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To be great is to be misunderstood, and Feynman was a great man. I'm still not sure who decided to abuse some quotes and invent this "razor". I don't believe F

To be great is to be misunderstood, and Feynman was a great man. I'm still not sure who decided to abuse some quotes and invent this "razor". I don't believe Feynman ever meant to overconstrain and corrupt information based on (likely incorrect) assumptions about his audience. There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. The information is either there or it isn't regardless of who can comprehend it. Losslessness is non-negotiable. The real problem is how you present that information, not whether you should leave it out. The only time you should leave something out is if it has little to no relation to the rest of what you're trying to say. > This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently deleted. Oh yeah also let's solve the "puzzle" from the middle of the blog post in Microsoft-y language everyone is familiar with by now. "This message was deleted due to your organization's retention policy, spam filter, or administrator. It temporarily remains on this device, but is at risk of being lost forever. Do you want to save a copy?" I believe in the real world Outlook doesn't even bother and has you and your message eat shit. If it was deleted it will never tell you about a cached copy and to the layperson it's just gone. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and indecision only makes communication harder.

tredigi 2y ago
> There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. This is so wrong that I can't imagine you actually meant it in the way that it quite obviously reads like. When my 3-year old just saw is favorite toy fall from the sofa because he put it in an .. unstable position, then obviously it won't help if I explain the theory of relativity to him, cause ultimately it was gravity causing the mess. It won't help either to "dumb it down" by only explaining Newton's mechanics. What he actually needs to understand is that things fall down. Why exactly can be explained later. Much later. When he goes to university perhaps, if he chooses to and still wants to know.
- lupire 2y ago
  That's not dumbing down. It's not a lie and it's not wrong.
- immibis 2y ago
  If your child doesn't understand falling, you are still saying "things fall down" instead of just saying "it's on the floor now"
- sublinear 2y ago
  I don't think we disagree at all about how to explain falling objects to a 3 year old. I did say it's best to leave out irrelevant detail. You might not like this, but full detail physics explanations are usually irrelevant to everyday life. I try to explain in terms of what's necessary to accomplish a goal, not what's necessary to fully understand. e.g. "if you tip things over close to the edge it will end up on the floor, so don't do that" As a side note, kids often put stuff in precarious places because they can't reach anywhere better. Anyway, the exceptions would be when the goal involves fully and arbitrarily defined contexts such as code or law. You can't assume much to get on with a task before being given a full explanation.

tredigi 2y ago

> There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. This is so wrong that I can't imagine you actually meant it in the way that it quite obviously reads like. When my 3-year old just saw is favorite toy fall from the sofa because he put it in an .. unstable position, then obviously it won't help if I explain the theory of relativity to him, cause ultimately it was gravity causing the mess. It won't help either to "dumb it down" by only explaining Newton's mechanics. What he actually needs to understand is that things fall down. Why exactly can be explained later. Much later. When he goes to university perhaps, if he chooses to and still wants to know.

lupire 2y ago
That's not dumbing down. It's not a lie and it's not wrong.
immibis 2y ago
If your child doesn't understand falling, you are still saying "things fall down" instead of just saying "it's on the floor now"
sublinear 2y ago
I don't think we disagree at all about how to explain falling objects to a 3 year old. I did say it's best to leave out irrelevant detail. You might not like this, but full detail physics explanations are usually irrelevant to everyday life. I try to explain in terms of what's necessary to accomplish a goal, not what's necessary to fully understand. e.g. "if you tip things over close to the edge it will end up on the floor, so don't do that" As a side note, kids often put stuff in precarious places because they can't reach anywhere better. Anyway, the exceptions would be when the goal involves fully and arbitrarily defined contexts such as code or law. You can't assume much to get on with a task before being given a full explanation.