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.

  • laurathepluralized@lemmy.world
    3·
    8 months ago

    “Positive feedback loop” to indicate a situation in which circumstances feeding into each other result in more good things happening, or “negative feedback loop” to indicate bad circumstances feeding into each other to result in more bad things happening.

    I have worked with enough controls folks to know that positive feedback in a control loop often leads to instability (bad), while negative feedback in a control loop can be used to stabilize the system (good). It just comes down to the math in the situation.

    So people saying that they are in a positive feedback loop can, to a controls person, sound counterintuitive. E.g. “I’m in a positive feedback loop of working out, having more energy as a result, and working out more, making me healthier!” would be momentarily confusing.

    I did grad school at an engineering/STEM-focused school, and the campus psychiatrist actually used these terms correctly when discussing anxiety attacks! As an engineer myself, that made my nerdy heart happy 🤣

    Another control theory phrase issue: The phrase “more optimal” is incorrect and very well may earn the speaker an “umm, actually” from any controls folks in the conversation. Optimality is not a scale–either something is optimal (with respect to a specific metric), or it isn’t.

    (EDIT: reducing verbosity)