Jargon is a smell, not a signal.
The more complex the language in a conversation becomes, the more useful a simple question becomes.
Do people actually understand what they're talking about?
Or are they performing understanding?
> Because those two things look surprisingly similar.
Every industry develops its own language
Specialised vocabulary isn't automatically bad.
Medicine needs technical terms. Engineering needs precise definitions. Physics would be impossible without shared language.
But jargon serves two very different purposes.
Sometimes it compresses complex ideas. Sometimes it disguises the absence of them.
The difference is subtle. But once you notice it, you see it everywhere.
The incentive problem
Most organisations quietly discourage uncertainty.
Admitting "we don't understand this yet" sounds risky. It threatens credibility. It slows momentum. It can even look like incompetence.
Which creates an incentive structure where sounding confident becomes safer than being accurate.
Jargon solves this problem beautifully.
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It allows people to talk about uncertain ideas while sounding sophisticated. The language becomes complicated. The thinking underneath it often doesn't.
Vocabulary inflation
Periods of technological change make this pattern especially visible.
When a new technology appears, three things usually happen.
- First, the machinery changes.
- Second, the vocabulary explodes.
- Third, the actual understanding arrives slowly.
The internet produced phrases like "content strategy" and "growth hacking." Crypto produced "tokenomics" and "decentralised finance." AI is producing its own linguistic boom.
Prompt engineering. AI-native workflows. Cognitive automation. Agent orchestration.
Some of these ideas will eventually prove meaningful. But the vocabulary often arrives before the clarity.
Why jargon is useful
This is where the concept becomes useful.
Jargon is not always evidence of insight. It is often evidence of uncertainty.
Which means it functions like a diagnostic signal. Not proof that people understand something. Proof that they are still trying to.
When language becomes elaborate, it's usually worth pausing. Not to dismiss the idea. But to interrogate it.
The simplest test
Ask someone to explain the idea in plain language.
Not simplified language. Plain language.
If the explanation becomes clearer, the idea is probably real.
If the explanation becomes more complicated, something else is happening.
That "something else" is often status protection. Or institutional theatre. Or people trying to keep up with a shift that nobody fully understands yet.
The compression principle
Real understanding has a strange property.
It compresses complexity rather than expanding it.
The more someone genuinely understands a system, the easier it becomes to explain it simply.
Which means the opposite pattern should make us cautious.
> When explanations become increasingly elaborate, it may not mean understanding is increasing. It may mean the field is still figuring itself out.
A useful habit
This doesn't mean rejecting every new term. Some concepts genuinely need names.
But it does mean developing a useful instinct.
When new jargon appears, treat it like a smell. Not evidence of insight. Evidence that something interesting might be happening underneath.
Then ask the only question that really matters.
What does that actually mean?
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