Hacker News Reader

Comment by rsstack | Hacker News Reader

> Explain Like I'm 5

> Buzz is an open-source, self-hosted workspace that combines team chat, AI agents and Git hosting using signed Nostr events, so teams can keep control of their data.

Very different expectations of 5-year-olds.

View on HN

It’s kinda interesting seeing what, IIRC, was originally a subreddit name which spawned from an AskReddit thread, is now a common marketing phrase in the tech world.

Similar to the sub itself, it’s now just shorthand for “describe using the first principles the expected audience should understand.”

I imagine a lot of people in the industry also fondly remember the 2010s reddit experience.

In this article, it's just an AI-generated TL;DR, tagline, sub-title box that was badly prompt-engineered and the website owners didn't care about its quality. I am pretty sure the entire website is an AI generated news aggregator.

The phrase was in an episode of The Office prior to that. I think it's fairly old.

Are you smarter than a five year old, kinda show

I remember someone saying it in high school back in the late 90s or early 00s.

I remember saying this when I was 5 years old

When the doctor slapped my ass directly after I was born I reportedly turned to him and in a serious tone inquired "why did you do that, explain it to me like I was 5" which so freaked the poor man out that he dropped me on my head, and thus I myself have no recollection of the event.

He was later sent to an asylum for the criminally insane although he used to break out and try to hunt me down to kill me for being "evil".

Not sure how long the subreddit has existed but I always assumed it was inspired by the episode of The Office where Michael asks Oscar to explain what a surplus is like he's 5. The broader usage on social media and the ELI5 shorthand are definitely the result of the subreddit though.

This article is definitely abusing the terminology, because I wouldn't expect even tech-knowledgeable people to know what Nostr is or does.

I remember when the sub was first created, I think there was an understanding it didn’t actually mean you were explaining to five year olds. Hard to recall exactly when it was created though, so definitely awhile ago.

It may not have started that way but there definitely was some amount of commenters that took it quite literally

The same understanding still exists, from https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rul...:

> The purpose of this subreddit is to simplify complex concepts in a way that is accessible for laypeople.

> The first thing to note about this is that this forum is not literally meant for 5-year-olds. Do not post questions that an actual 5-year-old would ask, and do not respond as though you're talking to a child.

The original joke for anyone who doesn't know or remember, Michael, the manager, asks his accountant to explain what a surplus is like he would to an 8 year old. Michael doesn't understand this and asks for how he would explain it to a 5 year old, which Oscar does a very good job with explaining and Michael finally understands.

Later the security guard is called upstairs to break a tie on votes for what to spend the surplus on, and Michael starts reciting Oscar's 5 year old explanation, and the guard cuts him off saying he knows what a surplus is.

I have to imagine this is sort of a joke about the audience too as inevitably the writers were considering that audience members might not know what a surplus is, and this kind of joke is an opportunity to explain it.

Ah you're totally right! That's S05E10; I adore that show so I'm peeved I'd forgotten.

Agree on the Nostr point. Apparently it stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays" - sort of cute.

It’s way older than Reddit, it’s older than the Office. I remember Denzel Washington saying it in some movie when I was a kid, and I doubt it originated there. Doesn’t Einstein have a quotation about it, too?

> “Prithee, make thy meaning plain, and speak to me as one would teach a child of five summers.”

— Shakespeare. Probably.

Philadelphia, 1993.

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." - Albert Einstein (allegedly :))

I always thought that the quote was with "5 year old" and that it was the reason for ELI5 :)

"An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid," Lord Rutherford of Nelson.

There should be some name for the phenonenom of assigning anything pithy to Einstein.

I just find it interesting that Lord Rutherford thought the purpose of science was chatting up barmaids.

Isn't it?

>it’s now just shorthand for “describe using the first principles the expected audience should understand.”

I think at that it still fails pretty bad. I suppose the expected audience is quite a bit broader than people who would know or actually care what nostr events are. Maybe my expectation is off though.

Hah, I used to tell my agents “eli5 (this task)”, then I started to worry that it will actually explain things as you would to a 5yo…

It’s just an irrational fear I have, in the end agents are not the HN comment section and they usually understand what I actually mean.

Ouch

Just yesterday, left puzzled with the ELI5 I was given, I did the next reasonable thing… “ELI4”

Seriously, what's hope is left for adults when a 5 year old understands signed Nostr events? The ELI-SWE is the docs I guess? I want to get off the Silicon Valley marketing express.

I'm reading that Buzz is a buzzword, buzzword corpospeak jargon buzzword. Buzzword corpospeak.

Anyone know what it actually does?

Extract money from venture capital

They’re all digital natives now, dontcha know

"Explain like I'm pitching to TechCrunch Disrupt".

The goal is to replace these 5 year old with a team of Nostr aware agents. /s

I imagine that's all very understandable to the average Bay Area five-year-old.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com