From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 02:12:22 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Hubert writes (in praise of good explanations)
>
>>A neglected form of intelligence and creativity that is not captured with
>>IQ measurement for example is the ability to jump down from the academical
>>horse and explain connections and causalities about black holes in an
>>everyday language without involving three letter words and mathematical
>>formula so that Average Joe might get encouraged to lay aside his horoscope
>>papers and to reinforce this initial knowledge.
>
> Yes, quite so. Also, sometimes I wonder just how well people
> understand things who cannot express what they know in every-
> day language. "Any scientist who cannot explain to an eight-
> year-old what he is doing is a charlatan" ---Kurt Vonnegut in
> Cat's Cradle.
"A witty saying proves nothing." I used to believe the eight-year-old
principle. I really did. Richard Feynman succeeded in explaining the
theory of little arrows to me when I was nine (Q.E.D.), and I have on
occasion tried to explain General Relativity to very small relatives...
...but eventually, things got complicated.
I think the universe is a deeper place than Kurt Vonnegut realized. It's
very easy to *think* you've conveyed understanding, when all you've really
done is taught someone shiny new words that sound impressive to them but
don't really connect to anything else in their minds.
I don't know how to convey understanding. Sometimes people catch the
pattern of what I say, or at least they seem to, but it seems more due to
their own ability to fill in the tremendous gaps in what I say than to any
writing ability of my own. It works, sort of, a little, if all you need
is for a few geniuses to understand what you say. But how do I talk to
anyone else? I don't know.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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