[tigeroil]

Funnily enough from the way that he talks in his videos I always assumed he wasn't that knowledgeable, until I found out more about him and realised what an incredibly skilled programmer he actually is.

I think maybe he just comes off that way because of how he presents things in videos.

[hnlmorg]

The problem with making hard things sound accessible for wider audiences, is that people who understand the hard stuff natively then cannot separate the layman’s explanation from the technical capabilities of the person making those explanations.

Perhaps ironically, over the years I’ve found it’s those who cannot look past the tech-jargon to be the lesser experienced because they learn the words without fully understanding the concepts.

[serf]

>The problem with making hard things sound accessible for wider audiences, is that people who understand the hard stuff natively then cannot separate the layman’s explanation from the technical capabilities of the person making those explanations.

it can also be the case that the 'laymen explanation' is actually patently wrong -- not just over-simplified or 'dumbed-down'; wrong.

some things just require a certain level of background knowledge; this is why generally any 'celebrity scientist' explanation of anything with the word 'quantum' in the subject line is generally just down-right wrong.

there is no decent metaphor by which to onboard a laymen in certain technical topics.

that isn't to say that the 'wrong' answers don't have value in educating the laymen, but the liberties that some experts take in 'wrongness allowance' is quite different from one another.

personally I think it's the responsibility of the explainer to step aside at some point and say : "Look, this is wrong, but without the background this is as close as I can get you to understanding this thing, so just don't take what I say as gospel from this point forward." -- the reason this is important is simply due to the fact that the laymen doesn't stand a chance at finding out which parts are wishy-washy by themselves without some further guidance.

not mentioning where the fairy tale begins is what leads people into thinking that there is actually an alive/dead cat out there somewhere. they grasp the metaphor itself rather than the statistics concept that is being explored.

[hnlmorg]

You’re conflating entertainment shows with university lectures.

The point of videos like the aforementioned isn’t to give people a background into game development. It’s to give people who have no experience an overview for entertainment purposes.

[monoau]

That's not true. Science communicators in the past have successfully taught complex theories to a wider audience without compromising in integrity and accuracy.

The issue here is that many youtubers have sold factual correctness for a view count.

[hnlmorg]

You say that and I guarantee you that people who have dedicated their career to that particular topic will say those “science communicators” are technically incorrect due to the generalisations and/or analogies made in the explanation.

It’s such a common behavioural tendency with general audience publications that someone coined a law for it (the name of which I forget but I’m sure someone else on here can reply with it).

[zztop44]

Those people who have dedicated their career to a narrow topic can also be wrong. Not so much about the facts, but in assessing whether or not certain compromises or analogies that don’t map 1:1 matter for the purposes of what is trying to be communicated.

[hnlmorg]

That’s exactly the point being made