I've found it's best to explain my job using unintelligible jargon.
There are three choices, really:
You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it.
You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked.
Or you can give a quick explanation using jargon that they don't understand, which will leave them bored but impressed, which is the best of the bad options.
When I meet people who immediately use hyper-specific jargon with strangers, I either distrust them, or assume they’re not emotionally intelligent (because it’s a choice demonstrates little respect for the person they’re addressing). It also projects that they may be compensating for some emotional insecurity on their own end, trying to assert intellectual “superiority” in some way.
The first option (explaining things simply) might make your job sound easy to a very small minority of extremely uneducated, under-stimulated people, who also have unaddressed insecurities around their own intelligence. But that’s not most humans.
Moderately-to-very intelligent people appreciate how difficult (and useful) it is to explain complex things simply. Hell, most “dumb” people understand, recognize, and appreciate this ability. Honestly, I think not appreciating simple explanations indicates both low mathematical/logical and social/emotional intelligence. Which makes explaining things simply a useful filter for, well… people that I wouldn’t get along with anyway.
With all that said, I prefer to first explain my job in an “explain like I’m 5” style and, if the other party indicates interest, add detail and jargon, taking into account related concepts that may already be familiar to them. If you take them into account, they won’t get bored when you go into detail.
I've often thought how my cat must think I am insane. I sit in from of a medium-sized glowing rectangle, I occasionally look at a small glowing rectangle, then in the evening stare at a really large glowing rectangle.
1) Cats do not really think that much about us at all, except for thoughts like - "oh no! it's about to attack! wait no, it's fine, relax..." or "will it feed me if I shout at it?" or "it's sitting down, perhaps I feel like sitting on it"
2) Their thoughts about us revolve around our weird lack of fur, the strange way we never clean ourselves by licking, and how bad we are at catching small animals to eat.
I’ve thought the same about our dogs when we stare for hours at “the light box.”
I wonder if it’s anything like what I feel when I watch them sniff the same bush for a seemingly endless amount of time like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.
> Hell, most “dumb” people understand, recognize, and appreciate this ability.
That remark reminds me of all the praise heaped by commenters onto videos that explain complex topics glibly. Like "I've been struggling to understand this for 20 years, until this video", etc.
Except, when, which is often the case in mathematics, there is actual way to reduce the complexity of a topic to be understandable to most people without sacrificing veracity for digestible half truths.
> With all that said, I prefer to first explain my job in an “explain like I’m 5” style and, if the other party indicates interest, add detail and jargon
It is just your choice. I'd prefer a short answer full of jargon. It gives people the opportunity to clarify what they want to ask. Do they really want to know details? Or they want a rough idea of an answer? Or they just filling silence with small talk?
Though other times, when I really want to talk about it, I'd go with some ELI5 explanation, while watching people, are they interested or not?
> Honestly, I think not appreciating simple explanations indicates both low mathematical/logical and social/emotional intelligence.
It can be. But mostly it is not. People are sending signals by choosing one form of the answer or another, you just need to decode their signals. And it will be better, if you don't jump to conclusions about their persistent psychological traits, based on the first impression.
I think the negotiation signal being sent by "all jargon" is "fuck off". It's not an attempt to gauge what level the other person is using. It's a blank wall, being thrust towards them.
It seems like dumbing it down or immediate heavy jargon with people you don't know are just both equally bad options.
What's wrong with asking their level of experience with the topic?
Sure, with parents you know the level. I'm talking "other strangers" you meet outside of a context where some familiarity would be expected (like at a conference one might assume at least some form of knowledge and ability to just have the other person ask about specific jargon they don't know).
But at the parents dinner party, that other guy may or may not be in your line of work. Just ask them.
Maybe it's just me but I feel entirely comfortable asking questions like "how much math did you take? do you remember what a derivative is?" and base my explanations on the response. Turns out fine every time so far... and if they don't remember what a derivative is (or whatever) then I just explain it differently no big deal. I'd almost argue it is easier than not asking, but only if I actually care about them understanding the answer.
meta: I hate how hn culture lately makes people assume that what was obviously a statement in support of a premise was somehow an argument. I get it, around here it is rational enough. Still weird.
> When I meet people who immediately use hyper-specific jargon with strangers,
That is 90% of the professors I asked questions to. If they go full jargon and don't want to explain any of it, they don't want you near them ( or they want you to improve before even having a conversation ).
> or assume they’re not emotionally intelligent (because it’s a choice demonstrates little respect for the person they’re addressing)
Intelligence, in the traditional sense, also involves understanding when to give up. Part of "emotional intelligence" is judging whether the other party actually cares about what you're about to say.
>
When I meet people who immediately use hyper-specific jargon with strangers, I either distrust them, or assume they’re not emotionally intelligent (because it’s a choice demonstrates little respect for the person they’re addressing).
For me, it's quite the opposite: such a choice demonstrates that they their prior is that I'm sufficiently smart and knowledgable to be likely able to understand this explanation - which I rather consider to be a praise. :-)
I think "with strangers" is the important bit. If a nuclear engineer is talking to some lay person and uses hyper specific jargon, then grandparent is correct.
If you've established a shared competency with the person, and are therefor no longer total strangers, that's totally different.
True, but however, there are times when I just really need to talk about the extremely detailed bits of some problem I'm thinking about - just the act of speech is really needed; I find this super annoying in other people, but forgivable because I also experience it. I have heard so much about minutiae from my kids that I have to force myself to just semi-actively listen to. My wife has to hear so many things that annoy her as well, when I don't get enough chattering out to co-workers or colleagues.
Sometimes, explaining your issue to a random person leads you to a solution. They don't even need to have any experience with the same or a similar issue; indeed, sometimes it's better if they don't! Often turns out you don't need someone who can respond, so explaining to an object like a rubber duck will do.
>You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it.
What is the problem with this?
Most jobs, when simplified, sound like "anybody can do it". I think it's generally understood among adults who have been in the workforce that, no, in fact anybody cannot do it.
There is no problem with it, but I assume there are many people who will look upon you favourably if they think you do a highly skilled job. While many of us may not care to impress those people, there are certainly those who do (possibly people with similar attitudes who care more about validation from people who think like them)
But we should also acknowledge that there's an entire culture built around valuing people and their time relative to one's perception of their "importance", that this culture can influence one's earning potential and acquisition of material possessions, and that many people do care about things like "seeming important" or moving upwards in this hierarchy as a result.
I think which direction you choose is about knowing your audience. As you mentioned, different people value different things and humans often want to present a different view of ourselves to different people at different times.
The way I think about it is this. There are roughly two groups of people:
- Some people will not care / be dismissive of what I have to say. I probably don't want to talk to these people much.
- Some people will be interested! I probably will like these people.
If I use technical jargon, I am optimizing to impress people I don't really care about impressing - and I will be pushing away the people that I would actually be interested to spend time with.
If I speak respectfully, i.e. the simple explanation, it will resonate more with the people I like. I will push away the people who don't care, but I didn't really want to talk with them anyways.
I don't see what's hard about threading the needle, or maybe I'm completely lacking in EQ
"I'm a mathematician, I study how shapes fit together, which surprisingly, is being used for new methods of secure communication by so and so university, but I just love the math"
Or “I’m a mathematician. I try really hard to find things I can prove that have no practical application. But frustratingly people keep finding important practical applications for my work.”
> No one has yet found any war-like purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity or quantum mechanics, and it seems very unlikely that anybody will do so for many years. - G.H.Hardy, Jan 1940
> A few decades later, we stand waiting for nuclear bombs guided by GPS to be launched when the cryptographic auth certificate is verified. So it goes.
One of the classical assessments in strategic behavior is "be worse than your roommates at chores so they do them, but not so bad they kick you to the curb."
> The latter option always comes across as rude. It's a very clear 'piss off you insect'
To me, it rather tells: "I consider you to be likely to be sufficiently smart and knowledgable to understand this topic if you put in some effort: do you want to learn some cool stuff which otherwise would demand a lot of literature research to learn? And since I already hinted that I consider you to be smart and knowledgable: would you like to teach me some cool, complicated stuff, too?"
I think you can explain the product you work on rather the what you actually do.
I personally say I work on Bluetooth support for Google Home assistant devices. "It's like Alexa, but Google.
Even if you work on some absurdly down stack thing, this seems to work. You work on making sure the internet is as fast as possible, or files are stored in the cloud properly, or the graphics on your computer are displayed correctly.
I once told my dad that if the subject of my thesis was something I could easily explain then it wouldn't be interesting enough to do a PhD in. I said it half-jokingly and he laughed about it, but he stopped asking me what I'm studying after that so maybe he did take it more seriously.
There’s something bittersweet about that moment when someone you love stops asking about your research. It’s a quiet kind of respect, but also a reminder of the communication gap academia often creates.
i once got excited to explain to my father what i did at a research lab after grad school. he listened patiently for about 30 minutes then he said “oh, so you build software for big business?”
>You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked.
Yes, don't fall into this trap. The other two options are still better. Everyone says, "no, no, I really want to know" and then tunes out two minutes later; then four minutes later they start doing the George Carlin lean: "Surgery! I am having my ears sewn shut!".
I work at many levels and on many different projects, so usually I give a very simple explanation of the most interesting one, in very simple terms, and add, 'that's a small part of my job'.
People that are interested can ask either to give more details on what I have explained, or what about the rest. If they are not interested, they say something and I usually ask what about them, no hard feelings.
I don't have that problem ("I work with computers / I am a computer programmer") but I usually follow with "I'm a race driver. I drive the car as fast as I can, I don't change the tires nor the oil in it" when I get the usual "can you fix my computer?" request.
For reasons that I care not to ask people get seriously annoyed by that.
I like that analogy for the simple reason that I imagine most race car drivers do in fact have opinions about tires and oil and know how to fix them. It's just not the main part of their job. Similarly, you probably would be a lot better at fixing computers than a layman.
Really? When I see that all I think is it's one of "them" - the kind that takes some kind of perverse pleasure in needlessly mystifying, complicating, and obfuscating things as much as possible - especially the trivial.
Blowing smoke around simple things to gatekeep them is not impressive and not cute.
Some ideas are too complex to explain accurately in simple terms.
You can give someone a simple explanation of quantum chromodynamics and have them walk away feeling like they learned something, but only by glossing over or misrepresenting critical details. You’d basically just be lying to them.
Quantum Mechanics is the example of a subject where supposed experts don’t really understand it either and hence can’t explain it adequately.
Also, it’s hilarious to get comments like this voted down by non-experts who assume this must be an outsider’s uninformed point of view.
I have a physics degree and I studied the origins and history of quantum mechanics. Its “founding fathers” all admitted that it’s a bunch of guesswork and that the models we have are arbitrary and lack something essential needed for proper understanding.
The math that describes it is known precisely. Specific implications of this are known. There's no information transfer, there's no time delay, etc.
And yet lay people keep incorrectly thinking it can be used for communication. Because lay-audience descriptions by experts keep using words that imply causality and information transfer.
This is not a failure of the experts to understand what's going on. It's a failure to translate that understanding to ordinary language. Because ordinary language is not suited for it.
> Its “founding fathers” all admitted that it’s a bunch of guesswork and that the models we have are arbitrary and lack something essential needed for proper understanding.
We don't have a model of why it works / if there's a more comprehensible layer of reality below it. But it's characterized well enough that we can make practical useful things with it.
> This is not a failure of the experts to understand what's going on.
> We don't have a model of why it works / if there's a more comprehensible layer of reality below it.
Counterpoint:
You’ve just admitted they don’t understand what’s going on — they merely have descriptive statistics. No different than a DNN that spits out incomprehensible but accurate answers.
So this is an example affirming that QM isn’t understood.
QM isn't less well understood though than Newton's mechanics. Neither cover the "why". But both provide a model of the world, the model (!) is very precisely understood and it matches observations in certain parts of reality. Like all reasonable scientific theories do. They have limits, and beyond those limits they don't apply, but that doesnt mean they are not understood. It's reality that is not sufficiently well understood and by coming up with more and more refined models/theories, we keep approximating it, likely without ever having a "fully correct" theory encompassing everything without limits. (But that's ok.)
The only descriptive / empirical parts is the particle masses.
But it sounds like your objection is that reality isn't allowed to be described by something as weird as complex values that you multiply to get probabilities, so there necessarily must be another layer down that would be more amenable to lay descriptions?
My point is that their models are fitted tensors/probability distributions, often retuned to fit new data (eg, the epicyclic nature of collider correction terms) — the same as fitting a DNN would be.
Their inability to describe what is happening is precisely the same as in the DNN case.
Actually it is just the opposite. QED is comprehensive and, as far as we know, accurate.
But it is impractical to use in most situations so major simplifications are required.
The correction factors that you mention are the result of undoing some of those simplifications, sometimes by including more of the basic theory and sometimes by saying something like "we know that we ignored something important here and it has to have this shape but we can only kinda sort measure how big it might be because it's too hard to actually calculate".
As I pointed out, eg, the high number of correction terms when trying to tune the model to actual particle accelerator data is evidence that our model is missing something. (And some things are plain missing: neutrino behavior, dark matter, dark energy, etc.)
In the same way that a high number of epicycles was evidence our theory of geocentrism was wrong — even though adding epicycles did compute increasingly accurate results.
> As I pointed out, eg, the high number of correction terms when trying to tune the model to actual particle accelerator data is evidence that our model is missing something. (And some things are plain missing: neutrino behavior, dark matter, dark energy, etc.)
This is rather a problem of the standard model. Physicists will immediately admit that something is missing there, and they are incredibly eager to find a better model. But basically every good attempt that they could come up with (e.g. supersymmetric extensions of the standard model; but I'm not a physicist) has by now (at least modtly) been falsified by accelerator experiments.
The comment you originally replied to was about entanglement, not the entire standard model. The math there is very simple, not built on correction terms.
... So it's about not being able to observe short-lived particles directly, and having to work backwards from longer lived interaction or decay products? Or about how those intermediate particles they have to calculate through also have empirically-determined properties?
Most of that is measured corrections, not a theoretical model.
Entanglement is just a statistical effect in our measurements — we can’t say what is happening or why that occurs. We can calculate that effect because we’ve fitted models, but that’s it.
Similarly, to predict proton collisions, you need to add a bunch of corrective epicycles (“virtual quarks”) to get what we measure out of the basic theory. But adding such corrections is just curve fitting via adding terms in a basis to match measurement. Again, we can’t say what is happening or why that occurs.
We have great approximators that produce accurate and precise results — but we don’t have a model of what and why, hence we don’t understand QM.
> Entanglement is just a statistical effect in our measurements — we can’t say what is happening or why that occurs. We can calculate that effect because we’ve fitted models, but that’s it.
Bell's theorem was a prediction from math before people found ways to measure and confirm it. A model based on fitting to observations would have happened in the other order.
> A model based on fitting to observations would have happened in the other order.
We’d already had models which said that certain quantities were conserved in a system — and entanglement says that is true of certain systems with multiple particles.
To repeat myself:
> Entanglement is just a statistical effect in our measurements — we can’t say what is happening or why that occurs.
Bell’s inequality is just a way to measure that correlation, ie, statistical effect — and I think it’s supporting my point the way to measure entanglement is via statistical effect.
ER=EPR is an example of a model that tries to explain what and why of entanglement.
Reminds me of the old videos on the Mill CPU architecture. There is multi hour long video about “the belt”, a primary concept in understanding the Mill architecture and instruction scheduling. It’s portrayed in the slides as an actual belt with a queue of items about to be processed, etc.
Only in the end to reveal the belt is truely conceptualized and does not formally exist. The belt is an accurate visual representation and teaching tool, but the actual mechanics emerge from data latches and the timing of releasing the data, etc.
To me, every profession—from software engineering to farming—has its complexities, yet most professionals can explain what they do in clear terms. When academics say they can’t offer a basic explanation, it often feels like an attempt to protect their status or avoid the effort—if not a kind of intellectual arrogance. Yes, the topics are challenging—you don’t need to throw in quantum buzzwords to convince me—but simplifying your work isn’t “dumbing it down”; it often sharpens your own understanding too.
I encounter this idea too much..the idea that complex topics can always be explained in a way to make everyone understand it...and that just isn't true. There is usually a point on any topic where further reduction/compression is no longer lossless. Yes, I think the analogy of image compression works pretty well. Lossless compression can only go so far. Further reduction introduces loss, but the image may still be understandable, but at a certain point, the loss from compression prevents understanding of the image, and may even mislead (Is that a bear, or uncle Robert?).
I personally think of this in terms of giving directions.
It's easy to give directions to somewhere near where you currently are -- "Just head down the road, it's the second left, then 3 doors down".
When giving directions to a far-away place you either have to get less accurate "it's on the other side of the world", or they get really, really long. Unless of course they already know the layout of the land -- "You already know Amy's house, over in Algebra Land? Oh, then it's just down the road, fourth left, six doors down".
People often seem cleverer because they know the layout of some really obscure land, but often it's just because people have never been anywhere near it. I have a joke about my research where I say, "A full explanation isn't that hard to explain, it's just long. About 4 hours probably. Are you interested?" So far, I've had 3 people take me up on that, and they all seemed to have an understanding once I'd finished (or, they really really wanted to escape).
So, what's a horse? Well, you look at it: it’s this big animal, standing on four legs, with muscles rippling under its skin, breathing steam into the cold air. And already — that’s amazing. Because somehow, inside that animal, grass gets turned into motion. Just grass! It eats plants, and then it runs like the wind.
Now, let’s dig deeper. You see those legs? Bones and tendons and muscles working like pulleys and levers — a beautiful system of mechanical engineering, except it evolved all by itself, over millions of years. The hoof? That’s a toe — it’s walking on its fingernail, basically — modified for speed and power.
And what about the brain? That horse is aware. It makes decisions. It gets scared, or curious. It remembers. It can learn. Inside that head is a network of neurons, just like yours, firing electricity and sending chemical messages. But it doesn’t talk. So we don’t know exactly what it thinks — but we know it does think, in its own horselike way.
The skin and hair? Cells growing in patterns, each one following instructions written in a long molecule called DNA. And where’d that come from? From the horse’s parents — and theirs, all the way back to a small, many-toed creature millions of years ago.
So the horse — it’s not just a horse. It’s a machine, a chemical plant, a thinking animal, a product of evolution, and a living example of how life organizes matter into something astonishing. And what’s really amazing is, we’re just scratching the surface. There’s still so much we don’t know. And that is the fun of it!
The quip you're referring to was meant to be inspirational. It doesn't pass even the slightest logical scrutiny when taken at its literal meaning. Please. (Apologies if this was just a reference without any further rhetorical intent though.)
It's like claiming that hashes are unique fingerprints. No, they aren't, they mathematically cannot be. Or like claiming how movie or video game trailers should be "perfectly representative" - once again, by definition, they cannot be. It's trivial to see this.
There are three choices, really:
You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it.
You can explain what you do and why it's important in terms they understand, but it'll take so long they'll get bored and wish they hadn't asked.
Or you can give a quick explanation using jargon that they don't understand, which will leave them bored but impressed, which is the best of the bad options.