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Comment by jasonkostempski | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the title should be "Why Really Dumb People Dislike Really Smart Leaders". "Talk to them like they're five" is what that suggestion sounds like to me.

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There's a difference between metaphors and speaking down to someone. When I talk about topics in CS or mathematics with my girlfriend or some members of my family, I speak in metaphors. I don't speak to them like they're five. I speak to them like they're intelligent people who have a model of the world that is different than mine or the things I want to discuss, and I relate my work or interests to their models.

Plenty of people don't talk down to 5 year olds. That's an assumption you've made regarding 'explain like I'm 5'.

Ironically, that's what makes 'explain like I'm 5' so useful - it takes away the assumptions people have in their heads and forces them to use simple language and explain things from first principles.

It's quite powerful really. Richard Feynman was famous for being to explain physics in a way a layman could understand. Neil deGrasse Tyson does the same and people love it.

> Richard Feynman was famous for being to explain physics in a way a layman could understand.

Agreed. And the Challenger O-ring demonstration was a beautiful example of metaphor even if it wasn't correct. (Morton-Thiokol engineers had evidence that the O-rings didn't seal even at 75F and had been trying to stop launches PERIOD).

However, Feynman was also famous for "proof by intimidation" if you caught him out on something he didn't understand.

There is another element beyond explaining clearly, and that is that people tend to remember and relate to tangible examples better than abstractions. Metaphors are great memory devices even for people who are not dumb or uneducated.

The minimum education level for the group I work in is a STEM bachelor's degree. The mode is probably a STEM masters with 5-10 years of experience. And, within the "small" group, everyone is a STEM PhD, MD, or both. We use a lot of metaphors, partially because some of the stuff we're talking about doesn't have a name yet, and we are still trying to figure out what the important properties are.

"Talk to them like they're five" when they're adults that can figure out that they're being talked down upon is a quick way to alienate the crowd even more.

If instead you mean to use more common words and to make concepts relatable to everyday life - that usually works out pretty well in my experience. It's not an easy thing to do either for the "smart" leader.

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