"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

Give an example, because it seems like you're just talking out of your own ass.

Really not good argument. Look at the science- it is complex as hell but every documentary explains it to 15-year-old. Afterall this quote is from Einstein.

He's right though.

So you can explain the baseline information to them. Really. In my experience, most supposedly "difficult" stuff is just badly explained and once I get it I'm able to teach it to my elderly mother and her partner, neither of which have the same educational fields as myself. I have a tutor for a subject I find difficult who can explain it far better than most teachers. And I've found that the dirty secret of how most people in teaching positions """""""""""""""learn""""""""""""""" is by memorising enough heuristics and isolated bits of memeable information that they can get by. They usually understand almost nothing.
To give an example, I've found that the people teaching me calculus generally had no idea where the various rules of calculus (chain rule etc.) come from. I hear from my tutor that it's topology. So there are people teaching university math at a very highly ranked uni who don't have any proof for the concepts they're working on, and don't know where these concepts come from. It's just repetition without comprehension.

>It applies to all sciences as well as academic philosophy
I'm not sure this applies to every philosophy.
>Wiles's proof of FLT would typically take years of graduate study for a person to understand, but it still could in theory be explained to a 5 year old given enough time
This is the example on how quote was intended. It's a great use of this, but this is generally not applied to, say, Heidegger. When someone ask how to know heidegger's philosophy, people usually say "start at the Being and Time". and I think it is right; you cannot understand him without that book. But you know how complex it is. And even the secondary literature of explaining Being and Time is far, FAR from ordinary literature. This is usually not happened in science and mathematics.

As a domain expert in a subset of electromagnetic propagation, I frequently have to simplify practical implementation and theoretical information at the cost of losing accuracy in both

Yes, but the point still stands, that you can explain everything you know about the subject to a 5 year old, at least in theory, because if you know the subject, your knowledge is built on concrete logical steps that anyone can understand. In practice, of course you have to simplify.

A 5 year old does not have the cognitive capacity to understand anything I do. No matter how I explain it. You probably don't either judging by your posts.

>We know this is wrong; we can feel it. But WHY is it wrong?
>What explains why it is wrong?
Language can be clumsier than understanding.

Judging by your posts, it seems like you don't understand what you're doing.

I am not convinced that even Heidegger could understand himself.

Something struck me last night. As we all know, if you can't condense your thoughts down to a five word sentence, you don't really understand what you're trying to say. Now, two great examples of thinkers not knowing their own thoughts are Homer (specifically in the Catalog of Ships aka. Iliad) and Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Both of these works and their ideas stretch far beyond the acceptable limit of five words to express their ideas. How hard is it to say, "there were many ships," and "action as universal law
" respectively? Now, seeing as I understand these people better than themselves, I am offering this refinement or, more aptly, a synthesis of their thoughts.

If we accept the Catalog of Ships > 5 words and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals> 5 words, then it would seem, for all intents and purposes, the Catalog of Ships = Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, at least in regard to being incoherent ramblings.

With this, we can safely combine these works and create a new name; "Catalog of Morals," "Groundwork of (the) Ships," "Groundwork of Catalogs," or "Catalog of Groundwork."

However, seeing the natural equality in these works, the title "Groundwork of Groundwork," or "Catalog of (the) Catalogs" are also valid.

And from this understanding we should see that the synthesis between, "there were many ships" and "action as universal law," yields either "there was universal law" or "every ship is universal law." But seeing as all these are all saying the same thing, it is just as well to say, "(the) universal law is ships."

So, what you should get from this is that if you write something you don't understand down and pass it off as an intelligible point, someone much smarter than you after your death will make you look like a fool.

Good day.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - DaVinci.

If you truly understand it, you SHOULD absolutely be able to explain it simply, even if the subject is so complicated that the most simple of explanations would require days and days of talking.

Einstein contradicted himself on that point.

He didn't want to explain relativity to a journalist, and he told him, "how do you explain how to fry an egg to someone who doesn't know what is fire, what is an egg, what is a handle and what is a pan?

>heh can't teach a 5 year old differential calculus, what sort of mathematician are you?
this only demonstrates the sheer simplicity of your base of knowledge

I don't think it's perfect advice, but there's a reason why deduction is called deduction. Because to deduce, is in effect to deduct or remove. You have a conditional statement like "if X, then Y," and by putting those two values in, you get only one back. Iterate the process enough times and you shouldn't have much left. In that sense, conclusions should be more simple than their proofs.

However, actually proving something to someone, is something else entirely.

>like you cannot say you read The Brothers Karamazov by reading one's explanation of The Brothers Karamazov
Because no one understands it well enough?

>We know this is wrong; we can feel it.
my sides

Because some concepts simply are irreducibly complex. You can simplify but you will lose important meaning in the process. Look at how pop culture handles quantum physics and Schrödinger's cat or whatever. You can explain everything simply if you make it simple enough -- doesn't mean that someone who watches The Big Bang Theory has a solid grasp of theoretical physics.
There is not a single person on the planet who can explain Heidegger "simply".

>There is not a single person on the planet who can explain Heidegger "simply".

Attached: 71b-hgGRJrL[1].jpg (880x1360, 180K)

Your post has reaffirmed my belief that Einstein was right

BASED

Attached: christ.jpg (564x616, 119K)

one of my great joys in life is figuring out how to explain stuff to my curious, precocious 4 year old. yesterday it was thermal and photoreactivity.

>f you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it
Yes, this is true

Finish your homework

>one cannot just explicitly explain an argument; it always ended up to "read X" or "check out X(19xx)".
Yeah, because they don't understand it. The only reason they say shit like this is because they have to defer being knowledgeable onto another entity. Those who are not retarded can sufficiently posit a point about something they understand. You are just trying to justify your own inability by making this absurd claim.

the first chapter in guenon’s “initiation and spiritual realization” btfo’s this quote forever

this reminds me of the argument
>if you can't define a word you shouldn't use it
when smartass faggots pull that out i ask them to define the word "the". that shuts them the fuck up in a hurry.

>this quote is oversaturated.
Have regulation book for air traffic control procedures.
Holy shit level complexity.
Simple explanation; Don't let airplanes crash together.
>Not informative enough to be of use.