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> In my experience there is a strong correlation between depth of understanding and being able to communicate a topic effectively. I claim that I would be able

> In my experience there is a strong correlation between depth of understanding and being able to communicate a topic effectively. I claim that I would be able to explain some rather deep results from my area of mathematical expertise quite effectively. But for the ordinary person to understand my explanations, we would have to start with a full-time course about elemetary basics that lasts for quite some months. On other words: just because you are able to communicate a topic effectively does not mean that the other side has the necessary background knowledge to understand your good explanations.

Voultapher 2y ago
I fully agree. However here we are not talking about laymen, we are talking about people with PHDs in related or exactly this field. If they can't understand it, who is left?
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > However here we are not talking about laymen, we are talking about people with PHDs in related or exactly this field. In particular in mathematics, research areas are quite isolated from each other, so even for a people from a related (sometimes even from the same) field, it typically takes a very serious effort to gain the necessary knowledge to understand a proof. This is also a reason why paper reviews take so much longer in mathematics than in many other academic disciplines.
  - Voultapher 2y ago
    Genuine question, does this level of complexity lead to higher rates of mistakes, such as faulty proofs passing review? I'm asking this because in my field of expertise it's a common correlation, that the more complex and arcane a piece of code is, the lower the chance is that issues will be discovered during review. In addition the chance of issues grows superlinear with complexity, as more control flow and invariants needs to be tracked in error prone human minds.
lenkite 2y ago
So you can't explain your stuff to an 8 year old child like Richard Feynman insisted ?
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > So you can't explain your stuff to an 8 year old child like Richard Feynman insisted ? I can explain stuff to an 8-year old child, but a very long part of my explanation will be about bringing the child "from zero to graduate-level knowledge" in mathematics. The solution to explaining stuff to an 8-year old child is thus not by making the material sufficiently stupid to make it understandable to a typical 8-year old, but to make the 8-year old sufficiently smart and knowledgeable to understand the topic.

Voultapher 2y ago

I fully agree. However here we are not talking about laymen, we are talking about people with PHDs in related or exactly this field. If they can't understand it, who is left?

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> However here we are not talking about laymen, we are talking about people with PHDs in related or exactly this field. In particular in mathematics, research areas are quite isolated from each other, so even for a people from a related (sometimes even from the same) field, it typically takes a very serious effort to gain the necessary knowledge to understand a proof. This is also a reason why paper reviews take so much longer in mathematics than in many other academic disciplines.
- Voultapher 2y ago
  Genuine question, does this level of complexity lead to higher rates of mistakes, such as faulty proofs passing review? I'm asking this because in my field of expertise it's a common correlation, that the more complex and arcane a piece of code is, the lower the chance is that issues will be discovered during review. In addition the chance of issues grows superlinear with complexity, as more control flow and invariants needs to be tracked in error prone human minds.

lenkite 2y ago

So you can't explain your stuff to an 8 year old child like Richard Feynman insisted ?

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> So you can't explain your stuff to an 8 year old child like Richard Feynman insisted ? I can explain stuff to an 8-year old child, but a very long part of my explanation will be about bringing the child "from zero to graduate-level knowledge" in mathematics. The solution to explaining stuff to an 8-year old child is thus not by making the material sufficiently stupid to make it understandable to a typical 8-year old, but to make the 8-year old sufficiently smart and knowledgeable to understand the topic.