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Acronyms

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Frank Wimberly-2

Acronyms

Can you all be careful about the use of acronyms? You're not as bad as my daughter whose emails are full of BRB, IDK, WYD, etc. Unless you're sure that it's universally known why not put its meaning in parentheses the first time you use it in an email and then use it freely after that.

Thanks,

Frank

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

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gepr

Re: Acronyms

It would be a fun experiment to adopt a few posting rules like this and see if it works. E.g. we've talked about thread hygiene a lot, top-posting vs. interleaving, [foot|end]notes, etc. Being antimethod, I'm against it all, of course. But it would be fun to play the game for awhile. Maybe we could even instantiate a peer-review system where if you think you want to post something, you get a set of 3 pRandomly chosen list members to send it to first. >8^D

On 1/25/21 2:18 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Can you all be careful about the use of acronyms? You're not as bad as my daughter whose emails are full of BRB, IDK, WYD, etc. Unless you're sure that it's universally known why not put its meaning in parentheses the first time you use it in an email and then use it freely after that.

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thompnickson2

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW.

Nick

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 4:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Thanks,

Frank

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Barry MacKichan

Re: Acronyms

When I see someting like BICBW,
1. I double click it
2. Get into a Google screen (or Duck Duck Go) (5 keystrokes using Launchbar on a Mac) It is unnecessary to copy it; Launchbar can with the selection.
3. Hit return.
4. Three out of the first five links contain the definition in the first line of the blurb. “BICBW stands for But I Could Be Wrong.”

Elapsed time: about five seconds.
Time to write this email, about 90 seconds.

—Barry

On 25 Jan 2021, at 17:31, [hidden email] wrote:

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW

Prof David West

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

NYAR

davew

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021, at 3:31 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW.

Nick

Nick Thompson
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 4:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Can you all be careful about the use of acronyms? You're not as bad as my daughter whose emails are full of BRB, IDK, WYD, etc. Unless you're sure that it's universally known why not put its meaning in parentheses the first time you use it in an email and then use it freely after that.

Thanks,

Frank
--
Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

Often bibliographies have clickable links, too. Biology papers have some of the most obscure terminology. It really seems like it is designed to obscure.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Barry MacKichan
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 3:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Elapsed time: about five seconds.
Time to write this email, about 90 seconds.

—Barry

On 25 Jan 2021, at 17:31, [hidden email] wrote:

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW

David Eric Smith

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

A story Cormac likes to tell is that Winston Churchill once said the two things people would miss in the post-war world would be a classical education and the horse.

I don’t suppose that twitter acronyms — sort of seems like it violates the spirit of twitter, no? If the point were to escape the 140-character trivialization limit, one could just gzip some plain text and send the binary — are exactly equivalent to classical literature, but maybe one refers to more than was written by using them (?)

Eric

On Jan 25, 2021, at 6:11 PM, Barry MacKichan <[hidden email]> wrote:

When I see someting like BICBW,
1. I double click it
2. Get into a Google screen (or Duck Duck Go) (5 keystrokes using Launchbar on a Mac) It is unnecessary to copy it; Launchbar can with the selection.
3. Hit return.
4. Three out of the first five links contain the definition in the first line of the blurb. “BICBW stands for But I Could Be Wrong.”
Elapsed time: about five seconds.
Time to write this email, about 90 seconds.
—Barry
On 25 Jan 2021, at 17:31, [hidden email] wrote:

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW

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thompnickson2

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by Barry MacKichan

Geez, barry. And I thought I had made it up. I was just teasing. In my line of work (I think of myself ultimately as a writer) the burden of proof is always with the generator of the text. I assume that nobody has time to mess with acronyms. If I want to be understood, I have to be clear. I assume it’s the same with programming. TRIAR.

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Barry MacKichan
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 5:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Elapsed time: about five seconds.
Time to write this email, about 90 seconds.

—Barry

On 25 Jan 2021, at 17:31, [hidden email] wrote:

I assume when people use acronyms it is to communicate their membership in a club that I am not qualified to join, and they want me to be sure I know that. So the medium IS the message. Also, i’s a useful move in an interpersonal power game. It forces the other person to come groveling back for an explication. BICBW

gepr

Re: Acronyms

No, not clear, rigorous. The thread on the performance of the inverse square root and how optimization compiles to different execution makes that point well. The only trick is how to trade clarity for rigor when popularizing.

On 1/25/21 3:30 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Geez, barry. And I thought I had made it up. I was just teasing. In my line of work (I think of myself ultimately as a writer) the burden of proof is always with the generator of the text. I assume that nobody has time to mess with acronyms. If I want to be understood, I have to be clear. I assume it’s the same with programming. TRIAR.

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thompnickson2

Re: Acronyms

Isn't clarity TO THE COMPUTER what rigor is?

N

Nick Thompson
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 5:34 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

No, not clear, rigorous. The thread on the performance of the inverse square root and how optimization compiles to different execution makes that point well. The only trick is how to trade clarity for rigor when popularizing.

On 1/25/21 3:30 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Geez, barry. And I thought I had made it up. I was just teasing. In
> my line of work (I think of myself ultimately as a writer) the burden of proof is always with the generator of the text. I assume that nobody has time to mess with acronyms. If I want to be understood, I have to be clear. I assume it’s the same with programming. TRIAR.

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jon zingale

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by gepr

Hopefully limiting trade to when it is necessary.

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jon zingale

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

The computer interprets both of Glen's *root* functions as being different,
so clarity walks a very different line there. Only sometimes do we get the
extensional equivalence of functions. Clarity, in a broader sense, often
requires substitution.

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Steve Smith

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick -

I think it *can* be the thing you call out, but I encounter it in so many contexts where that explanation doesn't really fit. Sometimes I think it is entirely unconscious shortcutting. On this list, for example, I use LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) because I believe that *all* Santa Fe/NM folks know what it is an acronym for and *many* non SFe (Santa Fe) NM (New Mexico) folks know it *by now*. Similarly I find SFI an acceptable contraction in this context.

On the technical side, the shortcut/contraction/acronym is often the primary/preferred reference. Even if you might not *know* that DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid or ATP is adenosine triphosphate... or that the YMCA is the young men's christian association, for example, you know the signified by that signifier, and in fact you *won't* know what those contractions are *for* unless you are in fact using them in some insider/technical sense.

I know people who work within a large but somewhat insular community whose acronyms are myriad and they are truly NOT trying to be exclusionary. I have a number of friends who are either social workers or have studied in the field or have friends/families with mental illness so I hear the acronym DSM and I can tell it is being used in a very "insider" way. I know little of the details, but I've gathered that "DSM II" somehow connotes both "modern" and "not-really-modern" psychiatric models, but I think even if I do the GoogleFu to learn the first level of details, I would not be much less puzzled by knowing, for example:

DSM-I and DSM-II

In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the DSM-I, an adaptation of a classification system developed by the armed forces during WW2. It was designed for use by doctors and other treatment providers.

The DSM-I was the first of its kind, but experts agreed that it still needed work. The DSM-II, released in 1968, attempted to incorporate the psychiatric knowledge of the day. It was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic concepts that were prominent at that time.

I think that both Glen and maybe Frank have tossed DSM or even DSM II into the conversation here without any more explication than I get at cocktail parties and it lands just as dead for me, but not offensive here as there (until I get my GoogleGoggles flashing Wikipedia/Wiktionary in my peripheral vision with automatic explication). It even seems like a good feature for Alexa/Siri/HeyGoogle to listen continuously and recognize acronyms and offer ordered-by-likelihood-from-context explications in your ear (or in the room if you want to shame the acronymster acrimoniously).

I understand that many are "lazy typists" who find it patently painful (emotionally if not physically) to type anything out. And *too many people* (IMO ... in my opinion) do too much of their correspondence on a TS (tiny screen) which requires them to hunt-peck with one finger (maybe two thumbs) without touch feedback and without the benefit of QWERTY knowledge built into their Neural Net neurons.

I'm assuming Frank's OP (original post) was in response to both some specific TLA (three letter acronym) used recently or the accrued irritation of having to look up jargon ( especially TLAs and MLAs (multi letter acronyms)) just to figure out a conversation he is *otherwise* informed enough on to follow. Or both. Or maybe he's just taking out his frustration with his daughter here where it's "safe" <grin>.

BTW (by the way) and FWIW (for what it's worth) I think I'd be game for one of Glen's experiments, even if the constraints offered somehow cramped *my* style (e.g. 20 line limit on posts, no markup-like formatting like *bold* or EMPHASIS or _underscore_ HTML (even formatting like bold or italics). or even his extremal suggestion of requiring "peer review" by 3 others before submitting (I'd probably become rather mute over that one) WTFOMFGROFLMAOGMWAS!

- Steve

gepr

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by jon zingale

Exactly. Marcus said it well with something like "If the compiler doesn’t do what one expects, one probably expects wrong." We can translate that to human intercommunication. If people react in unexpected ways to what you said, perhaps change your expectations of how people will react to what you said. No sense of clarity is necessary, only repeatability and reliability. E.g. I don't particularly care whether my cat thinks that laser dot is a bug or not. What I care about is that he demonstrates his agility chasing it around the room. I seem to have developed a bit of a palsy as I age. And on days when it's bad, he *really* chases it ... like with gusto. But on days when my hand is steady, I have to fake the palsy to get him to engage completely. Why? I don't care. But I know it to be True.

This reminds me of homomorphic encryption, computing over encrypted things.

On 1/25/21 3:41 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> The computer interprets both of Glen's *root* functions as being different,
> so clarity walks a very different line there. Only sometimes do we get the
> extensional equivalence of functions. Clarity, in a broader sense, often
> requires substitution.

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

SAS GI NST

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 5:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Nick -

DSM-I and DSM-II
In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the DSM-I, an adaptation of a classification system developed by the armed forces during WW2. It was designed for use by doctors and other treatment providers.
The DSM-I was the first of its kind, but experts agreed that it still needed work. The DSM-II, released in 1968, attempted to incorporate the psychiatric knowledge of the day. It was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic concepts that were prominent at that time.

- Steve

thompnickson2

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by gepr

Glen, I was trying to line up my understandings of clear and rigorous with yours. I was thinking that, in your use, a clear line of code was one that another programmer would understand, whereas a rigorous line of code was one that got the computer to do what you wanted it to do. Was I wrong about that?

N

Nick Thompson
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 6:02 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Exactly. Marcus said it well with something like "If the compiler doesn’t do what one expects, one probably expects wrong." We can translate that to human intercommunication. If people react in unexpected ways to what you said, perhaps change your expectations of how people will react to what you said. No sense of clarity is necessary, only repeatability and reliability. E.g. I don't particularly care whether my cat thinks that laser dot is a bug or not. What I care about is that he demonstrates his agility chasing it around the room. I seem to have developed a bit of a palsy as I age. And on days when it's bad, he *really* chases it ... like with gusto. But on days when my hand is steady, I have to fake the palsy to get him to engage completely. Why? I don't care. But I know it to be True.

This reminds me of homomorphic encryption, computing over encrypted things.

On 1/25/21 3:41 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> The computer interprets both of Glen's *root* functions as being
> different, so clarity walks a very different line there. Only
> sometimes do we get the extensional equivalence of functions. Clarity,
> in a broader sense, often requires substitution.

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gepr

Re: Acronyms

Wrong? No. I'm sure there's a large fraction of programmers out there who would agree with you. Incomplete? Yes. Rigor means doing everything necessary for your purpose. If a programmer's purpose is to communicate with other programmers, then sure, use pseudocode or whatever hand-waving human language you think might work. But if your purpose is to make something happen, in the world, outside of human minds, then use actual code and actual machines, including all the steps required to get the computer to do the thing.

Rigorous clarity, then, is a parsable phrase ... even for programmers. But clarity is not rigor ... at least not from a rigorous perspective. IDK. I expect my expectations for this post are off as well. 8^D

I intended to respond to Steve. But I'll let this stand as that response, too. The callback to Glassholes was well-received. <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Glasshole>

On 1/25/21 4:14 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Glen, I was trying to line up my understandings of clear and rigorous with yours. I was thinking that, in your use, a clear line of code was one that another programmer would understand, whereas a rigorous line of code was one that got the computer to do what you wanted it to do. Was I wrong about that?

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Steve Smith

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

SAS GI NST

@NLP - TS;DP (too short; didn't parse) - @SAS

...

BTW, for computer language wonks, I've been revisiting APL (A Programming Language) recently. I fell in love with it (for about 2 years) at the end of my BS Math/Physics for myriad reasons, including it's parsimonious yet apt expressions of arrays and linear algebra. I was working almost exclusively in physics simulations and perspective geometry loaded with vectors and arrays as well as the need for efficient text parsing/generation. APL's features were pretty concise for both.

APL was famous for one-liners long before PERL (more appropriately Perl as PERL is apparently a backronym?) was invented?

for example:

(2=0+.=T∅.|T)/T←ι
   vs
perl -wle '(1 x $_) !~ /^(11+)\1+$/ && print while ++ $_'

generates primes from 1 to N

@NST @GEPR both are rigorous but not clear (to anyone not facile in the idiom of the language)

I didn't work with *anyone* else on my APL, even my profs didn't "speak" APL and I *never* expected anyone except the APL interpreter to understand the APL I wrote. The writeup I did on my senior project included only the barest of APL code, and always formatted to be readable, not succinct (or cryptic)...

@SAS out

Nick Thompson

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam [hidden email] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 5:44 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Nick -

I think it *can* be the thing you call out, but I encounter it in so many contexts where that explanation doesn't really fit.   Sometimes I think it is entirely unconscious shortcutting.   On this list, for example, I use LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) because I believe that *all* Santa Fe/NM folks know what it is an acronym for and *many* non SFe (Santa Fe) NM (New Mexico) folks know it *by now*.   Similarly I find SFI an acceptable contraction in this context.

On the technical side, the shortcut/contraction/acronym is often the primary/preferred reference.   Even if you might not *know* that DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid or ATP is adenosine triphosphate... or that the YMCA is the young men's christian association, for example, you know the signified by that signifier, and in fact you *won't* know what those contractions are *for* unless you are in fact using them in some insider/technical sense.

I know people who work within a large but somewhat insular community whose acronyms are myriad and they are truly NOT trying to be exclusionary.   I have a number of friends who are either social workers or have studied in the field or have friends/families with mental illness so I hear the acronym DSM and I can tell it is being used in a very "insider" way.   I know little of the details, but I've gathered that "DSM II" somehow connotes both "modern" and "not-really-modern" psychiatric models, but I think even if I do the GoogleFu to learn the first level of details, I would not be much less puzzled by knowing, for example:

DSM-I and DSM-II

In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published the DSM-I, an adaptation of a classification system developed by the armed forces during WW2. It was designed for use by doctors and other treatment providers.

The DSM-I was the first of its kind, but experts agreed that it still needed work. The DSM-II, released in 1968, attempted to incorporate the psychiatric knowledge of the day. It was heavily influenced by psychoanalytic concepts that were prominent at that time.

I think that both Glen and maybe Frank have tossed DSM or even DSM II into the conversation here without any more explication than I get at cocktail parties and it lands just as dead for me, but not offensive here as there (until I get my GoogleGoggles flashing Wikipedia/Wiktionary in my peripheral vision with automatic explication). It even seems like a good feature for Alexa/Siri/HeyGoogle to listen continuously and recognize acronyms and offer ordered-by-likelihood-from-context explications in your ear (or in the room if you want to shame the acronymster acrimoniously).

I understand that many are "lazy typists" who find it patently painful (emotionally if not physically) to type anything out.   And *too many people* (IMO ... in my opinion) do too much of their correspondence on a TS (tiny screen) which requires them to hunt-peck with one finger (maybe two thumbs) without touch feedback and without the benefit of QWERTY knowledge built into their Neural Net neurons.

I'm assuming Frank's OP (original post) was in response to both some specific TLA (three letter acronym) used recently or the accrued irritation of having to look up jargon ( especially TLAs and MLAs (multi letter acronyms)) just to figure out a conversation he is *otherwise* informed enough on to follow.   Or both. Or maybe he's just taking out his frustration with his daughter here where it's "safe" <grin>.

BTW (by the way) and FWIW (for what it's worth) I think I'd be game for one of Glen's experiments, even if the constraints offered somehow cramped *my* style (e.g. 20 line limit on posts, no markup-like formatting like *bold* or EMPHASIS or _underscore_ HTML (even formatting like bold or italics).   or even his extremal suggestion of requiring "peer review" by 3 others before submitting (I'd probably become rather mute over that one) WTFOMFGROFLMAOGMWAS!

- Steve
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Steve Smith

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by gepr

GEPR -

I intended to respond to Steve. But I'll let this stand as that response, too. The callback to Glassholes was well-received. <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Glasshole>

I actually never saw googleGlass in the wild, but I sure remember the first year or so of folks who got their bluetooth earbud/mics and had to speak extra loud in public to make sure everyone knew how proud they were of theirs.

By the time we get back to FriAM@StJohns, I predict (softly) that there will be an option out there the one or more of us might have indulged in some kind of AR glasses (maybe in Biden Aviators, Oakley Wrap Arounds, or maybe Steampunk Goggles)...

It is overdue...

http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/2013/04/googlegoggling.html

BTW I see Nick was recently a guest lampoonist:

http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/2021/01/guest-lampoonist.html

- SAS

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Acronyms

In reply to this post by gepr

I don't disagree with that interpretation.

What I meant at the time was that there is really no group of people that have a better understanding of optimizing code for, and knowledge of, microarchitectures than the people that build compilers. People that fancy themselves experts at tuning application code performance should direct their attention to doing the Real Work of improving compilers. I don't mean "leave it to the experts", I mean "Know what you don't know and maybe what you don't even want to know."

Marcus
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2021 4:02 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Acronyms

Exactly. Marcus said it well with something like "If the compiler doesn’t do what one expects, one probably expects wrong." We can translate that to human intercommunication. If people react in unexpected ways to what you said, perhaps change your expectations of how people will react to what you said. No sense of clarity is necessary, only repeatability and reliability. E.g. I don't particularly care whether my cat thinks that laser dot is a bug or not. What I care about is that he demonstrates his agility chasing it around the room. I seem to have developed a bit of a palsy as I age. And on days when it's bad, he *really* chases it ... like with gusto. But on days when my hand is steady, I have to fake the palsy to get him to engage completely. Why? I don't care. But I know it to be True.

This reminds me of homomorphic encryption, computing over encrypted things.

On 1/25/21 3:41 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> The computer interprets both of Glen's *root* functions as being
> different, so clarity walks a very different line there. Only
> sometimes do we get the extensional equivalence of functions. Clarity,
> in a broader sense, often requires substitution.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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