Let me try to figure out where our disagreement is: I believe you can learn the basics of "how gravity works" without knowing the calculus that was used to derive it. You can learn the basics of "how gravity works" without even knowing g = 9.8m/s^2, or the algebra necessary to solve that equation. You can teach the basic concepts of "things fall", "heavy things fall as fast as light things", and probably even "things fall faster the longer they've been falling" to a 5 year old.
Do you agree that a child can learn something useful about the way the world works from these non-mathematical lessons in gravity?
The difference between gravity and quantum physics is that by the time someone is ready to learn about gravity, they've lived gravity and experienced it their whole life.
Yes, they've "experienced" quantum physics too, but their intuitions about it will (almost certainly) turn out to be mostly wrong; therefore, mathematics is required.
Recently reporters from two major national magazines contacted me in preparation for doing stories on Bitcoin. This reminded me that Wired magazine did a cover story on the Cypherpunks in its second issue. I think the LessWrong community is already larger and more active than Cypherpunks were back then, and potentially more influential, but there hasn't been much publicity on us. I'm tempted to suggest doing a story on LessWrong to one of the reporters. Is this a good idea, or bad?
More generally, do we want more publicity, and if so what's the best way to go about getting it?
ETA: Would it be bad etiquette to reveal the names of these magazines at this point, or even to say as much as I've said?