Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Feynman’s Razor

defenderofthebasic.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 138 posts

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#91

Post by smitty1e »

LoganDark wrote: post #57
powersnail wrote: post #26

I don't quite think the message-doesn't-exist example is caused by "dumbing down" too much. To me, the message "it no longer exists" is not the work of someone who, in trying to make layman understand, overdid it. Instead, it's the typical kind of mistake made by writers who forget about context. From the programmer's perspective, I speculate, the error _is_ indeed a case of something being non-existent. The code is…

"This message cannot be downloaded because it no longer exists on the server. You can copy the message or delete it."

A better phrasing might be "keep your local copy because your server-side copy is gone".

Communication is hard.

Welcome to people.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#92

Post by taneq »

Something I’ve been doing recently is declaring a variable, writing a comment explaining clearly what the variable actually does, then renaming the variable to reflect the comment. If I have to explain the variable name too much then it’s not a good name.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#93

Post by quibono »

neontomo wrote: post #45

If something can be explained without technical jargon in a way that satisfies novice and expert, what use is the jargon? I feel the example given in the article is bad because it isn't useful to either person, and jargon doesn't improve or lessen it. It's simply a poor explanation, which makes the argument weak.

I agree. I think that most of the time highly specialized topics have a lot of subtle context required. You either communicate all of that, or use jargon to get around it.

In some cases I think it's possible to do this and satisfy both groups but it's harder and takes more words (which is important in a media context at least). That said I imagine there's a spectrum here and you can usually find suitable middle ground.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#94

Post by lukan »

pier25 wrote: post #25
ajkjk wrote: post #17

Sometimes it feels like the trend online right now is to design everything to make you stupider, on the theory that if it asks less of you will go along with it more easily. For instance, Google results seem more "least common denominator" every month. No longer can I search for something subtle and get subtle results; their algorithm pushes me towards and unhelpful answers. Maybe it's because lots of people do respo…

Maybe at some point Google will release a Classic version of the algo like Coca-Cola did.

Coca-Cola used cocaine again?

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#95

Post by zexbha »

kohbo wrote: post #77
nicbou wrote: post #74

I struggle a lot with this in my work. I can’t assume that my readers are fluent English speakers, nor that they understand the topic. I can’t even assume that they care to understand. I have adopted a plain and unambiguous writing style that hopefully accounts for it. I am now experimenting with formatting that allows them to skim everything and still get the gist of it. In my opinion, nhs.uk is the best example to…

How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?

I would not have observed this on my own. Do contractions make English harder to comprehend for non-natives? I'll have to avoid using y'all'dn't've

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#96

Post by lukan »

userbinator wrote: post #90
civilized wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of you will be familiar with this story: military pilot gear was once designed for the average person, but then they realized that actually, most people deviate significantly from the average in at least one way. So they made the gear adjustable, and that greatly improved performance and reduced mistakes. Why is it that in tech we are often told a seemingly contrary narrative -- that everything is better, or at…

[flagged]

Also talking is cheaper than doing something.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#97

Post by ordu »

Why this obsession with "all words must be known"? People are perfectly capable to understand the core of the message even if it contains unknown words. It happens not every time, it doesn't happen for example when each one of the words is unknown, but the message:

> "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently deleted."

can be understood. Even if the first sentence looks like a technical garbage, the second gives the clear instructions. And I don't believe that the first sentence is a complete nonsense to a layman. It can be understood as "message is halfway through the process of the deletion".

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#98

Post by lupire »

kohbo wrote: post #77
nicbou wrote: post #74

I struggle a lot with this in my work. I can’t assume that my readers are fluent English speakers, nor that they understand the topic. I can’t even assume that they care to understand. I have adopted a plain and unambiguous writing style that hopefully accounts for it. I am now experimenting with formatting that allows them to skim everything and still get the gist of it. In my opinion, nhs.uk is the best example to…

How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?

Common English. The "n't” contractions are the most comfortable, and "can't" is most comfortable because it saves a syllable.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#99

Post by lupire »

zarzavat wrote: post #73
klabb3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I noted in the gp I think code implementations or numerical methods should be the goal. I’m 100% with Feynman on this one. I loved the book because of the intuition it gave me about quantum physics. He even has this amazing analogy for how to teach arithmetic without numbers. Now, you could absolutely claim that he fails in his analogies (I’m not among the .1% of people if not less who can debate that), but I ca…

In mathematics, geometric and algebraic explanations are complementary. If you plot a function, you can observe many properties easily, for instance where does it cross the axes? Is it symmetrical? How quickly does it grow? However there are also many properties that are easier to observe algebraically. For example if you plot x^n you can see if n is odd or even, but you can’t see what value n has because x^10 looks…

I strongly disagree. The geometric explanation lets you understand the main concept without the hassle of algebra. The algebra isn't needed for these fundamental topics.

There's no requirement to do opaque algebra before approaching intuition.

Feynman invented Feynman Diagrams, which are a major contribution to Physics because they avoid algebra, and physicists are certainly capable of algebra.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#100

Post by lupire »

tredigi wrote: post #71
sublinear wrote: post #31

To be great is to be misunderstood, and Feynman was a great man. I'm still not sure who decided to abuse some quotes and invent this "razor". I don't believe Feynman ever meant to overconstrain and corrupt information based on (likely incorrect) assumptions about his audience. There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. The information is either there or it isn't regardless of who can compreh…

> There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. This is so wrong that I can't imagine you actually meant it in the way that it quite obviously reads like. When my 3-year old just saw is favorite toy fall from the sofa because he put it in an .. unstable position, then obviously it won't help if I explain the theory of relativity to him, cause ultimately it was gravity causing the mess. It won't…

That's not dumbing down. It's not a lie and it's not wrong.
Post reply on HN