I assumed that ... > Light has a spectrum, and thus a color, regardless of where the light came from. And can be so bright as to appear to the eye white, or so

I assumed that ... > Light has a spectrum, and thus a color, regardless of where the light came from. And can be so bright as to appear to the eye white, or so dim as to appear dark gray (rods vs cones), also regardless. was no longer the conversation with the 5-year-old. I would call those two sentences ‘confused’ for pretty much any audience, but obviously a conversation with a 5-year-old isn’t going to get too deep into the weeds about definitions. * * * > getting to actionable "you have to start with at least the basics" implies an ability to successfully execute that approach. Fair enough. But someone who doesn’t have the background to more or less properly explain the basics should expect some criticism when they completely ignore them. > My experience is that it requires vastly greater effort, and domain expertise, than is currently considered non-insane, just for the associated content creation. There are plenty of people with a solid basic understanding of whatever subject you might point to. The problem is more that folks making materials for beginners are (often) not part of that group, and in many cases should be leaving the job to someone with more expertise. I don’t think someone has to be a cutting edge researcher (or tenured professor) in order to do a good job explaining the basics about scientific topics. They should at least read the introductory material aimed at scientists though. > [1:1 instruction] via AR/VR avatars I am not holding my breath. I expect videos, readings, interactive diagrams, better programming environments, ... will more likely be helpful than future-VR-Clippy. But it’s hard to substitute for human interaction with someone competent. > we're just often less than transparent about reporting our actual collective goals Well the first goal is more or less babysitting so that parents can go to work. But this doesn’t sound too inspiring.