[HN Gopher] Feynman's Razor
___________________________________________________________________
Feynman's Razor
Author : mmoustafa
Score : 341 points
Date : 2024-06-07 19:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (defenderofthebasic.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (defenderofthebasic.substack.com)
| cde-v wrote:
| That isn't a razor...
| drewcoo wrote:
| nods to Crocodile Dundee . . .
| moffkalast wrote:
| Just physicists havin' fun.
| px43 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
|
| > In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that
| allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for
| a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions.
|
| I'd say maybe the rule here allows one to eliminate the useless
| parts of an explanation, thus simplifying the process of coming
| up with explanations for complicated things.
| cde-v wrote:
| I'd say it is too reactive to be a razor as opposed to a rule
| that would prevent dumbing it down too far to begin with.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I still wouldn't call it a razor.
|
| A razor is when you have a large number of potential
| explanations and want a simple rule to check if it worth
| further scrutiny. Occam's razor is the most famous, it says
| that the simplest explanation is probably the right one,
| Hanlon's razor is another one, it says that stupidity is more
| likely than malice.
|
| Here it is just a guideline "don't dumb down", but there is
| no simple rule that tells if a message is dumb or not. For
| example, in the topic of science, a razor could be "numbers
| without error bars are dumb". It only takes a few seconds to
| see or not to see error bars, so you can quickly drop the
| ones without to focus on those that have.
| sfink wrote:
| How so? If you have a pile of explanations, you now have a way
| of dividing up the pile into ones you may want to keep and ones
| you should discard. That way is by asking whether an expert
| would understand what you're talking about.
|
| Occam's Razor takes a pile of explanations and discards all
| those with extra assumptions or components. Feynman's discards
| all those that don't convey anything to an expert. I once told
| my son that any good story involves surprise, a relatable
| character, and some mention of a giant talking carrot. All of
| those are razors. (Some razors might be more useful than
| others...)
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Where's the metarazor that helps us weed out what is or isn't a
| razor?
| drewcoo wrote:
| Feynman confused pedagogical skill with expertise in a given
| field. He insisted that experts could explain things. No, that's
| what a teacher does. Feynman was good at both and apparently had
| no one to challenge him on his claim that they were the same.
|
| It's possible to be a great teacher without being an expert on
| given subject matter. And it's possible to have the most
| expertise but be inscrutable.
|
| In the case of this quote, Feynman wasn't talking about expertise
| at all, but about explaining a thing with enough relevant details
| to be understood. Without those, a layman would not understand
| either.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Maybe. I think Feynman had a point.
|
| From my experience "experts" who are unable to explain well
| typically have an incomplete understanding.
|
| Language and knowledge are linked to a degree.
|
| Personally I have had subject I thought I was an expert an and
| when I went to explain them I realized the shortcomings of my
| understanding. Later when I was truly an expert my ability to
| explain them improved.
| mlyle wrote:
| > From my experience "experts" who are unable to explain well
| typically have an incomplete understanding.
|
| You also have to give yourself permission to step several
| tiers back and think about how to distill "next pieces" into
| what they know.
|
| I also find myself handwaving away a whole lot of edge cases
| or rigor away in order to have a bite-sized step that will
| help the student make progress.
|
| > Personally I have had subject I thought I was an expert an
| and when I went to explain them I realized the shortcomings
| of my understanding. Later when I was truly an expert my
| ability to explain them improved.
|
| Conversely, I find every time I've done this exercise of
| stepping back and breaking it down for someone else, my
| knowledge has deepened.
| exe34 wrote:
| My biggest challenge with explaining things to people is the
| stuff they already know that's either wrong or not relevant.
| To save the effort of finding out later, I now ask people to
| explain it to me first, tell me everything they know about
| this, before I can figure out how far back I have to step
| before explaining it all.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm also a "What do you think happens?" person. It both
| gives me a place to start, and a bunch of stuff to peg
| other stuff onto that I'm about to say. If you can link
| points of a good explanation to points of a bad, but
| intuitive naive explanation, it makes it easier to remember
| the good explanation.
| lupire wrote:
| That is the the special skill of a teacher. But any expert
| should be able to competently explain something to someone
| who isn't harboring a mistaken belief.
|
| Look at the ABC Conjecture catastrophe.
| programjames wrote:
| I think the ability to explain well requires you to be an
| expert, but also be able to quickly trace back all the
| definitions to what your student already knows.
| imabotbeep2937 wrote:
| Feynman was not a great teacher. Lots of people love his
| lectures now. But they're not getting graded on it.
|
| Actual students were considerably more mixed. Obviously
| individuals vary so if I post how most of his students were
| totally lost in class, they'll post how one student went on to
| win a Nobel prize and say gotcha.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are two types of teaching. One is teaching things to a
| complete beginner. The other is teaching things to someone
| who has already mastered the mechanics of a subject.
|
| Feynman was a world class second type teacher. If you already
| know how to work with physics equations and solve problems,
| then Feynman's lectures will improve your understanding
| considerably. The simplification process he does, gives you a
| grand understanding of the theory.
|
| Due to this, much of Feynman's pedagogy is not suitable for
| the first type of teaching. And should not be used as such.
| exe34 wrote:
| This reminds me of University Physics by Young and
| Freedman. The things I already understood were really
| dumbed down, and the things I didn't understand were
| inscrutable. I ended up using it as a door stop for the
| rest of the year until it fell apart and I had to throw it
| away. It was one of the first ones where the book came with
| a code that you had to use online to do the homework, so
| the book was also useless as second hand, after being
| useless when bought new.
| lupire wrote:
| His famous lectures were a first draft experiment for a
| class, not a "write a book on Sabbatical" textbook.
|
| For a first draft, they are incredible.
| scarmig wrote:
| I agree this is true if your goal is to inform. If, however, your
| goal is to increase clicks, decrease support tickets, and get
| engagement, I'd be surprised if being technically descriptive and
| accurate is better than dumbing it down to the point of
| inaccuracy.
|
| None of that is to say that I agree with the goal of engagement
| over conveying information.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| It's important to begin violently opposing, not just
| disagreeing with, the theory of engagement and revenue
| creation. It must become dangerous indeed for those who decide
| to pursue those goals.
| exe34 wrote:
| If they pay your bills, it is very dangerous to say anything
| in fact.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| Collaborators always have their excuses, and yet freedom
| fighters always seem to ignore those very excuses. What
| makes the difference in outlook?
| immibis wrote:
| The latter doesn't value human life, even their own.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| You think the person building technologies that cause
| human suffering values human life? Come on now.
| exe34 wrote:
| freedom fighters take calculated risks, they believe
| there's a prize that they can win.
|
| collaborators think that they are helping minimise harm
| and using the leverage/finance to help a lot more people
| than they could otherwise help/contribute to. nobody ever
| woke up and said, today I will do evil things. Man does
| not err willingly.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| That's what you think; I think plenty of people have
| shown that they wake up and prioritise themselves and
| only themselves. They don't think in terms of good or
| evil. They think "will this benefit me? Will this make me
| more money? Give me more status? More power?"
| exe34 wrote:
| have they told you this, or are you saying you are able
| to hear their private thoughts?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| My mistake for engaging with you; you have checkmated me.
| You are asking me for my sources now, whereas I should
| have asked you first what your source was for your claim
| about "nobody choosing to do evil". Alas, that now looks
| weak and desperate.
| exe34 wrote:
| it's from Socrates, as channelled by Plato.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Do you realize that you're on the Ycombinator news site?
|
| Do you realize that ycomb is an incubator of startups?
|
| Ycomb actively engages in the 'engagement and revenue
| creation' as S.O.P.. It's kind of their whole schtick. It's
| most people's schtick because that's how we feed ourselves.
|
| How else would one frame the 'information age' except through
| engagement and revenue creation? Engagement = data. Data =
| money. Money = stuff, fun, alimony, child support, back
| taxes, and a drinking habit. I'm just sayin'.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| You're saying a bunch of nothing
| scrubs wrote:
| Why bring that up? We all know it's BS, and the people who do
| it are expletive deleted morons. We're interested in what the
| smart people do .. and even better smart with a touch of
| class.
|
| The older I get the less and less patience I have with people
| pushing the "it's all politics", "everybody lies and manages
| up/down and if you don't you're a fool", or it's all about
| image.
|
| While there's smallish elements of truth to each in
| individual cases, this just cannot be the knee jerk reaction.
|
| Know BS when you see it then say it. It's not tough.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| The corruption is systematic and automated, so the struggle
| and response must be systematic and automated as well as
| forceful. Not knee jerk. But more organized than simple
| individuals doing the right thing. And much more forceful.
|
| It must become very dangerous to be an exploiter of the
| human condition. Must become very dangerous for
| capitalists, executives, marketers, and so on.
|
| Force and systematization/automation are required to gain
| power. And power is required to end capitalism.
| scrubs wrote:
| You've got too much time on your hands with all this
| jibber-jabber. Maybe you should find something to do me
| thinks...
| ioblomov wrote:
| The quest for clicks has definitely aggravated the problem but,
| as Murray Gell-Man once noted, journalism and dumbing down are
| almost synonymous...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
| soared wrote:
| Haven't considered that for reducing the number of support
| tickets, something to consider
| hifrote wrote:
| Funny thing is I think this about Feynman's own writing for "the
| layperson".
|
| I think things like Feynman's "little arrows" descriptions in QED
| only muddied and added to the mystique and mysticism of the
| physics he loved.
|
| Which is interesting because his written lectures[1], though, in
| their breadth and complexity require effort, seem as if they are
| intended for experts while being approachable to "the layperson".
|
| My only real complaint about those lectures is that even when I
| understood I rarely felt I had actionable tools for that new
| knowledge.
|
| The best descriptions of physics I feel that can sufficiently
| inform "the layperson" are ones that implements the physics in
| code[2], or through numerical methods.
|
| [1] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
|
| [2] https://www.lpfp.io/
| jarvist wrote:
| What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" / rotating
| clock hands in the QED book? I can't think of a more simple
| metaphor for the exponential of a complex phase, exp(i omega
| t). I suppose you could try and do it with more commonplace
| trigonometric functions, but then you lose the simple vector
| interpretation of adding the contributions. Or are you arguing
| that you should always try and teach complex numbers and the
| Euler identity to avoid strained analogies?
| hifrote wrote:
| > What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" /
| rotating clock hands in the QED book?
|
| It's difficult to articulate, but two aspects are:
|
| The amount of times I have only confused people more by
| trying to explain even modular arithmetic by calling on the
| clock analogy.
|
| And the fact that the little "clock hands" are a complete
| abstraction from both the physics being described and the
| mathematical models that describe that physics. ~"Quantum
| physics is just about adding clocks?"
|
| > I can't think of a more simple metaphor for the exponential
| of a complex phase, exp(i omega t).
|
| As I noted in the gp I think code implementations or
| numerical methods should be the goal.
|
| The solution to the confusion about referencing clocks when
| talking about modular arithmetic was just to write down a
| complete numerical example, ie all natural numbers mod 6 up
| to 10, and use that as the abstraction for further
| discussion: negatives, reals, periodicity, infinities,
| applications, et al.
| red75prime wrote:
| And after you'll learn negatives, reals, periodicity, etc.,
| you'll find that a rotating clock hand is a completely fine
| analogy. So, maybe it's not that bad to have this analogy
| from the beginning to not lose the forest behind the trees.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > As I noted in the gp I think code implementations or
| numerical methods should be the goal.
|
| I'm 100% with Feynman on this one. I loved the book because
| of the intuition it gave me about quantum physics. He even
| has this amazing analogy for how to teach arithmetic
| without numbers. Now, you could absolutely claim that he
| fails in his analogies (I'm not among the .1% of people if
| not less who can debate that), but I can still say claim
| confidently that math is not the goal. Abstraction is not
| intuition.
| zarzavat wrote:
| In mathematics, geometric and algebraic explanations are
| complementary.
|
| If you plot a function, you can observe many properties
| easily, for instance where does it cross the axes? Is it
| symmetrical? How quickly does it grow?
|
| However there are also many properties that are easier to
| observe algebraically. For example if you plot x^n you
| can see if n is odd or even, but you can't see what value
| n has because x^10 looks very much like x^12. But if you
| have the algebraic representation you can read it off.
|
| The issue with Feynman's clocks is that he only provides
| the geometric explanation (what physicists would call
| "intuition"), and not the algebraic explanation.
|
| This only helps two kinds of people: 1) people not
| capable of understanding the algebra, 2) people who
| already know the algebra and want to develop intuition.
|
| For the third group of 3) people are capable of
| understanding the algebra but haven't learned it yet,
| only talking about clocks is a bit dizzying.
| lupire wrote:
| I strongly disagree. The geometric explanation lets you
| understand the main concept without the hassle of
| algebra. The algebra isn't needed for these fundamental
| topics.
|
| There's no requirement to do opaque algebra before
| approaching intuition.
|
| Feynman invented Feynman Diagrams, which are a major
| contribution to Physics because they avoid algebra, and
| physicists are certainly capable of algebra.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > people are capable of understanding the algebra but
| haven't learned it yet
|
| Those people are perfectly capable of taking any other
| textbook. What value is there in another book that
| explains the subject in the same exact way?
|
| Besides, almost all of those people will have a much
| easier time picking the other textbook if they read the
| intuitive explanation first.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > The amount of times I have only confused people more by
| trying to explain...
|
| That's not Feynman's fault!
| hifrote wrote:
| > Or are you arguing that you should always try and teach
| complex numbers and the Euler identity to avoid strained
| analogies?
|
| I think it's okay to be explain complex numbers. I think it's
| just best to additionally explain why. That is, show why
| (real, imaginary) is a better numerical system than the more
| broadly taught (x,y) of the 2 dimensional space being
| explored.
|
| As for the Euler identity I suppose you could include that
| when explaining why we use the exp() function, which is
| because it plays nicer with integration and derivation than
| other numerical representations.
|
| I want the analogies to be representative of the work rather
| than my own mental model of it.
| ajkjk wrote:
| In fact he didn't like the lectures and thought they largely
| failed at pedagogy. The actual Caltech students who listened to
| them didn't get much out of them. Instead they were primarily
| useful in explaining the subject to _other physicists_. I think
| he says this in the foreword? (if not, I read it somewhere
| else).
| programjames wrote:
| I recommend Sussman's SICP for physics in code:
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262028967/
| nostrebored wrote:
| The original message is enough information to deduce what's
| probably going on as an expert and not feel alien to the customer
| base.
|
| What's the point of conveying root causes to the user? In this
| case the error tells you what you need to know: copy the message.
| Send it again if you want.
|
| The point of communication isn't always education. This isn't a
| razor. It doesn't do anything to help you consider audience. It
| will lead you to bad conclusions.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The original message is enough information to deduce what's
| probably going on as an expert_
|
| I dunno, I had no idea what the original message was trying to
| convey; it wasn't until I read lisper's comment that I got what
| was going on.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Sometimes it feels like the trend online right now is to design
| everything to make you stupider, on the theory that if it asks
| less of you will go along with it more easily. For instance,
| Google results seem more "least common denominator" every month.
| No longer can I search for something subtle and get subtle
| results; their algorithm pushes me towards and unhelpful answers.
| Maybe it's because lots of people do respond better to this, so
| it shows up better in the data. Anyway I hate it. I would like to
| gradually learn more as I interact with things, and engage with
| the complexity in systems, not have it hidden from me.
| amelius wrote:
| If you design a system for idiots, only idiots will use it.
| toss1 wrote:
| Sadly there's also the old saying that "no one ever went
| broke underestimating the intelligence of the average
| customer" (P.T. Barnum ?).
| gwd wrote:
| I mean, yeah, there are certainly plenty of business models
| that rely on people not understanding what it is that
| they're buying. If you want to make your living that way, I
| can believe it's not that hard. But that doesn't mean that
| money _can 't_ be made by selling to intelligent people and
| attempting to educate the less informed. I know how I
| prefer to spend my short time here on Earth.
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe at some point Google will release a Classic version of
| the algo like Coca-Cola did.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see, but my guess is that it would
| be exploited to death very quickly. There is a constant cat
| and mouse game between search engine and those who want to
| "optimize" their results. Going back and staying there would
| be like having the mouse stand still, not good.
|
| It would have to be a different product, developed in
| parallel, rather than a snapshot of the past.
| xmprt wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. It's a cat and mouse game
| but the cat can't catch two different mice. If the classic
| Google algorithm is significantly different from the new
| one, SEO that's targeting the new algorithm wouldn't be as
| successful with the old one which is also barely used (so
| no one would bother optimizing for the old algorithm).
|
| Then make it so the new algorithm penalizes people abusing
| the old/simple algorithm (and since the old algorithm is
| simple, it should be simpler to catch people abusing it
| too).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Obviously the SEO scoundrels would make _two pages_ ,
| each optimized for different algorithm. Websites are
| effectively free to make.
| lukan wrote:
| Coca-Cola used cocaine again?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It certainly uses Coca leaves.
|
| > Coca-Cola might have taken the cocaine out of their
| drink, but the company still needed to source coca leaves,
| which became more and more challenging. By 1914, the
| American federal government had officially restricted
| cocaine to medicinal use. So, as the government began
| debating an official import ban, Coke sent its lobbyists
| into the fray, pushing for a special exemption. Their
| fingerprints are all over the Harrison Act of 1922, which
| banned the import of coca leaves, but included a section
| permitting the use of "de-cocainized coca leaves or
| preparations made therefrom, or to any other preparations
| of coca leaves that do not contain cocaine." Only two
| companies were given special permits by the act to import
| those coca leaves for processing -- one of which was
| Maywood Chemical Works, of Maywood, New Jersey, whose
| biggest customer was the Coca-Cola company.
|
| > This special loophole would carry over in every piece of
| anti-narcotics legislation that followed, including
| international agreements restricting the global trade in
| coca leaves. Over the ensuing decades, the company
| continued to demonstrate the lengths to which they would go
| to protect their supply, from supporting opposition to the
| traditional use of coca, to developing a secret coca farm
| of their own on Hawai`i.
|
| https://www.eater.com/23620802/cocaine-in-coca-cola-coke-
| rec...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The web the original algo was designed for no longer exists.
| civilized wrote:
| Many of you will be familiar with this story: military pilot
| gear was once designed for the average person, but then they
| realized that actually, most people deviate significantly from
| the average in at least one way. So they made the gear
| adjustable, and that greatly improved performance and reduced
| mistakes.
|
| Why is it that in tech we are often told a seemingly contrary
| narrative -- that everything is better, or at least more
| profitable, when targeted to some hypothetical average person,
| and who cares about the diversity of individuals?
| blargey wrote:
| Might be that military pilots are much more engaged with the
| product than the average google-user with search.
|
| Or how these digital tools pervade spaces where everyone has
| to be able to use them, even if they're the type that refuses
| to engage with the text displayed in message boxes or
| technical jargon like "files" and "tabs", because they have
| the expertise that is more valuable to the business than the
| peripheral software. A greater expectation and insistence
| that things "just work", that the tools get out of the way
| instead of integrating with the user.
|
| Maybe adjusting some straps and seat positions is more
| intuitive than digging for advanced options. Maybe it's
| significantly more difficult to surface options in digital
| mediums without introducing friction as a side-effect,
| because you're always fighting over screen real estate and
| screen legibility, instead of being able to just add a latch
| on the strap that's there when you need it and invisible when
| you don't.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Maybe adjusting some straps and seat positions is more
| intuitive than digging for advanced options. Maybe it's
| significantly more difficult to surface options in digital
| mediums without introducing friction as a side-effect,
| because you're always fighting over screen real estate and
| screen legibility, instead of being able to just add a
| latch on the strap that's there when you need it and
| invisible when you don't
|
| You design a different car to win F1 races, to take a couch
| across town, to drive a family on a weekend trip, to win
| rally races, to haul a boat ... but in software we don't
| want to do that. We want everything to do everything
| because "niche" markets are too small for companies to keep
| growing into the stratosphere.
|
| See also: Every program attempts to expand until it can
| read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are
| replaced by ones which can. (zawinski's law)
| evilduck wrote:
| There's a military, and by proxy a government and a
| country's populace behind a pilot who are all invested in a
| pilot's success. In battle or on missions they don't get
| many do-overs and pilots and planes are expensive to
| mobilize and to lose. Millions of dollars are on the line
| each time they take off, better to get it right the first
| time.
|
| For ad driven search engine products the more you as a user
| flail the more ads you can be served on subsequent
| searches, so long as they ride the line of not driving you
| away entirely. A string of ten searches that fail you is
| bad because their product looks ineffective but two or
| three searches to get what you want is better for their
| bottom line than nailing it on your first attempt.
| mbivert wrote:
| The military in general seem to be more rationally grounded
| than civilians, as far as work is concerned. Promiscuity with
| death _must_ encourage a different "work culture".
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I get the feeling that there's an inverse correlation
| between the number of people that think the military is a
| competent meritocracy and the number of people that
| actually served in the military.
|
| It's a giant government bureaucracy, with plenty of stupid
| internal politics, and gross incompetency. No better or
| worse than any other large organization.
| synecdoche wrote:
| Thinking that people that have trait X in common to also
| have some admirable trait Y is unfortunately wishful
| thinking. The military may for some be one of the last
| areas of such thinking.
| mbivert wrote:
| Yeah it's probable that I'm idealizing.
|
| My direct experience is very limited, but I've heard a
| few decent things from people better involved than I am.
| I suppose "the military" is a wide thing, there must be
| consequential differences between, say, American
| bureaucrats and French field soldiers in Africa for
| example. The former shouldn't be as close to death, or to
| soldiers who are, on a daily basis.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I miss Norton Disk Doctor, not because I work on drive recovery
| but because it had an interface that respected the user's
| intelligence.
|
| Every other storage-related system I've ever used either had
| inscrutable gibberish like: "Mode 5/7?" [Y]
|
| Or overly dumbed down questions like: Are you
| sure? [N]
|
| What am I sure about!? What is mode 5? Or is it 7? Both? What!?
| [1]
|
| Norton meanwhile had several paragraphs of text explaining what
| every decision meant. It explained _concepts_ inline. It provided
| an explanation of the benefits and risks. It let you make an
| informed choice instead of just hitting Y over and over and
| hoping for the best.
|
| This kind of respect for the reader / user applies to all forms
| of technical writing such as manuals, user interfaces, blog
| articles, and API docs.
|
| Instead of trying to dumb down the text for a "lay" audience, try
| to educate all audiences to become more technical after having
| read and understood what you wrote.
|
| [1] That is verbatim from a Hitachi SAN array that was holding
| all of the data for a government department. The manual helpfully
| explained that this option toggles between mode 5/7 being either
| on or off. If you choose wrong the array will erase itself and
| kill your cat. Or neither of those things. Who knows?
| cubefox wrote:
| A similar point applies to settings menus in software,
| especially advanced settings. It takes very little effort for
| people who make these settings to include e.g. a short tooltip
| explanation for every setting. Yet this is rarely done.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >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??
|
| Maybe it should be even less descriptive.
|
| "This message will soon no longer be available. Make sure you
| copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want
| to use them later."
|
| Talking about the cache doesn't help the user. Really the
| solution is to add a button at the end of the message that says
| "save message contents to device." Then the message is clear and
| easily actionable.
| directevolve wrote:
| The message could also give both this actionable advice and
| lisper's more technical explanation. You could label the more
| in-depth explanation or even put it on a second screen accessed
| via an 'advanced explanation' button.
| powersnail wrote:
| I don't quite think the message-doesn't-exist example is caused
| by "dumbing down" too much. To me, the message "it no longer
| exists" is not the work of someone who, in trying to make layman
| understand, overdid it.
|
| Instead, it's the typical kind of mistake made by writers who
| forget about context.
|
| From the programmer's perspective, I speculate, the error _is_
| indeed a case of something being non-existent. The code is
| written to fetch something from the server, the server says it's
| not there, and well, the application should tell the user about
| it.
|
| Within the very narrow context of fetching it from the server,
| "doesn't exist" is correct. However, in the context of the user
| who's sitting there looking at the message, "doesn't exist" is
| simply false.
|
| The message needs to be re-contextualized, such that it makes
| sense. "The message doesn't exist on the server, it exists on
| your computer at the moment, but just for a short while, so you
| better copy it".
|
| It doesn't matter whether the user understand what a "server" is.
| Simply knowing that the message doesn't exist [at some place], is
| enough to make the whole sentence sensible.
|
| Like if I go to a car mechanic, who just points to the whole car
| and say "it's gonna be replaced", it would be confusing. But if
| he says that "xxx is gonna be replaced", that's perfectly
| comprehensible, even if I don't know what xxx is.
| LoganDark wrote:
| "This message cannot be downloaded because it no longer exists
| on the server. You can copy the message or delete it."
| smitty1e wrote:
| A better phrasing might be "keep your local copy because your
| server-side copy is gone".
|
| Communication is hard.
|
| Welcome to people.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's not a better phrasing. That doesn't explain what
| happened at all.
|
| If you think that's a sensible recommendation, it's nice to
| add it _after_ the error message. But it 's not an error
| message.
| smitty1e wrote:
| That is a fair cop.
| jack_pp wrote:
| instead of server it could say "on our end"
| yosefk wrote:
| It could say "cloud" instead of server and "your device"
| instead of cache and laypeople would get it, I think. It's
| unfortunate that servers are called cloud but at least
| there's a word that's commonly understood. Not sure if "on
| our end" would work, perhaps it would, too.
|
| Contrary to GP I have no doubt that the original message was
| phrased the way it was to avoid explaining how things work,
| on the theory that it's bad form to explain this, because
| users understanding it is neither possible nor desirable. If
| a programmer was writing naturally, for their colleague or
| future self to read the message, the server and the cache
| would certainly make an appearance. They weren't omitted
| because the context was obvious but because exposing the
| context was considered undesirable; I think so because a more
| internal rather than end-user error message never looks like
| this.
| sublinear wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| That's not dumbing down. It's not a lie and it's not wrong.
| immibis wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| neontomo wrote:
| If something can be explained without technical jargon in a way
| that satisfies novice and expert, what use is the jargon?
|
| I feel the example given in the article is bad because it isn't
| useful to either person, and jargon doesn't improve or lessen it.
| It's simply a poor explanation, which makes the argument weak.
| quibono wrote:
| I agree. I think that most of the time highly specialized
| topics have a lot of subtle context required. You either
| communicate all of that, or use jargon to get around it.
|
| In some cases I think it's possible to do this and satisfy both
| groups but it's harder and takes more words (which is important
| in a media context at least). That said I imagine there's a
| spectrum here and you can usually find suitable middle ground.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Funny, I always thought Feynman's Razor was along these lines
| (from 1979 QED lectures in New Zealand, response to audience
| question):
|
| > Q: "Do you like the idea that our picture of the world has to
| be based on a calculation which involves probability?"
|
| > A: "...if I get right down to it, I don't say I like it and I
| don't say I don't like it. I got very highly trained over the
| years to be a scientist and there's a certain way you have to
| look at things. When I give a talk I simplify a little bit, I
| cheat a little bit to make it sound like I don't like it. What I
| mean is it's peculiar. But I never think, this is what I like and
| this is what I don't like, I think this is what it is and this is
| what it isn't. And whether I like it or I don't like it is really
| irrelevant and believe it or not I have extracted it out of my
| mind. I do not even ask myself whether I like it or I don't like
| it because it's a complete irrelevance."
|
| As far as complexity and how to explain things to people without
| technical experience of the subject, the rabbit hole always goes
| deeper. Here's a nice quote from the rotation in space section of
| the caltech lectures:
|
| > "We shall not use these equations in all their generality and
| study all their consequences, because this would take many years,
| and we must soon turn to other subjects. In an introductory
| course we can present only the fundamental laws and apply them to
| a very few situations of special interest."
| mock-possum wrote:
| That's such a typical Feynman answer too. charitably he's doing
| it because he doesn't want to misspeak or suggest something
| untrue from his position of expertise - but it does also come
| off as being dodgy about answering people's questions. He does
| the exact same thing in that video clip where an interviewers
| asks him how magnets work .
| photochemsyn wrote:
| That's just part of the answer, he goes on to say that if you
| ask questions of nature and don't like the answers then
| that's just too bad, you don't get to dictate to nature how
| to behave. Scientists who don't like particular results
| because they don't match their philosophy of how things
| should be (most famously Einstein and QM) tend to end up
| tilting at windmills and not making any more progress.
|
| However, humans can't help having likes and dislikes but I
| think the trick is to save that for other areas of interest -
| e.g., art or music or people or activities that you like for
| entirely subjective reasons.
| lisper wrote:
| > My favorite comment was from lisper...
|
| Cool! Someone noticed me!
|
| :-)
|
| (I find this noteworthy because I've been putting all this effort
| into writing a series of blog posts about the scientific method
| and I've gotten very little feedback on that. But this little
| throwaway comment, _that_ gets attention! Life is funny
| sometimes.)
| neontomo wrote:
| Your profile link is broken, where can I find out more? If you
| were advertising yourself what would you ask me to read?
| (giving you a wildcard here)
| sneak wrote:
| This seems like a good point to beat my drum: put your email
| address in your HN profile, people! A website link also
| wouldn't hurt.
|
| Otherwise if someone wants to follow up with you about a
| comment, there is no way to do so without spamming a public
| comment reply.
|
| Contact info!
| tredigi wrote:
| That won't work because many people here post anonymously.
| They have a throwaway account and make a new one now and
| then to leave no trace to their real identity. Leaving an
| email address would mean having to maintain a throwaway
| email in sync with the HN account.
|
| Nowadays that's even harder to do since HN shadowbans new
| accounts for a while. You write a comment and you are
| surprised that nobody replies. It's because nobody but
| yourself can see it.
|
| Which, ironically, contributes to the issue disussed here.
|
| I'm also using a rather new account, let's see if this msg
| actually is visible now.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Leaving an email address would mean having to maintain
| a throwaway email in sync with the HN account.
|
| Apple's hide my email or DDG's email services are good
| for that imo.
|
| > I'm also using a rather new account, let's see if this
| msg actually is visible now.
|
| Take a guess ;)
| lanstin wrote:
| http://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-
| introductio...
| lisper wrote:
| > Your profile link is broken
|
| Try it now.
| mihaic wrote:
| While there really is a trend to overly dumb down things, I'd
| just like to speculate that the "message no longer exists" part
| is simply these when someone adapted the reasonable error for a
| delete message, and forgot to actually check if that phrasing
| work anymore.
|
| Small changes creeping up into something stupid is a common thing
| as well when everyone just does a tiny isolated part.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Funny that the author himself failed to reproduce Feynman's
| quote: it should be "And there are now sixty two kinds of
| particles", not "And there are not sixty two kinds of particles".
| nicbou wrote:
| I struggle a lot with this in my work. I can't assume that my
| readers are fluent English speakers, nor that they understand the
| topic. I can't even assume that they care to understand. I have
| adopted a plain and unambiguous writing style that hopefully
| accounts for it. I am now experimenting with formatting that
| allows them to skim everything and still get the gist of it. In
| my opinion, nhs.uk is the best example to learn from.
|
| People are not stupid, but they are busy, tired, lazy, or simply
| not that interested in the finer details. There is a balance
| between respecting their intellect and respecting their time.
| kohbo wrote:
| How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?
| zexbha wrote:
| I would not have observed this on my own. Do contractions
| make English harder to comprehend for non-natives? I'll have
| to avoid using y'all'dn't've
| Aspos wrote:
| Yes they do
| lupire wrote:
| Common English. The "n't" contractions are the most
| comfortable, and "can't" is most comfortable because it saves
| a syllable.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| That's a cool observation - it could just be GP's natural
| turn of phrase. I know a few people who never use any
| contractions when they speak. I assume it's a local/familial
| style.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| You can probably skip nhs.uk and go straight to uk.gov's
| writing guidelines themselves:
|
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
| fragmede wrote:
| "This message will self-destruct after reading."
| MrPatan wrote:
| In UX, the right way to think about your users is not that they
| are dumb, but that they are very smart but very busy, and don't
| have time for your app's bullshit. It puts you in the right frame
| of mind when designing interfaces. It's not about dealing with
| dunces, but about being efficient with peoples time and
| attention.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| The "This message can't be saved" text is not that bad, actually.
| The important thing is that the second part tells the user what
| to do. The first part could be rewritten "An error occurred" and
| that would be fine, too, since the details are not likely to
| matter to the user -- the important thing is what the user ought
| to do next.
|
| A driver does not need to know the reason for a detour. All that
| matters is whether the alternative route is clearly indicated.
| eastbound wrote:
| It's pretty important to know the cause, though. "The message
| doesn't exist" is fairly different from "You
| password/token/auth is expired and thus, the message can't be
| saved". Or "the hard drive is unavailable" or "the network has
| timed out".
|
| It's also important to know what action can't be done. "The
| message can't be saved" from "The message can't be viewed
| anymore" which hints that it may have been properly saved.
|
| Please don't bring back the fashion of dialog boxes just
| showing "Error in the system". Or even "Error 1521", which,
| although nowadays it would help for a perfect StackOverflow
| search, is still annoying.
| satisfice wrote:
| The author introduces a distinction that I hadn't fully
| considered before: difficult writing is not all equally
| problematic. Being misunderstood is a problem, but how and why
| you are misunderstood matters.
| wszrfcbhujnikm wrote:
| Nah I like New Scientist and Quanta Magazine etc... to give me an
| insight into a complicated topic. It isn't adequate for a
| professor to understand the subject to write a thesis sure, but
| there is no harm in more people kinda understanding something.
| This is especially true of the sort of dumbing down the big short
| film did, when the impact on society means everyone should sort
| of understand what happened Nd why the economy tanked.
| amelius wrote:
| I dunno. We now have ChatGPT to dumb things down for us __and__
| allow us to ask questions. I think the importance of these
| popular science magazines may be disappearing.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| Quanta is a great example! They don't dumb things down. It
| passes feymans razor because the professor can read it and know
| _what it 's talking about_
|
| I think it'd be a fun follow-up and talk a quanta article, and
| some PhD in the topic, and walk through why it does (or does
| not) pass this razor.
|
| I think one very simple but important thing they do is they
| don't shy away from mentioning the technical terms. I just
| opened a random one and in the first paragraph they say the
| word "Hamiltonian cycle", and explain it. The explanation is
| probably super simplified, but that's fine, it's (1) an anchor
| for the curious layperson to read more/Google it (2) it's a
| marker for the expert, he immediately knows what they're
| talking about, and doesn't have to try to reconstruct it/guess
| greekanalyst wrote:
| Simplicity is key, but over-simplicity is a killer.
| taneq wrote:
| Something I've been doing recently is declaring a variable,
| writing a comment explaining clearly what the variable _actually_
| does, then renaming the variable to reflect the comment. If I
| have to explain the variable name too much then it's not a good
| name.
| ordu wrote:
| Why this obsession with "all words must be known"? People are
| perfectly capable to understand the core of the message even if
| it contains unknown words. It happens not every time, it doesn't
| happen for example when each one of the words is unknown, but the
| message:
|
| > "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."
|
| can be understood. Even if the first sentence looks like a
| technical garbage, the second gives the clear instructions. And I
| don't believe that the first sentence is a complete nonsense to a
| layman. It can be understood as "message is halfway through the
| process of the deletion".
| mannykannot wrote:
| There's an association here to another topic which came up
| recently: a review of Matt Strassler's new book, Waves in an
| Impossible Sea [1]. Professor Strassler says a big motivation for
| writing this book was what he calls 'phibs': 'explanations' of
| physics so bowdlerized that they are not just uninformative, but
| at least misleading and sometimes outright wrong. The particular
| phib which got him started was a commonly-repeated attempt to
| give an idea of how the Higgs field gives rise to the masses of
| certain particles [2]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40607307
|
| [2] https://profmattstrassler.com/2024/04/16/why-the-higgs-
| field...
| Archelaos wrote:
| The case of the original error message does not really match what
| Feynman was concerned about. The original error message was not
| too simple, but its first part was some hocus-pocus that made
| (almost) no sense -- the less, the more the reader is a
| layperson. Only an expert had a chance of guessing the
| explanation. In the quoted passage, Feynman instead was concerned
| about popular accounts of science that are not useful for the
| reader -- not because they are unintelligible or wrong, but
| because they are too simplistic and provide too less information.
| corinn3 wrote:
| Yeah computing day to day sure is mired in euphemisms for math.
|
| Cache is a variable. Server is a function. Anyone who graduated
| high school should know that much.
|
| Hopefully we'll start to move away from 1900s ignorant business
| machines euphemisms for applied physics
| amai wrote:
| ,,Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
| simpler."
|
| The last part of this quote is often forgotten.
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