Climate is something people already understand to some extent. If you start talking about different climate models and their assumptions, you should get those confused looks straight away.
Comment on Lemmy is a tech literate echo chamber
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoHow bad this is in practice is something you can choose to mitigate simply by regularly talking to normal people.
Source: I’m a climate scientist, I do this all the time (and only rarely get looks of complete confusion)
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t though, because I actually know how to talk to normal humans. It’s not that hard. You start high-level, and then gauge their curiosity (via questions and body language), and then go a bit deeper, and if they start getting confused, then you back up a bit, and you just stay at their level, not at whatever insane depth your own brain might be at at the time. You use metaphors to link what’s happening in your work to things they have experienced in their life to build understanding at their level. Simplify and abstract, without dumbing it down.
My brain is fully stuck in philosophy of science mode at the moment, and thinking about how to integrate climate science with financial risk models (and how that doesn’t make sense in some ways). I have talked with people from across the spectrum, from people working in climate science or finance for decades, to people with a high-school education. The conversations are nearly always interesting (for both of us), and usually decently long. It’s really not that hard, if you just make an effort to meet people where they are.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
You’re fortunate that your field happens to be reasonably accessible to common people. For example, if you’re a production engineer in a company that manufactures network infrastructure, it suddenly gets very hard to even explain what you do for a living. Normal people may have seen a router, but they’ve never even heard of switches. Regardless, they never paid much attention to network hardware, because they didn’t have to.
Climate is a lot harder to ignore. Everyone has thought about these things at some level. Everyone has heard about climate change at school, on TV, news articles etc. People also experience these things on a very personal level. Only very few people can say the same about network switches, let alone submarine line terminal equipment.
There are even more obscure fields out there. The relatives of those professionals just know that their nephew does something technical and hard to understand. I guess those dinner table conversations might gravitate towards some easier topics.
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve played with switches before, and some DIY electronics, and have done some network admin. I’ll grant that the actual internal electronics and software are far to complex for even me to understand.
But again, if you talk to someone with some interest in what you’re doing, you can find a level they they can understand. Maybe using metaphors like human-operated old-school telephone switch boards, that’s an image that most people will have seen, and can understand at a coarse conceptual level. You CAN have an interesting conversation at the level, if YOU want to be interested in it (and if they do, which is partially contingent on you being able to connect with them in the first place).
If you think climate is simpler or more accessible, I’d suggest you have a quick go at explaining the Navier-Stokes equations, Darcy’s law for fluid flow through porous media, or why convective storm activity needs to be parameterised in climate models (and at what scale it doesn’t). Climate isn’t easier, or more accessible than network admin - both require years or tertiary education to start understanding even parts of the underlying principles, and no one person understands either field completely. It IS probably more familiar for most people, because it’s in the media all the time. But again, that’s just a matter of finding the extent of their knowledge and interest, and coming up to their level.
Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
As someone in wildlife conservation, this doesn’t work for everyone. For me, it just makes me hate talking to people. They will be confidently wrong and nothing you say will convince them otherwise. Doesn’t help that I live in one of the worst educated states in the union.
Also, the 'tism puts me at a disadvantage out the gate. So I might be biased.
naught101@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t necessarily mean trying to convince people of something, I more mean conversing with interested, but less educated people. Convincing people is a whole separate skill set to just explaining your technical knowledge in plain language (which is the part that’s beneficial here).