being bitter - just being bitter means being broken, like a pack mule. Like any good little defiant, raging misfit, I decided for myself that meanness of this kind was simply an evil thing, and that I'd move against it by living my life in a different way. I could tell that some people were just mean, because they were cursed with certain problems and that this is how they dealt with it. What was scary, though, was the fact that many of their problems weren't so far removed from mine, or the people I called my friends. So the way I ended up seeing it, is that it's all about how you deal with them.
I did put my foot down, at least where I was concerned. I did act on a determination not to be just another self-interested bastard. I learned to teach classes, I helped found a martial arts club, and I put in a conscious effort to be a helpful and thoughtful person in general. Especially in the beginning, it was just a charade. I didn't feel any of it in any genuine way - it was just me giving voice to my distaste for wantonly mean people. Not wanting to become one of them, I made an effort to act in the opposite way - not out of heart, but out of principle. It was just the way I saw things. Gradually, I let that become a greater part of being who I am - or at least, who I think I am. And now I can honestly say that it *feels* like a part of my heart now, and not just a set of motions I go through on ideological grounds.
But what's the difference, then? The difference remains in the perspective. Put me in a roomful of 'nice' people (especially when I'm in a good mood - and believe it or not, that happens. You probably wouldn't know it from my posts, though) and on the surface, we'll all seem the same. Put one mean person in there, though, and you can see the difference in perspective. Some people would just be annoyed by this person. Others would be hurt. I would be royally pissed off, gnashing and cursing and just begging that the cosmos would see fit to hand that person a painful and violent death. The difference is all in the history that mean people and I have had with each other. A history that, quite possibly, I have yet to fully come to terms with.
But it's not just an attitude. It's not just a holding, a feeling, or even a conviction. It's something upon which I act; not in the sense that I go around plotting the downfall of mean people, no. But rather, in the fact that I'm very, very conscious of the way that I act towards people and the things I've chosen to do with my life. It's never more than a few layers down in my thoughts. It's that coloration that's a part of what really makes the things that I do, unique to me. In a sense, it really does define in part who I am.
It's not quite a curse or a blessing. It's a curse in that it has made me a pretty fundamentally unhappy person, since these unpleasant musings are always running in the background, often keeping me from fully appreciating all the other good things I've got in my life. It's a blessing in that it makes me consciously avoid become a generally selfish person wholly heedless to the needs of others, as I've seen happen to more than a few other people, either through malicious intention or just a simple and very forgivable lack of awareness. I had a tendency to be very selfish when I was much younger; I might well have turned out much more badly if not for a mixed blessing like this.
Hopefully you'll have a more happy example than that for yourself. But take, for a moment, a sense or a feeling you've had all your life, about who you've been, and see how that's guided who you are and what you do. Why you understand certain viewpoints and perspectives unique to you which you believe no one else can really understand.
The truth is, it's more than likely that, for any given thread you pick, there *is* someone out there who'll see it the same way you do, who'll understand what you mean. The part that makes it feel lonely, is that sometimes it seems like the people who you most want to understand it are the ones who'll never quite get it. And it's only because they haven't been through what you have, whether it happens to be a blessing, a curse, or both. It's why they are who they are - and why, for better or worse, they will never be you.
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