Jargon is not due to status scarcity, but it sometimes makes unearned requests for attention
When you see a new intricate discipline, and you’re reticent to invest in navigating it, asking to be convinced that your attention has been earned is fine, but I don’t recall seeing a valid or interesting complaint about jargon that deviates from this.
Like most wide-scale social phenomena, jargon is shaped by multiple incentives, with a pretty wide variance in the narrowness of consumer (insider, outsider, elite, median) and type of value provided (clarity, obfuscation, reinforcement of values, chunking of concepts).
Undertstanding a field VERY OFTEN requires understanding the people and social structures that shape the field. Jargon is useful in this dimension, as well as the surface-level content of the jargon.
Jargon is not due to status scarcity, but it sometimes makes unearned requests for attention
When you see a new intricate discipline, and you’re reticent to invest in navigating it, asking to be convinced that your attention has been earned is fine, but I don’t recall seeing a valid or interesting complaint about jargon that deviates from this.
Some elaboration here
Like most wide-scale social phenomena, jargon is shaped by multiple incentives, with a pretty wide variance in the narrowness of consumer (insider, outsider, elite, median) and type of value provided (clarity, obfuscation, reinforcement of values, chunking of concepts).
Undertstanding a field VERY OFTEN requires understanding the people and social structures that shape the field. Jargon is useful in this dimension, as well as the surface-level content of the jargon.