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ACI-REF-Virtual-Residency / questions-and-answers

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Explain it to a 12-year-old #4

Open JackS9 opened 8 years ago

JackS9 commented 8 years ago

New issue to follow up on the lively discussion inspired by Alan Alda's talk at SC15 and his contest each year to produce a video that explains a supposedly complex phenomenon to a 12-year-old.

dbrunson commented 8 years ago

There's an entertaining video here from the Time challenge: http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/what-is-time/

JackS9 commented 8 years ago

I think it would be neat to sponsor a competition for explaining CI stuff - "How CI Stuff Works" or "How to Talk to Researchers Like They Were 12-year-olds Without Them Knowing It".

dbrunson commented 8 years ago

I wonder if the reason that 11 (or 12) year olds are good judges is because they will actually tell you that they don't understand what you're saying. Adults give subtler clues.

JackS9 commented 8 years ago

It's also about the time they stop believing in magic (hand-waving) - looking intently to see how it's really done. Many adults are still susceptible to (or lazily satisfied with) hand-waving explanations.

Adults, especially scientists, are apt to let someone else's jargon slip by, figuring they'll look it up later - so as not to look stupid for asking. So it's pretty easy to get away with jargon and hand-waving when taking to those outside your field, and it's so much easier than actually explaining "in plain English". Unfortunately this unwillingness to ask clarifying questions shuts down any further dialog. For fear of having something "dumbed down" for us, we "dumb up" instead - i.e., clam up so as not to sound dumb.

On Dec 19, 2015, at 7:40 AM, Dana Brunson notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com> wrote:

I wonder if the reason that 11 (or 12) year olds are good judges is because they will actually tell you that they don't understand what you're saying. Adults give subtler clues.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/ACI-REF-Virtual-Residency/questions-and-answers/issues/4#issuecomment-165981922.