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Comment by elhudy | Hacker News Reader

Humans are incredibly adaptive. Is there much reason to have an expansive vocabulary nowadays? We are taught to speak and write as concisely and understandably as possible. We can look up the definition of any word at our fingertips. "[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books." - Einstein.

Maybe these tests are declining because they are measuring skills that are decreasingly relevant? I'm not certain I believe this myself but it's an interesting thought.

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Your vocabulary is tied to your expressive power and your ability to form coherent and compelling arguments. I'd argue that without an expansive vocabulary you would struggle to write with precision let alone brevity.

Not that its wrong to question, I just think you'd need to do more work supporting the idea that language skills are less important today for some reason.

> Your vocabulary is tied to your expressive power and your ability to form coherent and compelling arguments

There is even more to it. Language can influence (prev.: limits) your thinking and ability to categorize. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

(Removed misleading reference)

Isn't this Sapir-Whorf, which has been disproven? At least the last time I read of it in relation to 1984.

Yup, linguistic determinism is nonsense, thanks for pointing that out. I edited my comment.

Using a rare word with a marginally different meaning to convey an idea more precisely and concisely depends on the person on the other end of the conversation knowing that word and the marginal difference in meaning it conveys. The moment you can't trust people to distinguish between two synonyms, one of them becomes useless. As we communicate with wider groups whom we have less familiarity with, the amount you can trust nuance to be conveyed decreases. And logically as already rare words become more rarely used, the likelihood that your audience is familiar with them further decreases.

Someone who focuses on clearly explaining thoughts using small numbers of commonly understood words will be much better at forming coherent and compelling arguments than someone who instead invests the same resources in learning a vast but useless vocabulary.

> We can look up the definition of any word at our fingertips.

So what? Being able to understand expressive language and quickly context shift vocabulary is extremely valuable. If you don't have the vocabulary to identify context, being able to look up the definition of words will only get you so far. Additionally, you can't write words if you don't know that they exist.

All, I am not saying that having a solid vocabulary isn't valuable. Of course it is valuable. What I am saying is that potentially, for most people, having a vastly expansive vocabulary might not be as valuable as it used to be.

That only makes it even more valuable for one to possess it because it sets you apart from everyone else.

I've previously wondered if people are learning vocabulary they wouldn't be willing to put in a test.

This site is dense in terms and acronyms that generally will not appear in a dictionary, which does not appear to be unusual. Many interests and professions have a frightening number of terms and acronyms now.

> We are taught to speak and write as concisely and understandably as possible.

One day... I believe.

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