Comment by sigmoid10

Comment by sigmoid10 3 days ago

The Yukawa potential is also just a more "classical" limit of an inherently quantum mechanical process. Sure you can explain things with it and even do some practical calculations, but if you plan on going to the bottom of it it'll always fail. If you want to explain Feynman propagators correctly you basically have to explain so many other things first, you might as well write a whole book. And even then you're trapped in the confines of perturbation theory, which is only a tiny window into a much bigger world. I really don't think it is possible to convey these things in a way that is both accurate (in the sense that it won't lead to misunderstandings) and simple enough so that people without some hefty prerequisites can truly understand it. I wish it were different. Because this is causing a growing rift between scientists and the normal population.

specialist 3 days ago

IIRC, Feynman said something like "I can't explain magnetism to a layperson in terms they can understand."

> ...causing a growing rift between scientists and the normal population.

True.

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ergonaught 3 days ago

The full quote is better.
Ie: “I can’t explain it in terms of something else you’re more familiar with because I don’t understand it terms of anything else you’re more familiar with.”

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dbsmith83 3 days ago

Yet Einstein said something like "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". So maybe Feynman didn't understand it "well enough"

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- sigmoid10 2 days ago
  
  That was a pretty classical point of view. Quantum mechanics has gone so deep by now, there simply is nothing in a layperson's world that could accurately represent what is really going on. This was not a limit of Feynman, it's a limit of humans.
  
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- cwillu 3 days ago
  
  Einstein was giving a rule of thumb, not a law of nature.
  
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- HenryBemis 2 days ago
  
  I sometimes listen to Jordan Peterson's podcasts (and have read the "12 rules.."). I understand the dude. Then I found on YT a speech/discussion he had with/for psychologists, and they were still speaking English, and I couldn't understand half of what they were saying.
  Now, to my 'craft' (GRC). I lately catch myself speaking like Peter Thiel, taking 20-30 second 'silences', build in my mind what I want to say, 'translate it' to simple(r) English, and then slowly say it out loud to make sure I pave the path with mental & verbal stepping stones without using any jargon.
  I very well understand what I want to say, but the gap between in the knowledge and the use of language puts the onus to the explainer.
  
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