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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

#231

Post by combatentropy »

I think this statement is a tautology. To understand something is to know it in simple terms. To understand something is to have mentally broken down a complex subject into its simpler pieces. For example, to understand a car engine is to take it apart in your head and know each part, how it moves, and what it does.

Many think they understand something, when really they only know how to use it. For example, I understand how to use a computer, but that doesn't mean I understand how a processor works at the level of registers and assembly language. So if I were to try to teach someone a computer, then I could say things like "Click that, and this will happen," or "Type such and such, and then this other thing you want will happen." But if anyone asked me about how that actually works, to follow all the way how a physical mouse-click gets transformed into a change in the window on the screen, then I couldn't. Or, even if I could, it might take me half an hour to explain it, depending on how much they want to know.

So maybe it's that we undestand things, but at different levels. Few people understand something at its deepest level. In fact, physicists would say no one does.

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

#232

Post by sh87 »

jknoepfler wrote: post #120
sh87 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever 'taught' anyone anything? When you do, you'll probably get what Feynman was trying to say. Complexity is intrinsic. Just that as a teacher/guide/explainer, you have to gently guide the novices around enough to invoke a sense of curiosity that will drive the pupil to explore on their own. The task at hand here is to make things less overwhelming, not removing or ignoring complexity. For every complex sys…

I have, and do. Physics 101, or in my case computer science 101 are not the world. Humans are gifted teachers (probably unique among animals in our instinct to simplify while teaching). I love distilling things down into teachable parts. It's hard, interesting work. But I also do research, and I absolutely do not expect deeply technical topics like advances in aerospace engineering or gene regulation or cosmology to…

My comment came across snarky. I apologize.

I agree cs 101 is not the world. I also agree some concepts cannot be simplified and it shouldn't.

My point was what you hinted towards when you say "distilling things down". My gripe is that most people that have taught or guided me have had no inclination to do that. I would have had a much smoother learning curve for it.

I also feel if there is a concept that can be taught by one person to another, it can be slowly be presented in increasing order of complexity than be presented all at once. That feeling of slowly building or adding complexity is underestimated and hard.

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

#233

Post by sh87 »

jknoepfler wrote: post #120
sh87 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever 'taught' anyone anything? When you do, you'll probably get what Feynman was trying to say. Complexity is intrinsic. Just that as a teacher/guide/explainer, you have to gently guide the novices around enough to invoke a sense of curiosity that will drive the pupil to explore on their own. The task at hand here is to make things less overwhelming, not removing or ignoring complexity. For every complex sys…

I have, and do. Physics 101, or in my case computer science 101 are not the world. Humans are gifted teachers (probably unique among animals in our instinct to simplify while teaching). I love distilling things down into teachable parts. It's hard, interesting work. But I also do research, and I absolutely do not expect deeply technical topics like advances in aerospace engineering or gene regulation or cosmology to…

My comment came across snarky. I apologize.

I agree cs 101 is not the world. I also agree some concepts cannot be simplified and it shouldn't.

My point was what you hinted towards when you say "distilling things down". My gripe is that most people that have taught or guided me have had no inclination to do that. I would have had a much smoother learning curve for it.

I also feel if there is a concept that can be taught by one person to another, it can be slowly be presented in increasing order of complexity than be presented all at once. That feeling of slowly building or adding complexity is underestimated and hard.

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

#234

Post by moomin »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #45
moomin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to Feynman talk about magnetism fails to answer that question definitively one way or the other. But seriously, if you can't explain what a complex-valued "probability" is to a layman, apparently you don't understand quantum mechanics?

I assume this is the bit of video you're referring to?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM

That's the one :)

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

#235

Post by sh87 »

dtashima wrote: post #127
jshelly wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Feynman's statement is a wee bit over the top, and I will say that being able to teach complex things to novices is definitely an art and certainly one which I do not possess

I think it's partly motivational. There is definitely a level of understanding where it feels like you understand a concept, and then when you try to teach it to someone else, you realize when they ask basic questions that you don't understand it as deeply as you thought you did. So, if you think you understand something, it's worth trying to explain it simply, so you can push your own understanding of the subject.

I think this is closest to what Feynman (I think) wanted to convey.

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

#236

Post by wddps »

freddref wrote: post #13

Feynman also said: "Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize." [1] Showing a limitation of the maxim or Feynman's hubris? [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

Why is this true? Can someone explain it to me?

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

#237

Post by samuell »

jmileham wrote: post #17
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.

This. I tend to think a key to really understanding something, is the ability to put that "something" in to contexts at a wide variety of abstraction levels.

That's what I hated the most with uni: Some professors could write 10 blackboards full of formulae, but could hardly put together a few words to explain what we were actually doing. Unsurprisingly, I don't remember much from these lectures. Fortunately that is not all professors, but it worries me how large a percent of them were like this.

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