6 ms·
Explain it to me like I'm ten
- 01284a7e 2mo ago[flagged]
- ranger_danger 2mo agoI don't think the article itself was intended to be written for a 10-year-old to understand it.
- nemosaltat 2mo agoNeither did the author > If you are reading this column you definitely aren’t a typical 10-year-old, but the image of the bewildered 10-year-old gives the expert an anchor to help them slow down and simplify [0] [0] TFA
- rpdillon 2mo agoThe blog post isn't directed at 10-year-olds. In fact, you're pulling a phrase from a paragraph that's describing exactly how you should not speak when talking to a 10-year-old. > The simplest constraint for anyone trying to explain a complex topic is to accept the request to “explain it to me like I’m 10 years old”. What’s packed into that request is, vividly exaggerated, the reminder that what seems obvious to an expert is often incomprehensible to the listener. Technical jargon and fusillades of acronyms are often used to convey an explanation that has been denuded of all the foundations and context that might allow it to make sense.
- 01284a7e 2mo ago[flagged]
- AnimalMuppet 2mo agoTen-year-olds don't need advice on how to explain something like the listener is ten.
- cwmoore 2mo ago“Explain it like I am an adult.” - 10yo
- nemosaltat 2mo agoIt might be helpful to note that this article was written for the FT (as he mentions at the very bottom.) While it aphoristically may make a “pre out of you and me,” I presume neither the author, nor the subscribership of FT _are_ indeed (or wish to be) constrained to the language of a typical 10-year-old. Presumably the same would apply to the readership of HN. We don’t know if the author _can_ explain it like we’re ten, but I think we can be reasonably certain they understandably chose not to.
- atoav 2mo agoGood thing they never claimed to be writing in that style then. Not sure what you're working yourself up over here. Authors are allowed to write about a method of writing without having to apply it themselves.
- Chris2048 2mo agoIs "explaining it like I'm ten" a complex topic?
- kelnos 2mo agoThe author can do that, but didn't for literary effect. And he can do that because his audience is FT readers, not 10-year-olds.
- rzzzt 2mo agoIt's when multiple soldiers are ordered to fire their guns very quickly, either everyone at once or one after another.
- nemosaltat 2mo agoIndeed, TFA isn’t exactly pellucid
- vova_hn2 2mo agoI think that the author is doing it deliberately, to put the reader in the shoes of someone who has a hard time understanding some of the words, and reinforce his point. As a non-native English speaker there are 4 words in this article that I had to look up, which is significantly higher than a typical article from HN frontpage (usually it's 0, occasionally 1). If anyone curious, the words are: pellucid, fusillades, pram (idk, why I never heard it. I knew the word "stroller", of course, but I never thought about different kinds of strollers), octogenarian (this one I could have guessed from Latin roots and context, was lazy).
- hn_go_brrrrr 2mo agoPram is common in British English. I'm guessing you learned US English, which doesn't use it.
- KineticLensman 2mo agoYes, as slang for ‘perambulator’, which is basically ‘stroller’
- ninalanyon 2mo agoNot really a stroller is a pushchair. A pram is a kind of mobile bed for babies.
- KineticLensman 2mo agoFair enough. In my defence, I was coming at it etymologically, where (according to the OED), a perambulator is 'A person who walks or travels through or about a place' (hence 'walker') OR 'A carriage for a baby or young child, which may be pushed along by a person on foot. Now usually shortened to pram [...] a cradle mounted on four wheels'. So 'mobile bed' is a perfect description
- thaumasiotes 2mo agoThe word pram doesn't exist in American English, true, but you'll learn it anyway if you ever read Peter Pan.
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago> No ten year old knows that word. Why would you think that?
- esikich 2mo agoBecause they pretty much just learned to read?
- singpolyma3 2mo ago... 5 years prior
- esikich 2mo agoWell I've got 38 years of reading experience and have never seen that word.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- basscomm 2mo agoIf you can't glean the definition from context, anyone 10 years old or older should be able to use a dictionary.
- esikich 2mo agoCan a 10 year old do that? Wtf are we talking about.
- basscomm 2mo agoWe were talking about how explaining something to a 10-year-old sometimes means that you use words that a 10-year-old doesn't know. And that a 10-year-old should have the ability to use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words. I was also implying that you, and I assumed that you were more than 10 years old, could also use a dictionary to look up words you weren't familiar with if you aren't able to glean their definition from context. Can a 10-year-old use a dictionary? That's approximately fifth grade in the US. By 10 years old, they should be able to use a dictionary and encyclopedias to look up stuff. At the very least they should be able to go to merriam-webster.com or wherever and type in an unfamiliar word to get a definition.
- jimmygrapes 2mo agoPirate books use it a lot!
- Smaug123 2mo agoI just checked on Gutenberg and was surprised to find that Hornblower doesn't use the word! But the second sentence of the first Sherlock Holmes book (A Study in Scarlet) introduces Watson as having been a member of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.
- hny6epwg93 2mo agoI disagree but respect the reasoning
- FinnLobsien 2mo agoI think constraints essentially force you to reevaluate the thing from base principles because you add a condition that’s incompatible with the default way of doing things. I think this is also why hackathons work: You can’t afford the bikeshedding we often do to avoid the hard work because you need to ship something by a deadline 1/500th of most of your normal deadlines, so all of your effort is concentrated into what moves the core work forward. What gets proven in hackathons often become features, products, or companies later - even if they’re things that would be ruled out in any planning meeting because they seem too hard/laborious.
- bariumbitmap 2mo agoI'd say a lot of the value in "explain it to me like I'm ten" is just expending more time and effort in explaining something. People of all ages respond to engaging writing and clever analogies, and that tends to accompany the style of writing for a younger or broader audience.
- viralreferapp 2mo ago[flagged]
- temporallobe 2mo agoMy favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As usual, it very much depends on the target audience.
- necovek 2mo agoIncidentally, that's my favourite quote from Blaise Pascal: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/
- asdfasvea 2mo agoMy favorite quote for 10 years was from my 1993 college math professor: You will never go wrong attributing a pithy quote to Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain. And then the internet became popular.
- necovek 2mo agoI think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?
- madcaptenor 2mo agoFranklin couldn't predict the future. It was Twain, saying you'd never go wrong attributing a quote to Franklin.
- necovek 2mo agoRespecting a timeline only matters in some universes, and in the Universe of Quotes, it certainly does not!
- 2mo ago
- effnorwood 2mo ago[dead]
- gerdesj 2mo ago"puzzling than pellucid" Pellucid might be cromullant but it ain't pervasive. I have never heard that word and I've heard quite a few. If I had to guess: it might be American (US) in situ wankery only, for the use of. Might be wrong.
- pbhjpbhj 2mo agoHarford, the author of the OC, is a learned man of at least middle-age (sorry!). He has been a journalist for decades. I suspect he may have had an education including Latin (per-lucid => pellucid) making that word choice far more natural. But really it's a poetic pairing of punchy adjectives amplified by alliteration! I'm a fan of his work generally. This piece landed well with me, I like to read less used vocabulary too. So often I can't express myself naturally because people don't share my word sense; it's liberating to release those bounds when writing for a more academic audience; as Hartford clearly was here. I did spot an error: >soldier a rifle They mean shoulder, of course. Surprised if a newspaper editor or personal spellchecker missed that; perhaps it was left in as bait for social media comments!? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Harford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Harford
- SoftTalker 2mo ago> But really it's a poetic pairing of punchy adjectives amplified by alliteration! Silence! You bubble-headed boobie! -- Dr. Smith
- ahazred8ta 2mo agoJonathan Harris gave an interview where he described the suit-wearing stuntman Bob May as "A very strange individual, even by the standards of the 1960s. Whenever I said 'you bubble-headed booby', I wasn't talking to the robot."
- matherial 2mo agoI agree, but not everyone can. I've worked with several people who were top experts in their field and absolutely sucked at accessible explanations. The author alludes to it here: "the very expertise that makes the expert worth consulting also makes it hard for the expert to imagine what it was like to know nothing about the topic" - but that also carries over to ELI5 or ELI10. Another problem is that, to be frank, experts sometimes don't know how to explain certain concepts. For example, you can be adept in calculus without knowing where the rules come from. All you can do is relay the rulebook to someone else. Another problem, I think, is that we're actually overindexing on ELI5 / ELI10, a problem compounded by YouTube educators and LLMs. Many skills are hard to learn and require some trial, error, and hands-on practice. It's easy to come up with an endless supply of childlike metaphors. It's a lot harder to actually teach someone that way.
- mahdi7d1 2mo agoWith both ELI5 and this title, the hidden assumption which is generally correct is that "I don't remember much from my education specifically middle and highschool". Well I do remember my highschool subjects and I feel like there is a chasm between highly detailed technical content created for other profesionals and watered down versions for 5 year olds. I don't see that many "explain to me like I've finished highschool" content.
- jamilton 2mo agoI think at some point you just have to try to read the technical content then see what you don't understand and figure that out.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoYou're asking for "explain like you respect my intelligence"
- baxtr 2mo agoI think OPs comment is about education and not intelligence per se.
- watercast 2mo agoI used to work in higher ed. The reason you don't see this is that it's harder to produce (usably) than an eli5; there is little incentive as there aren't many advanced enough to want it who aren't also in walled off training; and there are often many tiers between layperson and professional such that connecting the right audience with the right material is its own problem. I agree it is terribly frustrating.
- mjg59 2mo agoI teach OS security for a masters course. I don't know where my students are for any given semester - it's a mixture between experts who need a certification (I have taught someone who literally wrote the book on a major OS's security model) and people who have ended up on security entirely by accident. It is extremely hard to write something that lands for that entire range. "Finished highschool" is really not a precise determinator in the way "I am literally 5" is.
- karim79 2mo agoReally enjoyed the read. Thank you OP.
- 8bitsrule 2mo agoSome Einstein quotes (uncited) on the topic of explaining things: https://www.azquotes.com/author/4399-Albert_Einstein/tag/understanding https://www.azquotes.com/author/4399-Albert_Einstein/tag/und... including (something like) the most usual one: "You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother."
- hsuduebc2 2mo agoI must recommend "50 Things That Made the Modern Economy", 10-15 minutes audio episodes, very entertaining and educational.
- aristofun 2mo agoI have to admit that is the biggest challenge for me in working at modern IT companies - to understand the language. I attribute that to me not being a native speaker. I always feel they all speak like Im 100, not ten. Because of abundance of peculiar terminology, unusual ways of doing and describing things, extreme diversity of accents etc sometimes it feels like people intentionally make things more complicated than they are. It’s sometimes harder for me to understand and make sense than most boring philosophical lectures on youtube.
- philipallstar 2mo ago> a notch in the back of the helmet designed to accommodate hair buns allowed all soldiers, regardless of hair-do, to raise their heads while prone. “A new, more meticulous sizing process that benefitted women benefitted everyone,” Epstein writes. This isn't a story of accommodating women magically accommodating everyone. It's spending lots of money allowing something for women because they're women, that of course benefits men as well. It's just you wouldn't normally spend that much money on something cosmetic for men; you'd just shave their hair off, so the money can go to something more useful (or not cost the taxpayer as much).
- K0balt 2mo agoI use “ELI 58” with my coding agent all The time. It’s perfect lol
- tsoukase 2mo agoThe whole ELIx implies that an advanced narrator has to simplify things for another adult. Why not just call it a simplified ELI-at-my-age?