Hacker News Reader

Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

It's also the jargon.

I remember years ago telling a coworker that I was an ACM member and subscribed to the SIGPLAN proceedings. He looked at me and with all sincerity asked, "You can understand those things??"

To which I responded, "About half," but I totally sympathized with his question. Both Math and CS need the reincarnation of Richard Feynman to come and shake things up a bit. There's too much of the 'dazzle them with bullshit' going on. It's no wonder that it takes so long for basic research to see application in real scenarios. You people bury your research under layers of obfuscation about half the time. Does it really help anybody to do that? Why do you do that?

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." is my new favorite Albert Einstein quote.

View on HN

Thing is, I did understand it. Hell, I looked through my notes from maths degree (5 years ago) and guess what - most of it seems like nonsense. The worst bit is that because these were notes to myself - jam packed with comments of "so obviously" followed by a transformation I can make no sense of at all.

It makes me pretty sad to think what a waste of time that learning was. Also the flip side of "hehe - I was well smart" is "shit - I'm now a moron"

>"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." is my new favorite Albert Einstein quote.

Yes and no.

I spend a fair amount of time explaining things to children. Not exactly five year olds, so no ELI5. More like ELI13. But to do this often requires over simplifying points to you either hand wave or or even sometimes given incorrect examples that are 'good enough' at the level that you are aiming at.

For example, consider explaining gravity as mass attracting mass. That is over simplified and breaks down at certain points, but for explaining to a kid why objects fall when you drop them, and even giving an opening to explain things like acceleration of falling objects, it is good enough.

So a better way of saying it is that if you understand both the subject matter and your audience well enough, you will be able to given simple explanations that will increase the audience's understanding.

> "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." is my new favorite Albert Einstein quote.

It’s also one of his more moronic quotes. Certainly on a very abstract, dumbed-down level everything can be explained simply; sure, if you cannot give your parents a rough idea what you’re doing, you might want to look into more examples. But there are plenty of things which require a very extensive basis to be understood thoroughly.

For example, it is very easy to summarise what a (mathematical) group is and for anyone with a basic understanding of abstract maths, it will be understandable. It’s also very simple to find some examples (integers with addition, ℝ/{0} with multiplication etc.) which might be understandable by laypeople, but you will either confuse the latter or only give examples and not the actually important content.

Further, when you have “simply explained” what a group is, can you go on and equally “simply explain“ what a the fundamental representation is and how irreducible representations come about? You just need a certain level of knowledge (e.g., linear algebra) already and not every paper can include a full introduction into representation theory.

I have taken to adding the corollary response ", but if you can only explain it simply, you also don't understand it well enough."

"You just need a certain level of knowledge (e.g., linear algebra) already and not every paper can include a full introduction into representation theory."

Then why is paper still the overwhelmingly preferred medium?

Using hypertext it would be trivial to link to an external source describing the specific concept used from linear algebra.

Not providing supporting links is only good for an audience that holds the entirety of mathematical knowledge in their heads (ie mathematicians in academia).

The rest of the world, incl those who have since moved on like the author, don't fit into that category.

Therefore, the work can only be accurately read and understood by the tiny minority of specialists capable of decoding the intent of the work.

Limited reach = limited value to society.

Is the intent of a PHD really to advance the field of mathematics? Or is it just another 'measuring stick' for individuals to prove to others how 'smart' they are?

Einstein also said "make things simple and not simpler". They will always be things that are irreducible.

But at the same time, if you can ONLY explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com