OTOH it was Feynman who said something like ‘we don't know how to explain [something] to freshmen, therefore we don't really understand it yet’, and Einstein and Rutherford are alleged to have said similar things about explaining stuff to grandmothers and bartenders respectively.
He probably was using the word “understand” in a relatively narrow sense (after all he was the same person who said that no-one understood QM), and I agree with your general point, but certain people do overestimate how impossible it is to explain certain things in a way that can be understood by intelligent laymen (as done e.g. in Feynman's QED).
I think according to Feynman the fact that nobody understands QM is the reason why we can't easily teach it to freshman.
In some sense I think modern physics even dropped the goal of understanding. It got replaced by the mantra of "Shut up and calculate."
but certain people do overestimate how impossible it is to explain certain things in a way that can be understood by intelligent laymen (as done e.g. in Feynman's QED).
I also often underrate it. I once tried to teach a first year student in informatics A the principle of recursion. The whole ...
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