zlacker

>>todsac+(OP)
why do they have to write papers in a way that the readers have to chewing on them.

>>billco+nb
Papers are designed to be read by a specific audience of highly technical, skilled people in a topic where if it is original research, must be very explicit, and prove and disprove multiple things simultaneously.

Of course, standards vary significantly institution to institution and even person to person, and highly technical, skilled people are not indicative of full capability of reading, let alone reviewing the topic, doubly so when it is original research.

>>latenc+wD
Let me translate this for the layman: papers are written using terms and notation that only makes sense if you've gone through the the process of learning their derivation from first principles in the narrow field in which they apply.

It has the odd effect of making this stuff comprehensible only to those that essentially already know what it is, and possibly a few people academically adjacent to those people.

Other people can decipher it, after long and arduous labor, but it essentially requires rediscovering the path that brought it about, knowing what the outcome will be. In that sense these papers are less useful than they seem.

Academia is a little like religion: to outsiders the language and rituals make little sense, only those indoctrinated in its tenets can achieve enlightenment.

>>dkjaud+zG
This is a very poor and inaccurate "translation". Papers from math and physics are hard to understand not because of specific choice of "terms and notation" but because of actual concepts they are based on. Terms and notation actually make it easier to understand, compressing pages of words into a single symbol. Without these the best you get is quanta article, where you can get a vague feeling of what is being done, but no actual understanding.

If you talk about a modern city with a hunter gatherer, how many words would you have to explain? Do these words exist because modern life is "like a religion" and hunter gatherer is not "indoctrinated"?