autonomous terminology

[John Baez <baez@math.ucr.edu>]

Dusko wrote:

colin mclarty's cryptic comment is very interesting to me, and it seems to
> strike at the heart of some matters of interest.
>

Colin's comment didn't seem cryptic to me - let me guess what he meant.


> On May 9, 2010, at 3:41 PM, Colin McLarty wrote:
>
>  Dusko Pavlovic Asks
>>
>>  is there any reason why words should be taken seriously?
>>>
>>
>> That just depends on whether or not you want to be understood by people
>> who do not already know everything you are going to say.
>>
>
> there are at least two ways to interpret this.
>
> 1) "you can only say something new if you declare what your words mean.
> otherwise, people will interpret them in their own way, and understand only
> what they already know."
>
> 2) "you can only say something new if you contribute to the evolution of
> language. otherwise, everything you say are just words that people already
> know, mostly in combinations that they already tried."
>

I thought he meant:

3) If you don't take the prevailing meaning of words seriously, you're
likely to talk in ways that people won't understand, unless they happen to
already know everything you're trying to say.

I worry about this point a lot, because I often want to "fix" standard
mathematical terminology that I dislike, and I have to weigh my desire to do
that against my desire to be understood by people who are unwilling to learn
new ways of talking.

For example: do I use "n-category" to mean "weak n-category", which will
eventually be the most sensible course of action, but may be premature, or
do I use it to mean "strict n-category", as tradition dictates?

Best,
jb


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