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Re:A sticky problem that evaporated by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @07:05AM (#21979163)
Medicine is even worse for this.

I was once diagnosed with "non-specific gingival inflammation" which apparently meant "You have a mild gum infection and we have no idea why."

Re:A sticky problem that evaporated by kstrauser on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @11:44AM (#21981633)
That's appropriate for a diagnosis, which is the term that they'd pass on to the next doctor who wants to peek into your mouth. "Hey, I looked at TheOtherHobbes, and here's where we're at:

- We haven't yet figured out what's causing it, but - [the official name for the body part involved], - is notably red and puffy, which is probably caused by an infection, - but there could be any number of other root causes, we haven't run sufficient tests to find the exact cause, and we're not worried enough to recommend a million expensive and invasive tests for what's 99% likely to be a common, simple infection."

Jargon is very information dense, and everyone in every field uses it to convey a lot of information quickly. Take a phrase that would be very clear to any reader here: "there's too much RF from my Wi-Fi router, so I switched from a Bluetooth mouse to USB". Suppose this is how I fixed my friend's mouse problems, and he got the gist of what was happening but didn't really understand the details. His girlfriend comes over and asks why he suddenly has a wired mouse. He hands her a piece of paper where I've written exactly the sentence above, she reads it, says "oh, weird. Makes sense though."

Now, my friend may not understand every word of what I wrote. Even "mouse" is jargon, albeit something that's been around forever so it's widely understood. However, his technical girlfriend would immediately understand what the actual problem was and why that was a good solution to it. The diagnosis wasn't for him specifically. The diagnosis was for the next technical person to understand where we're at with the problem.

Re:A sticky problem that evaporated by StavrosK on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @07:36AM (#21979346)
Oh yes, this is a good one to know. "Non-specific" = "we have no clue wtf is going on".
Re:A sticky problem that evaporated by madcaptenor on Tuesday January 07, 2020 @09:47AM (#21980342)
My kid once had "toddler's diarrhea", aka we don't know why she's going a lot, but she is.