I’m fairly certain it was Albert Einstein who said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”, and – generally speaking – this is true. With that said, however, there is a massive difference between explaining something complicated in a straightforward way and dumbing it down to the point where it completely loses any and all nuance.
And yes, quite often, this is much easier said than done. Thankfully, as Editorial & Content Manager for a studio whose very job it is to take complex ideas and turn them into clear communications, I have a bunch of fail-safe ways to ensure that your audience gets exactly what you’re trying to say without losing any of the critical meaning.
1. Ask yourself: “Who is this for?”
Before you even open up that Word document, take a step back and have a good think about who your audience is, because this needs to form the foundation of everything that comes after.
Talking to academics or industry professionals with a solid grounding in the subject matter? Great! You can hold onto that complex terminology. Trying to communicate with the general public, however? That’s also not a problem, but you are going to have to put in more legwork when it comes to keeping your messaging accessible.
Which brings me nicely onto…
2. Lose the jargon, keep the precision
When communicating complex ideas, it’s crucial that you keep language accessible without losing any of the meaning. For example, you might know what it means if a patient presents with “Acute idiopathic tachycardia”, but I can almost guarantee that your average Joe on the street would have no idea.
However, the average person is going to know what you’re talking about if you say “the patient’s heartrate has suddenly increased to over 100 beats per minute, and we don’t know the underlying cause.”
The wording has changed, but the meaning has remained the same. The only difference is how many people will understand what you’re trying to say.
3. Give the general gist, then get into the detail
Do you know how long the average person spends thoroughly reading an article? No, me neither, but it’s probably not very long. After all, we humans are inherently lazy, and in an age where information comes at us thick and fast, it’s crucial to hook your audience before you bog them down with too many intricacies.
So, here’s what you do: you open with a brief overview of the topic, then you get into the detail. Hook your fish with a nice juicy worm, and once you’ve got him in the boat, then you can start fully explaining the “Black Hole Information Paradox” to him.
4. Use analogies sparingly and clearly
Remember that fish analogy I used in the last paragraph? DON’T DO THAT.
What? I said I was good at clearly explaining things, not perfect.
I personally love to use analogies, but the problem is, you risk making something even less clear for an audience than it was in the first place.
Let’s take J. J. Thomson’s 1904 “plum pudding model” as an example. Thomson likened the atom to a plum pudding, i.e. he thought that it was one big “doughy” positive charge with a bunch of electron “plums” distributed throughout. The analogy is fine if you know what a plum pudding is, but if you don’t, you’re left none-the-wiser and probably feeling a little bit hungry.
In short; analogies can sometimes be helpful, but make sure they’re simple and universally-understood.
5. Mark uncertainty and limitations honestly
There’s a bit of a misconception that in order to be credible, you have to have all of the answers, but this actually isn’t the case at all. In fact, people are far more likely to have trust in someone who admits their limitations than someone who presents themselves as an infallible know-it-all.
If what you’re explaining has unknowns or there are shortcomings in its application, tell your audience.
So, in the spirit of openness and acknowledging your weaknesses: my name’s Cat and I don’t actually know the difference between a hyphen, an em-dash and an en-dash. And at this point, I’m a little afraid to ask…
Example: The Black Hole Information Paradox
Remember earlier when I mentioned educating a fish on the Black Hole Information Paradox? Well, now I’m going to educate YOU, dear reader, using all of the principles I’ve just set out.
We’ll start with a highly technical explanation:
“The black hole information paradox arises from the apparent nonunitary evolution implied by Hawking radiation, where semiclassical gravity predicts pure states collapsing into mixed thermal states, violating quantum mechanical unitarity and challenging the consistency of general relativity with quantum field theory.”
Did you get all of that? No, me neither, but that’s okay! We’re going to make it easy to understand without losing any of the nuance.
So, first things first: who is my audience? Well, you’re probably very highly educated, but for the purposes of this exercise, I’m going to assume you’re just an average person with a passing interest in science.
Next, we’re going to replace our jargon. So “Hawking radiation” would become “faint radiation that black holes slowly leak”, “unitary evolution” becomes “physics rules that say nothing is ever truly lost”, and “mixed thermal state” becomes “random, pattern-less radiation”.
Jargon’s out, simplicity is in! Now, let’s add a hook. Something like “Black holes might destroy energy… and if they do, one of the most trusted rules of physics breaks.”
Are you hooked? I know I am.
Next, are our analogies. In this instance, you might compare the changing state of matter to steam evaporating off of a boiling pot; everyone knows that boiling water turns it to steam, so this is a fairly safe analogy.
Finally, we confess what we don’t know. The paradox is unsolved – hence, why it’s a paradox -, competing ideas exist, and there isn’t yet a full theory of quantum gravity.
Put all of that together and we get:
“Black holes might destroy energy… and if they do, one of the most trusted rules of physics breaks.
In simple terms, it’s the problem that black holes seem to erase information, and according to modern physics, that should be impossible. Quantum theory says that information about a physical system can change form – like how boiling water in a pot turns it to steam - but it can never truly disappear.
However, when matter falls into a black hole and the black hole slowly evaporates by emitting faint radiation, that radiation appears completely random and carries no record of what fell in. If the information really is gone forever, then a core rule of quantum physics is wrong. If it isn’t gone, we don’t yet understand where it’s hiding.
Physicists are still debating the answer, and solving it likely requires a new theory that successfully combines gravity and quantum mechanics.”
The final result is an explanation of a rather complex bit of science that most people should be able to understand.