Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise, helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a fairly rare skill.
I once had a job interview that had a task where only one person was allowed to view an object made of random Lego bricks, they would communicate the structure to another person, that person would communicate it to a builder. The idea being to replicate the object. It's not easy.
This idea you had, interestingly, has nasty traps.
1. You need to specify an “origin” which is (0,0).
This is hard because there is more than one good choice (base or top of a brick?), the structure base may be more than a single brick wide, and you still need an orientation for the base bricks relative to the table, since if they’re at an angle, it isn’t the same.
2. This fails, or at least complicates, on structures that are not fully connected, like 2 towers next to each other. XYZ doesn’t have tools for two towers, rotated, at an angle not parallel to the table.
3. You’re fucked on units if there are any “small” half bricks in the structure, which are common in lego sets.
4. It’s not human optimized. If you forget the origin (easy in a big structure, you fail.
It’s not a bad idea, for some forms of the problem, but this underconsideration is why explaining things is hard.
I've had to explain to folks many times (and convince myself) that at some point, once you recognize there are multiple valid 'good' options, you need to move forward. There's often little long term benefit to identifying the 'better' or 'best' option for many projects - you just need an agreed consensus on the ground rules.
Also, what seems to be left off of these exercises sometimes is the concept of subroutines. At some point, rather than giving you explicit instructions for PB&J (like, extend hand, move towards knife, curl fingers around knife handle, move arm back to original position, etc), that can be coded as a named macro/subroutine, and we can just say "grab knife". (or... "grab knife by handle!")
To truly explain concepts to another, you have to be able to think like them or at least imagine what it would be like to think like them; you have to listen to them, observe them and react accordingly. In addition you need to be a subject matter expert to such a degree that you can invent or recall appropriate analogies and metaphors which suit your audience. All told this is a rare find, requiring either instinct, or long experience.
I find this difficult to believe. An innate ability of humans is to teach others - evolution has selected for it, because humans need to be taught, as their living skills are not innate.
I don't see how the ability to teach others would be an evolved ability. Learning from others, yes. But teaching others is a different skill than learning.
I have a cat who was separated from its mother too early. It shows some vague abilities at hunting, but is quite inept at it.
I've also seen a documentary that claimed humans have a unique ability to respond to pointing. Pointing is a big part of teaching. No animal has as lengthy a childhood as humans, and that is to teach them how to survive.
It just doesn't make any sense that people are inherently bad at teaching.
That's my point. I don't think cats are very good at explaining things, but they still manage to teach their young to hunt. I see that as coming from a strong ability to imitate, rather than a strong ability to explain.
> It just doesn't make any sense that people are inherently bad at teaching.
Whether it makes sense or not, what is your personal experience with others who try to teach you? Did you have nothing but highly effective teachers in school?
"Most people are actually pretty bad at explaining things in a clear, concise, helpful way, very often especially people well-versed in the field they are trying to explain. Communicating complex concepts to non-experts is indeed a fairly rare skill."
Except that we are not talking about numbers, we are talking about human behavior. Applying a formula to that, as you are attempting to do, is not going to give you the conclusions you expect.
FYI he's applying logical operations to sentences as logical propositions, which is valid and precise. Not hand wavey, and condescending like you are doing.
Looks like all three of us are being a bit condescending here.
Here is the actual logic: if people are not inherently bad at teaching, that means they are mostly effective at it, right? Were most of the teachers you've had in your life effective at teaching? Mine certainly were not.
Perhaps you were having problems with the use of my word "nothing" instead of "mostly," which is just a colloquialism. Idioms of language rarely respond to logic in the way numbers do.
Not just you're (derogatively named?) hackers but anyone who uses natural language for precise meaning; lawyers, mathematicians, philosophers. People who say what they mean, and mean what they say.
> I don’t know, should it be special to be able to explain things?
Given that so few people can explain something, yes. The problem is that explaining requires a very deep understanding which so few people attain. This Feynman story sums it up perfectly[1]:
Once, I [David Goodstein] said to him, "Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics." Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, "I'll prepare a freshman lecture on it." But he came back a few days later to say, "I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it."
Every so often I review the iPhone introduction keynote, and marvel at how Jobs crafted such an engaging and compelling hour. It's a very special talent.
Especially with the team getting toasted in the audience assuming it was all going to blow up. Even hardware succumbs to a distortion field. I too love watching it.
