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How does a five year old know what a "satellite", "gravity", "orbit", or half a dozen of other words used here is? The "ELI5" meme needs to die, it does not ma

by pferde 6y ago

How does a five year old know what a "satellite", "gravity", "orbit", or half a dozen of other words used here is? The "ELI5" meme needs to die, it does not make any sense in most of the situations it is used, and also it's a self-disgrace to anyone using it to compare their own intelligence and knowledge to that of a five year old.

zowanet 6y ago
I wouldn't say it's a meme, it's just a convenient shorthand for "I'm not overly familiar with the domain, please help me understand". No need to overthink it.
- pferde 6y ago
  I would say it is indeed a meme. From Wikipedia: "A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme." Contrary to what Internet would like us to believe, a " meme" is not a picture of a cat with some written words around it.
  - cbg0 6y ago
    You're being overly pedantic about this thing.
    - pferde 6y ago
      What, pedantic about correct terms describing correct things? If we cease to care about that, any communication using words simply stops working, because orange breathe knit, attend evasive colour and lonely arrogant arithmetic chemical wonder twig.
- JshWright 6y ago
  It's definitely a meme, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful in the sense you describe.
NamTaf 6y ago
The operative word is 'like'. That is, explain to a similar degree of domain understanding as you'd expect from a 5 year old, rather than explain using a 5 year old's vocabulary. But all that aside, what nerd kid wasn't drawing space shuttles and rockets by age 5?!? That was my jam!
- pferde 6y ago
  That's just it - a five year old might be into rockets and astronauts and all that fancy stuff (I was too), but his or her "degree of domain understanding" is nowhere near enough to grasp how those things really work, nor does he or she have the education underpinnings needed to do so. "ELI10" or "ELI15" would be a much less ridiculous request. It's still rather grating how people willingly denigrate themselves by comparing their own intelligence to that of a child's. What's wrong with good old "explain it to a layperson"? The fact that it does not make a cool acronym? We're not on twitter (or in high school, for that matter), learn to express yourself like an adult. And yes, I am fun at parties. :)
threatripper 6y ago
I think that most kids already know what a satellite looks like. Those trash cans that often have solar cell wings and some satellite dishes. They fly way up in the sky. Gravity pulls you down to earth. It gives you weight. Without gravity everything on earth would start hovering and flying around like on the space station. Things in space near earth also get pulled towards earth. Orbit is if you throw something so very fast that it doesn't fall back to earth but instead moves on a circle around earth like if you have a stone on a string and spin it. On the moon you can throw a stone very far. On the moon there is no atmosphere that slows it down. If you throw the stone harder and harder it will fly very far until it gets dragged down by the moons gravity. Maybe use a cannon to throw it very fast it will fly past the horizon. If you have just the right velocity it will fly all the way around the moon and hit you in the back of your head. --- I think this topic is something that can be explained very well to kids. Also many kids are fascinated by rockets and space. The explanations and visualizations may not always be 100% accurate but I think they do the job.
- pferde 6y ago
  Yes, with enough explanation, you can maaaaybe, possibly, eventually come up with enough lies (simplifications) understandable by a five year old to make some kind of explanation. (The grandparent post would certainly not be enough.) But you've been caught into a hole you (and grandparent poster) have dug for yourself, by trying to explain it fully. A better explanation for a five year old would be something like: satellites all fly high above us, and we are putting more and more satellites up there, and eventually they will crash into each other, and then into other satellites, and so on, until there is nothing but broken satellites flying up there. If the kid is interested and has more questions about "how" and "why" (the favourite world exploration tools for every kid), only then it's time to introduce him or her to gravity , the fact that Earth is round, and the basics of orbital mechanics.
JshWright 6y ago
I just asked my four year old and they had no trouble with "satellite" and "gravity". I did have to give them a little bit of an explanation for "orbit" (but again, they're 4, not yet 5)

by pferde 6y ago

zowanet 6y ago

I wouldn't say it's a meme, it's just a convenient shorthand for "I'm not overly familiar with the domain, please help me understand". No need to overthink it.

pferde 6y ago
I would say it is indeed a meme. From Wikipedia: "A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that becomes a fad and spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme." Contrary to what Internet would like us to believe, a " meme" is not a picture of a cat with some written words around it.
- cbg0 6y ago
  You're being overly pedantic about this thing.
  - pferde 6y ago
    What, pedantic about correct terms describing correct things? If we cease to care about that, any communication using words simply stops working, because orange breathe knit, attend evasive colour and lonely arrogant arithmetic chemical wonder twig.
JshWright 6y ago
It's definitely a meme, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful in the sense you describe.

NamTaf 6y ago

The operative word is 'like'. That is, explain to a similar degree of domain understanding as you'd expect from a 5 year old, rather than explain using a 5 year old's vocabulary. But all that aside, what nerd kid wasn't drawing space shuttles and rockets by age 5?!? That was my jam!

pferde 6y ago
That's just it - a five year old might be into rockets and astronauts and all that fancy stuff (I was too), but his or her "degree of domain understanding" is nowhere near enough to grasp how those things really work, nor does he or she have the education underpinnings needed to do so. "ELI10" or "ELI15" would be a much less ridiculous request. It's still rather grating how people willingly denigrate themselves by comparing their own intelligence to that of a child's. What's wrong with good old "explain it to a layperson"? The fact that it does not make a cool acronym? We're not on twitter (or in high school, for that matter), learn to express yourself like an adult. And yes, I am fun at parties. :)

threatripper 6y ago

I think that most kids already know what a satellite looks like. Those trash cans that often have solar cell wings and some satellite dishes. They fly way up in the sky. Gravity pulls you down to earth. It gives you weight. Without gravity everything on earth would start hovering and flying around like on the space station. Things in space near earth also get pulled towards earth. Orbit is if you throw something so very fast that it doesn't fall back to earth but instead moves on a circle around earth like if you have a stone on a string and spin it. On the moon you can throw a stone very far. On the moon there is no atmosphere that slows it down. If you throw the stone harder and harder it will fly very far until it gets dragged down by the moons gravity. Maybe use a cannon to throw it very fast it will fly past the horizon. If you have just the right velocity it will fly all the way around the moon and hit you in the back of your head. --- I think this topic is something that can be explained very well to kids. Also many kids are fascinated by rockets and space. The explanations and visualizations may not always be 100% accurate but I think they do the job.

pferde 6y ago
Yes, with enough explanation, you can maaaaybe, possibly, eventually come up with enough lies (simplifications) understandable by a five year old to make some kind of explanation. (The grandparent post would certainly not be enough.) But you've been caught into a hole you (and grandparent poster) have dug for yourself, by trying to explain it fully. A better explanation for a five year old would be something like: satellites all fly high above us, and we are putting more and more satellites up there, and eventually they will crash into each other, and then into other satellites, and so on, until there is nothing but broken satellites flying up there. If the kid is interested and has more questions about "how" and "why" (the favourite world exploration tools for every kid), only then it's time to introduce him or her to gravity , the fact that Earth is round, and the basics of orbital mechanics.

JshWright 6y ago

I just asked my four year old and they had no trouble with "satellite" and "gravity". I did have to give them a little bit of an explanation for "orbit" (but again, they're 4, not yet 5)