What are commonly used idioms/metaphors that make no sense to anyone who knows about the topic they come from?
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Not quite an idiom, but one of the senior managers at work keeps talking about Moore's Law in the context of AI stuff like it's some kind of fundamental law of the universe that any given technology will double in capability every 2 years
- Moore observed that transistor density in microprocessors had historically been doubling every 18 months, and this trend more or less continued for a decade or so after he noted it
- Density has nothing to do with the capability of technology that uses those microprocessors. The performance of the chips roughly doubled every couple of years, but there was a lot more going on with that than just transistor density
- Moore's law hasn't held for at least the last decade
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Oh god, the cringe techno-optimist shit where you believe every kind of hype at once. The cream does not rise to the top.
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wrote on last edited by [email protected]
It's true, although I doubt most users know that. I wonder if it actually was an idiom before the science was invented/discovered.
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What I mean is like for example, a person having "gravitational pull" or someone making a "quantum leap" makes no sense to anyone who knows about physics. Gravity is extremely weak and quantum leaps are tiny.
Or "David versus Goliath" to describe a huge underdoge makes no sense to anyone who knows about history, because nobody bringing a gun to a sword fight is going to be the underdog but that's essentially what David did.
I'm looking for more examples like that.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]TBF David is portrayed as the underdog in that story. IIRC Goliath had armour and may have had ranged weapons as well, but David got lucky (through divine intervention) with a difficult, imprecise weapon.
"If I was dictator for a day", "who made you king" and so on. Autocrats have a lot of power, but it's always leaky as hell and their position is always precarious. In some ways they're just the first among prisoners, since if they ever go against the system itself they're out as fast as Gorbachev was. None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
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Hm, this is interesting. I only have a passing understanding of control theory, but couldn't a positive feedback loop indeed be good when the output is always desirable in increased quantities? A positive feedback loop doesn't necessarily lead to instability, like you said. So maybe this is just me actually-ing your actually, lol.
As for "more optimal", oof, I say that a lot so maybe I'm biased. When I say that I'm thinking like a percentage. If optimal is X, then 80% of X is indeed more of the optimal amount than 20% of X. Yes, optimality is a point, but "more optimal" just seems like shorthand for "closer to optimal". Or maybe I should just start saying that?
This reminds me of a professor I had who hates when people say something is "growing exponentially", since he argued the exponent could be 1, or fractional, or negative. It's a technically correct distinction, but the thing is that people who use that term to describe something growing like x^2, are not even wrong that it's exponential. I feel like when it comes to this type of phrasing, it's fine not to deal with edge cases, because being specific actually makes what is said more confusing.
"I'm in a negative feedback loop with respect to my laziness which will soon stabilize with me continually going to the gym daily, which is closer to optimal than before. As a result, my energy levels are going to increase exponentially, where the value of the exponent is greater than 1!"
Hmm. Now that I say it that doesn't seem that crazy. Although I do still think some common "default settings" don't do any harm.
Those are good points! I can imagine positive feedback to be desirable in some situations and to some extent--a musician's amplifier needs to have some positive feedback to amplify the frequencies they care about, for instance, but likely also needs some negative to cancel out frequencies they don't want to amplify, either in the amplifier itself or in the sound booth. Or maybe for some chemical processes, where you always want to make more of product X, and you're just adjusting the positive feedback to keep the production of X at a certain range of acceptable rates. It all comes down to the math and the desired output! My areas of work are mainly related to areas where negative feedback is desired, but it's really very context-specific.
As for "more optimal," I think I picked up the habit of avoiding that phrase due to grad school being my life for so long. A lot of my cohort was very controls-focused in their research, and several of the controls profs would correct presenting/proposing/defending students if they used that phrase, so we got used to either avoiding the phrase entirely or jokingly pointing it out if a fellow student said it. But in my full-time job now, things are much more relaxed with respect to that sort of thing. Maybe in a few years, I won't hear those profs' "can you tell me what you mean by 'more optimal?'" didactic questions in my head when I encounter the phrase
And yeah, exponential growth is another good example! It's clear in the colloquial sense, but my engineer-brain still thinks "wait a minute..." when I hear it! -
One of the things I remember most from high school biology is "an organism exists in a state of negative feedback, and when that feedback becomes positive it dies". It applies to way more than just biological organisms, and is less confusing to laymen than anything about valleys in the space of possible configurations.
More optimal is not only wrong but a bullshit, unnecessarily wordy way of saying "better" in the first place.
Interesting! My last biology class is a tiny speck in my rearview mirror, so I'm not sure that I'm understanding it the way your class meant for it to be understood, but I think that that makes a lot of sense. Too much of one kind of input to a living thing without an output to balance it out can be disastrous.
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- Even when Moore's Law was still holding ground, it was countered by Wirth's Law: software is getting slower at a more rapid pace than hardware is getting faster.
Thank you for introducing me to Wirth's Law. I'll be citing that whenever I write code that takes forever to run even on powerful compute
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What I mean is like for example, a person having "gravitational pull" or someone making a "quantum leap" makes no sense to anyone who knows about physics. Gravity is extremely weak and quantum leaps are tiny.
Or "David versus Goliath" to describe a huge underdoge makes no sense to anyone who knows about history, because nobody bringing a gun to a sword fight is going to be the underdog but that's essentially what David did.
I'm looking for more examples like that.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Thunder only happens when it's rainin'
Players only love you when they're playin'
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I hadn’t heard this take. Did David cheat by using the slingshot? Was that not allowed? Was this like a duel with rules?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Whenever I've read that passage, I've usually considered his underdog-ness to be from him deciding to not wear even the king's fancy armor, and from him being the youngest child in his family. So he looked even more dwarfed by Goliath than he would have had he worn armor, and since he wasn't one of the elder children in his family (despite being a teen or adult), no one in the culture at the time was expecting him to become a hero--much less a king later! But him eschewing the armor in order to keep his agility and range of motion for using a sling makes total sense--I think King Saul was just miffed that his offer of his own personal armor was rebuffed
EDIT: minor correction
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A particularly weird and disgusting one that I heard from far too many adults as a kid, was "pull your finger out of your arse". This apparently means 'get a move on' and/or 'stop being lazy'.
As a kid with autism it really grossed me out to think all the adults who said this had decided I was slow/lazy because they thought I was regularly putting my fingers in my bum.
Being an adult who has tried most sex stuff now (and also witnessed and spoken candidly with many others who have too), I can unequivocally state that anal play involving fingers, either with a partner or alone, does not correlate with difficulty completing tasks or laziness, either during the act or afterwards. And that the folk I've known who have admitted to trying this, are seemingly not any lazier or less efficient than the folk I've known who haven't.
I still don't know why or how "pull your finger out if your arse" became a phrase meaning what it does, I'm going to hazard a guess it's based on homophobic stereotypes, but even then why was it said to me as an afab child? Maybe it was supposed to be funny.
Not sure of the etymology of that one either.. I assume having one’s finger up their butt isn’t exactly a productive use of time unless the task at hand is butt stimulation. Congrats on the sex though
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Interesting! My last biology class is a tiny speck in my rearview mirror, so I'm not sure that I'm understanding it the way your class meant for it to be understood, but I think that that makes a lot of sense. Too much of one kind of input to a living thing without an output to balance it out can be disastrous.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]They meant it in a homeostasis kind of way, not matter conservation. If a cell responds to an increase in osmotic pressure with more osmotic pressure it will not be a cell for very long. Ditto for body heat, hormones, cell growth or any number of other things in a multicellular organism. I guess it was just an interesting, birds-eye way of approaching the topic, and most of the other stuff was not as memorable.
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Not sure of the etymology of that one either.. I assume having one’s finger up their butt isn’t exactly a productive use of time unless the task at hand is butt stimulation. Congrats on the sex though
Butt stuff is over rated imo. Thanks tho.
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"Does a bear shit in the woods?"
Might be a regional thing but people would often say this as a sarcastic but emphatic "Yes" reply to people, particularly "obvious" answers.
Truth is, my personal observation is that they will make every opportunity to come out on the nearest road or field and shit there.
Obviously one could argue the pedantry (eg rural = woods, or most shit is in wooded areas) but my point is back to there actually being enough nuance to argue the point that they aren't making the point they think they are when they say that.
I'm fun at parties!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I'm fun at parties!
Would you say you’re a party pooper?
(Likely another example of a phrase that OP was looking for)
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Humans are still monkeys. We're a couple laws and an evolutionary blink away from throwing it around.
I can think of even more, actually, like "shit rolls down the hill" (meaning blame naturally shifts to inferiors) and "hope in one hand, shit in the other and see which fills faster".
My partner and I went to the zoo for one of our first dates (13 years ago, holy poop) and when we approached the gorilla, he slowly pooped out a giant log into his hand, slowly brought the poo around to the front, stared us directly in the eyes, and took a big ol bite, moving it around with his tongue and teeth.
Everyone was mortified. We couldn’t stop laughing. I wish I had taken a video of it.
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TBF David is portrayed as the underdog in that story. IIRC Goliath had armour and may have had ranged weapons as well, but David got lucky (through divine intervention) with a difficult, imprecise weapon.
"If I was dictator for a day", "who made you king" and so on. Autocrats have a lot of power, but it's always leaky as hell and their position is always precarious. In some ways they're just the first among prisoners, since if they ever go against the system itself they're out as fast as Gorbachev was. None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
I don't want my skeleton coming out either, I'm using it
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What I mean is like for example, a person having "gravitational pull" or someone making a "quantum leap" makes no sense to anyone who knows about physics. Gravity is extremely weak and quantum leaps are tiny.
Or "David versus Goliath" to describe a huge underdoge makes no sense to anyone who knows about history, because nobody bringing a gun to a sword fight is going to be the underdog but that's essentially what David did.
I'm looking for more examples like that.
"You cannot have a cake and eat it too?"
Bruv, if I have a cake in my hands, I am going to eat it.
It's like me giving a back massage to my girlfriend. Things are going to get groped.
Yes, I have a girlfriend. I will not be taking any questions. -
Thank you for introducing me to Wirth's Law. I'll be citing that whenever I write code that takes forever to run even on powerful compute
I'm totally guilty too. I'll be right next to you in that circle of hell reserved for "SWEs who failed to optimize their code."
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None of the top officials want their skeletons coming out.
I don't want my skeleton coming out either, I'm using it
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I meant the ones in their closet, but when it comes to methods of disposing of political enemies, you never know!
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My partner and I went to the zoo for one of our first dates (13 years ago, holy poop) and when we approached the gorilla, he slowly pooped out a giant log into his hand, slowly brought the poo around to the front, stared us directly in the eyes, and took a big ol bite, moving it around with his tongue and teeth.
Everyone was mortified. We couldn’t stop laughing. I wish I had taken a video of it.
Lol, I think we were the entertainment that day.
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What I mean is like for example, a person having "gravitational pull" or someone making a "quantum leap" makes no sense to anyone who knows about physics. Gravity is extremely weak and quantum leaps are tiny.
Or "David versus Goliath" to describe a huge underdoge makes no sense to anyone who knows about history, because nobody bringing a gun to a sword fight is going to be the underdog but that's essentially what David did.
I'm looking for more examples like that.
"Rome wasn't built in a day"
Has an entirely different message to me. It's often used as a reminder to be patient, not to loose your temper, etc.
On the day Rome was founded Romulus killed his brother Remus and marked out the city of Rome, construction starts. This is my initial reaction.
The next thing the Romans, a group of men (probably criminals), did after founding Rome was to raid their neighbours and kidnap their women. Rome then makes war for the better part of a thousand years, eventually subjugating the known world.
I think it's better used as a reminder subjugation starts out in small measures. "Parliament just passed antiterrorism laws, I'm sure they're to protect us" "Rome wasn't built in a day"
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I'm fun at parties!
Would you say you’re a party pooper?
(Likely another example of a phrase that OP was looking for)
Upvote for Flula
