Think about referential distance. If you have a choice between a common-speech phrase and a jargon one, the common-speech one is probably a better choice: it will be understood by a broader audience, and will better serve to spread useful ideas into the mainstream — to raise the sanity waterline, as Eliezer puts it.

The expression, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" is a reasonably common expression. So it is probably fine to refer to it, at least to a technically-educated English-speaking audience. (Although it sounds like it might be ancient, it was apparently coined by mid-20th-century psychologist Abraham Maslow — yeah, the "hierarchy of needs" guy.)