Seth's Blog : Dumbing it down

Dumbing it down

There’s a lot of pressure to make things dumber. Better to make it dumb than to have someone simply walk away, apparently.

With so much to consume, and an unlimited amount to learn, there’s a race to make knowledge into a checklist item. Freon gas! Large language model! Coefficients! Many people just want to say a magic word and move on.

Of course, if we dumb things down, they become dumb.

This is not the same as simplifying concepts before adding nuance.

Four year olds easily learn to speak, and many kids in second grade can read. Not because they have a dumb version, but because someone cared enough to make the method simple.

There are simple explanations for quantum mechanics and for auto mechanics as well. They simply take a while to understand well enough to teach them to other people.

Start with basic principles, go slow and build. No need to dumb it down. Simple it up instead.

We have enough dumb. We need more simple.