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That's a nice clip. I think his description of the nature of explanations is relevant here though. Most phenomena, that one might like explained, or wish to un
by HarHarVeryFunny 3y ago
That's a nice clip.
I think his description of the nature of explanations is relevant here though. Most phenomena, that one might like explained, or wish to understand, aren't as irreducible (at least in terms of things familiar to the questioner) as the fundamental forces!
In terms of education, explaining things at one level of reduction, even if there is more that could be said, meaningfully increases the knowledge of the student (and allows them to ask the next question, should they be interested). This really isn't the same as an analogical "explanation" that in fact explains nothing.
- pas 3y agothe important thing is to give people a model, not just tell them a fancy story (that they can repeat later without it helping them) of course, it's easy to say that and hard to come up with good but simple models on the spot, but people don't gain knowledge by learning opaque phrases (that's how we got the whole "quantum woo" epidemic a decade or two ago)