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DanArmak comments on Open Thread, August 2010 - Less Wrong
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I thought I'd pose an informal poll, possibly to become a top-level, in preparation for my article about How to Explain.
The question: on all the topics you consider yourself an "expert" or "very knowledgeable about", do you believe you understand them at least at Level 2? That is, do you believe you are aware of the inferential connections between your expertise and layperson-level knowledge?
Or, to put it another way, do you think that, given enough time, but using only your present knowledge, you could teach a reasonably-intelligent layperson, one-on-one, to understand complex topics in your expertise, teaching them every intermediate topic necessary for grounding the hardest level?
Edit: Per DanArmak's query, anything you can re-derive or infer from your present knowledge counts as part of your present knowledge for purposes of answering this question.
I'll save my answer for later -- though I suspect many of you already know it!
This strikes me as an un-lifelike assumption. If I had to explain things in this way, I would expect to encounter some things that I don't explicitly know (and other that I knew and have forgotten), and to have to (re)derive them. But I expect that I would be able to rederive almost all of them.
Refining my own understanding is a natural part of building a complex explanation-story to tell to others, and will happen unless I've already built this precise story before and remember it.
For purposes of this question, things you can rederive from your present knowledge count as part of your present knowledge.