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If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

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Re: If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

#11

Post by lcnmrn »

scandox wrote: post #6

In job interviews I always zone in on the most complicated thing someone has worked on and then ask them to explain it to me. Often a thesis or a project or a large system or something low level to do with OS features etc... It is amazing how rarely people can get it across to me in basic terms. In fact even the idea of breaking it down into non technical concepts seems to be surprising and alien to many people. I re…

I fail all interviews when I explain complex things in simple terms. Must be some correlation here.

Re: If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

#12

Post by jlg23 »

ivanbakel wrote: post #7

The problem I find with this outlook is that it takes technical terms being jargon at face value. If you can't fall back on progress in language which allows you to express more complex ideas, you're not going to reach the same depth of understanding in simpler words without it taking a lot longer anyways - with most of your time spent reestablishing what you just threw out the window. If you rehash it in smaller wor…

> If you rehash it in smaller words, just by information density alone, aren't you guaranteed to be losing some detail?

Of course, but when explaining something to another person, one should strive to optimize for being understood, not for the highest information density.

Re: If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

#17

Post by jmileham »

ivanbakel wrote: post #7

The problem I find with this outlook is that it takes technical terms being jargon at face value. If you can't fall back on progress in language which allows you to express more complex ideas, you're not going to reach the same depth of understanding in simpler words without it taking a lot longer anyways - with most of your time spent reestablishing what you just threw out the window. If you rehash it in smaller wor…

But explaining something in simple terms is a necessary step to teaching the concept. Only once the concept is understood can you put a name to it and keep climbing the ladder of abstraction. This article doesn't devalue proper terminology, it values fluency with abstractions.

Re: If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

#18

Post by ivanbakel »

jlg23 wrote: post #12
ivanbakel wrote: post #7

The problem I find with this outlook is that it takes technical terms being jargon at face value. If you can't fall back on progress in language which allows you to express more complex ideas, you're not going to reach the same depth of understanding in simpler words without it taking a lot longer anyways - with most of your time spent reestablishing what you just threw out the window. If you rehash it in smaller wor…

> If you rehash it in smaller words, just by information density alone, aren't you guaranteed to be losing some detail? Of course, but when explaining something to another person, one should strive to optimize for being understood, not for the highest information density.

But then what does it mean to be understood?

If you skip out the part of the analogy where you actually return to the complex terminology you're simplifying, you haven't produced understanding - you've only made a just-so story which is a reflection of the reality, not a justification for it.

Re: If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it

#20

Post by adrianratnapala »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #9
ivanbakel wrote: post #7

The problem I find with this outlook is that it takes technical terms being jargon at face value. If you can't fall back on progress in language which allows you to express more complex ideas, you're not going to reach the same depth of understanding in simpler words without it taking a lot longer anyways - with most of your time spent reestablishing what you just threw out the window. If you rehash it in smaller wor…

Explaining a concept doesn't need to be done with complex technical terms. Analogies are sufficient. Executing on a concept using complex technology requires complex technical terms.

It depends on the concept.

ivanbakel is not making some blanket claim that things always require complex technical terms. He is just saying that language -- including field-specific jargon -- evolves so that people steeped in the language can explain things to each other.

The clearest example of that how hard it is to decypher popular articles about quantum mechanics. Here, even when explaining concepts at a skin deep level, stories they tell are utterly inadequate if not misleading.

That's because even the basic concepts of QM are ones from linear algebra. And is shy Feynman was a sometimes devotee of the "shut up and calculate" school of interpretation.

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