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Comment by ivanbakel | Hacker News Reader

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 words, just by information density alone, aren't you guaranteed to be losing some detail?

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"Education is a series of small lies." Spoken by my intro to computer engineering professor, upon telling us that most real processors actually have some ternary logic.

The notion here is that educating beginners about a subject is different from communication between experts. Yes, experts use jargon because it is more efficient. But, the notion here is that if you truly understand something, you should be able to find a way to explain it to a non-expert, building up from words and concepts they already understand. And, further, if you can't do that, then perhaps your understanding is not as deep as you thought it was.

> most real processors actually have some ternary logic

Was he referring to the Z state? If so, it's not really ternary logic but rather a "no result" state for cases where there is a control signal involved (e.g., in a tri-state buffer).

So it was a small lie?

Not really, no. More like an unnecessary detail, especially if it was an introductory course on the subject. It's not like knowledge of the Z state will suddenly change how you would design systems.

Modern CPUs have phase-locked loops generating clocks for each region of the chip. These use separate pull-up and pull-down mosfets to control the frequency, so arguably ternary.

Even more non-binary things happen inside DRAM and flash memory.

Ehh I don't believe PLLs have a ternary component at all. I'm not an expert though.

DRAM is analog-based due to the fact that the core memory unit is a capacitor, so it can't be ternary (not digital). I might agree with flash though.

If something is too complex to be explained to a college freshman, it might be time for a paradigm shift to simplify (I.e. Ptolemaic astronomy vs heliocentric)

Algebra and calculus were one bleeding edge research that only the elite understood, now kids are learning it in middle school.

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

Yes, but knowing which information you can lose is why it is said that you don't understand it until you can explain it. Explaining it in simple terms forces you to over-simplify, and then you have to pick which information is important and which isn't...and doing that requires a deep understanding of the subject (and your audience).

You have a knack for explaining "explaining something in simple terms" in simple terms. Kudos.

> 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.

"But then what does it mean to be understood?"

Great epistemological question for the ages. Vectors for the response include audience type, previous knowledge context, goal for how much needs to be conveyed...

This is the key. The person you explained it to could probably not turn around and explain it to someone else, but could walk away thinking that they understood it.

I don't think the idea is that you must always explain all of the things in eli5 fashion.

>But then what does it mean to be understood?

The same thing that it means to hear a bad quality 8bit, 20kbps copy of a song. It's still better than NOT hearing it, and it gives you an idea about what it entails, even if you don't hear all the information in it.

Even in everyday language we make the distinction about understanding something fully and having a rough understanding of it.

It's the other way around: First was the concept, then the agreement which words we use to describe them.

> 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

Billions of people know what a telephone does and how to use one without understanding τῆλε ("tele-", distant) and φωνή ("phone", voice, talk, language). They all get the concept and nobody would argue that they need to understand the terminology as well.

Or: I can teach you to play chess without teaching a single chess-specific term. Yes, other players will laugh at you when you call the pawns "smurfs", but when you understand how to handle your smurf-army, opponents will stop laughing after hearing you announcing "death by smurf-supported horse in 2 turns". (Though they'll definitely hate you for calling a knight a horse ;).

> I can teach you to play chess without teaching a single chess-specific term. Yes, other players will laugh at you when you call the pawns "smurfs", but when you understand how to handle your smurf-army

But that doesn't remove the terminology, it only changes it. You can understand chess equally well in English, French, or Lebanese, because the syntax isn't as important as the semantics. You can't teach me chess without talking about the idea of a "piece", no matter what you end up calling it. There has to be some common groundwork.

>Billions of people know what a telephone does and how to use one without understanding τῆλε ("tele-", distant) and φωνή ("phone", voice, talk, language). They all get the concept and nobody would argue that they need to understand the terminology as well.

The etymology of words tends to have no bearing on understanding them technically. To me, that's a non-comparison.

What's really meant is more that plenty of people use a telephone without a comprehensive understanding of EM radiation. That doesn't mean they can't use their phones, it just means if you explain EM radiation to them in terms of phones, they probably aren't going to come away understanding it any better.

Where are you trying to go?

First it was that, to understand, we have to "actually return to the complex terminology you're simplifying". I disagree.

Now it is, that we need some common way of communicating. I agree.

But that are two different questions.

> [explaining EM radition in terms of phones does not help]

Nor does explaining EM radiation in terms of oranges. But I'd do neither. I'd first try to figure out whether you struggle with the concept of what a phone is or with the question how it works. Because step 1 in being understood is to understand what you are trying to say, to define the metric you can later use to evaluate your success in your attempt at being understood.

This discussion really needs a concrete example.

Here is one of the best examples of clear communication I know:

http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

Norvig is a genius, and his genius is reflected in how he can so succinctly and clearly explain how to write a spell checker, without falling into elaborate jargon or droning on without getting to the point.

And that goes equally for his code and his prose, by the way.

There are many people who use a lot more jargon and verbosity to make their points, who are not in the same league as Norvig in terms of intelligence.

A classical joke from the GDR (about scientific language, not about farmers):

"The production volume of agriculturists is the reciprocal of the intellectual capacity of the producers."

also known as:

"The less intelligent the farmer, the bigger his potatoes."

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.

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.

Maybe a refinement of this approach is to FIRST explain in simple terms to establish basic understanding and SECOND going deeper with technical jargon.

Well, yeah, but the technical detail doesn't have to remain low. When you first explain something to someone you keep it simple so that they get the broad picture, you use analogies and what not. As they learn you can start introducing more and more detail.

It's about explaining in a way the recipient can understand so "simple terms" becomes "terms your recipient can understand".

It's not a fail if you use jargon. It's a fail if you can't explain the jargon.

If you can't re-write it in assembly, you don't know how it works!

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