From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 04:18:43 MST
Lee:
> "Any scientist who cannot explain to an eight-
> > year-old what he is doing is a charlatan" ---Kurt Vonnegut in
> > Cat's Cradle.
Vonnegut wants to provoke. Stephen Hawking recently announced he wanted to
publish a book next year where he explained modern cosmology for twelve year
old kids. I am not that optimistic, but then...I don't have the mind of
Professor Hawking. No one expects anybody to explain time dilation, cosmic
inflation or black hole singularities to a pre-teenager in a sufficient way.
Principally it IS possible to communicate the basic facts of a science to a
high school junior without using insider slang and academic talk that
frightens even some *regular* extropians. But it is hard professional work
though, to write a popular science book without getting too academic.
Eliezer:
> "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...
Feynman is a very good example.When I read his talk about those little
arrows it appeared to me that I understood quantum electrodynamics. As a
non-physicist I have to reread it every once in a while, but the principle
of adding little arrows got stuck in my mind since the first reading.
And then his wonderful three-step-formula :
1. An electron goes from A to B.
2. A photon goes from A to B.
3. An electron emits or absorbs one photon.
If you tell a kid that these three fundamental actions explain everything in
the universe, all we eat and touch, see and smell, except the phenomena of
gravity and radioactivity, I believe this kid will ask you right away to
explain gravity and radioactivity to him. That's a great way to inflame
people and to boost their enthusiasm. But pleasant people like Feynman pop
up too seldom within one century.
> 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.
I believe one way is to find out how many steps you leave out, when you talk
about a topic, tacitly assuming your dialogue partner has the same ability
to jump that you have. I guess one important point in failing to communicate
is that your partner does not have the guts to admit at what - probably
low - step he fails to get what you mean.
Persons who I found belong to the best communicators, are editors of
publishing companies. They want to publish your book, but they feel they
must really understand every sentence you said/wrote. Some top editors are
not afraid to admit the parts they don't understand. It is their business to
understand, so they have rejected the vanity of pretending to know and
understand everything from scratch. They uncover the thinking steps you
leave out and force you to rewrite passages and then they rewrite them one
more time.
When Stephen Hawking started to write his famous book and sent 3 new pages
from Cambridge, England to his New York editor, he received 6 pages of
questions in return from him. Hawking was used to skip 5, 6 or more
thinking steps that *he* thought were common place knowledge. And he was not
at all amused that he had to rewrite his whole book several times. His
editor kept asking persistently until he thought that a moderately
intelligent human - like him - was able to understand it if only he
invested a little time and concentration.
It is this ability to put oneself in somebody else's place, daring to think
naive, and regularly talking to fairly intelligent people who are
self-confident and persistently enough to interrupt you - there are only
few, very few :-) - because they desperately want to know if Friendly
Artificial Intelligence must not have arms and legs to get around in the
world ...that you start to communicate in a different way, maybe.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:38 MST