Thread by @patio11

Random note for you: when asked "Do you speak Japanese?", the instrumentally effective answer is probably not はい (Yes), it is まあ、一応話せることは話せますが (Well I suppose I might speak a little), both for cultural appropriateness and as an instant proof of work.

There exist other fields which similarly counsel dropping a shibboleth in the first sentence. For example, if you are an entrepreneur in any of the hottest four fields this year in Silicon Valley, you should probably distinguish yourself from folks who read about the field once.

Example:

"What's your startup?"
"Oh we're in data science." versus "Cloud hosting for Jupiter so that data scientists spend less time doing devops."

(That would be a better answer most of the time, but *really* important for hot fields.)

Similarly there is a handshake protocol here: if someone responds to that second sentence with "Oh cool data science is so important" you can write down their chance of being a practitioner or informed consumer of it to below 1%.

(Nothing wrong with that, morally speaking, but there are a great many conversations which work better when you understand where you are at in them.)