[sah2ed]

> So, the solution is to dumb everything down to the least common denominator?

Essentially, yes.

Using words most people are familiar with will afford a lot of people nearly instantaneous cognition [0] of the information you are trying to convey with your writing.

This applies to both ends of the reading spectrum: highly educated people who do a lot of reading than most; and poorly educated people who probably had to drop out of school to make ends meet.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subitizing