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Well, several different teachers who I consider wise (because they managed
to stuff worthwhile ideas through my own thick skull) have told me the same
thing, in different ways:
If you can't explain it in simple terms to {insert randomly selected
non-expert, your grandmother, for example, here} you don't really know it.
The inability to bring a subject back to basics, to present it to the
uninitiated, is not an automatic consequence of being an expert. It is a
consequence of being wrapped up in your own point of view. That may be a
workable state of mind for an engineer in some situations, but a
communicator just can't work that way. We are always presenting material to
people who have a point of view somehow different from our own.
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mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com
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