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Feynman's Razor

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Feynman's Razor

If an expert can't understand your explanation, you've dumbed it down
too much!

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Defender of the Basic
Jun 07, 2024
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Feynman's Razor

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    "I can't read the articles in the paper. I don't know what they
    mean. I don't know what kind of a machine it was just because it
    weighed seven tons. And there are not sixty two kinds of
    particles, and I would like to know what atomic bullet he is
    referring to"

    -- Richard Feynman, The Meaning of it All, page 38 in PDF & 88 in
    the book

I've been using this as my north star when explaining technical
matters to laypeople. Basically, if someone who is capable of
understanding the thing read my description, would they get it? If
not, then it's not a adequate explanation.

I was thinking about this recently because of a HN discussion (https:
//news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40535868) where people were making fun
of this nonsensical error message:

    This message can't be saved because it no longer exists. It can
    only be discarded. Make sure you copy the contents of the message
    before you discard if you want to use them later.

what the hell does this mean? The message doesn't exist, but I can
copy its contents? If I can copy its contents...why can't I save it??
If it doesn't exist why do I have to discard it??

My favorite comment was from lisper who said basically, "guys, chill,
there is a legit technical edge case here, it's just difficult to
explain to the layperson. How would YOU do it?"

That is a great question! Here was one person's attempt that I liked:

    "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."

many scoffed at this though. Because "the layperson doesn't
understand things like `cache` and `server`"

ok but do you see the problem here? The original error message
already doesn't tell me anything, even if I am perfectly capable of
understanding it. It's assuming the average person is too dumb/
doesn't care about understanding the root cause, and treating ALL
users this way.

What's the real harm in using the words "server" and "cache" ? The
user who doesn't care about understanding isn't going to get much out
of it either way, I can concede that. But those that do can and will
google those terms, and maybe they will learn something. And you can
be sure there WILL in fact be users who understand it who will
absolutely appreciate it.

I think this is very much Feynman's point: he didn't have flowery
unrealistic expectations of the average person. He just said, look, 
there's a LOT of variance in the skill & interest of people. Why are
we not even giving people a chance?

"the whole idea that the average person is unintelligent is a very
dangerous idea"

here's the full page:

 
[https]

I caught myself violating this recently, when working on my 
"substack-proxy" tool (to get around twitter censorship of substack
posts). It automatically makes a request to my server to create a URL
when you copy/paste something in. But I noticed it was making too
many requests, if people were typing/editing the URL

 
[https]

so I just added a delay of ~1 second. Initially it said "loading...".
But this is wrong, it's not actually loading. The better thing is to
just say what is happening (that it's waiting for you to finish
typing)

 
[https]

I think this is important because it just accurately reflects the
state of the machine. It's not dumbing it down, it's not assuming
what info the user needs or doesn't need.

Consider what happens in an error case where it's stuck. It's more
obvious that something is wrong when it's stuck on "waiting for you
to finish typing" than "loading"

You don't have to explain everything, just be faithful when you do

I'm not saying you have to teach everyone everything about your
software. That's too high of a bar (and it is true that often the
user doesn't care, they just want it to work)

For the "message no longer exists" thing, I think it would have been
perfectly fine to say:

    Error code 1027: file cannot be saved.
   
    - [Copy contents]
    - [Delete file]

what's happening? why can't the file be saved? you can google "error
code 1027". If you don't care, these are your options.

I think this is better than giving the user a weird/incorrect model
about how computers work (that makes it harder for them to reason
about this & other systems)

Examples of passing/failing Feynman's razor?

If I stumble on other examples I'll share it here. I'd love it if you
sent me anything you stumble on or add it in the comments below!

  * This 1980's TV show "bits and bytes" that explains how computers
    work to people that have never used one before, without dumbing
    it down

      + in the same episode they explain (1) how to turn the computer
        on, how to press "enter" to input text into the computer (2)
        and also, what binary code is

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