If you ever gave an answer that would pass in a midterm examination in public as a politician, it would be complete disaster and nobody would understand what yo

If you ever gave an answer that would pass in a midterm examination in public as a politician, it would be complete disaster and nobody would understand what you are talking about and you would embarrass yourself. One of the most difficult challenges in science is to find the exact level of complexity in an explanation to fit your audience. You can see this if you go to a talk at a university -- often researchers are so obsessed with looking smart that they begin with extremely difficult material that 10% of their audience understands and go on from there, losing another percent every 10 minutes. Sometimes people will give a 'general audience' talk that is so simplified that everyone understands it but nobody gets anything out of it; it's just vague platitudes and intuitions. Most of Trudeau's language is so vague it could neither be called correct or incorrect (with a few exceptions). I think the purpose of it was: 1) to acknowledge to the researchers there that he took the time to learn /something/ about their highly technical field and that he finds it interesting and exciting. Contrast this with, for example, any politician that has ever existed in the history of the world. 2) to give a vague general explanation of what the phenomenon is that would make sense to his general audience, who don't even understand what computers are. Most importantly NOT: 3) To prove to scientists he understands science as well as they do. I think his speech was excellent in light of those two goals.