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DSimon 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!
Computer programming: I'm not sure if I am at Level 2 or not on this.
In favor of being at Level 2: I regularly think about non-computer-related topics with a CS-like approach (i.e. using information theory ideas when playing the inference game Zendo).
Also, I strongly associate my knowledge of "folk psychology" and "folk science" to computer science ideas, and these insights work in both directions. For example, the "learned helplessness" phenomenon, where inexperienced users become so uncomfortable with a system that they prefer to cling to their inexperienced status than to risk failure in an attempt to understand the system better, appears in many areas of life having nothing directly to do with computers.
Evidence against being at Level 2: I do not have the necessary computer engineering knowledge to connect my understanding of computer programming to my understanding of physics. And, although I have not tried this very often, my experiments in attempting to teach computer programming to laypeople have been middling at best.
My assessment at this point is that I am probably near to Level 2 in computer programming, but not quite there yet.