The biggest "duh" moment of my life

[mangosteen]

I am now going to tell you about the single biggest "duh" moment of my life.


It happened on last Tuesday afternoon at Legoland in Carlsbad, California.

I was talking with my friend... let's call him Gustav. Gustav went to a real engineering school, and is a very smart guy all around, even if I did have to bill him for the red ink after proofreading some of his papers; but that was a long time ago.

So, bookteacher, Gustav, and I were wandering around Legoland, gawking at the immense labors of love that are large-scale Lego sculpture, occasionally uttering sentences of the form "Look a (noun)! Made of Lego!!!", when I decided to bitch about something that I've bitched about for at least 15 years of my life, if not more.

Up to that point in my life, I just didn't understand electricity. Circuit schematics left me utterly boggled. I'd stare at anything more that the most trivial of circuits and say "but how does the electricity decide to go where it goes?" I've read several basic electronics books, but none of them adequately explained why electrons don't just all make a right turn at the nearest junction. This has stumped me since I flunked E&M the first time, and struggled through it the second. I just didn't get it. I will also note that everyone who said "well, isn't it obvious?" when I asked them was only saved from a ruthless pummeling from me because I'm a relatively nice guy who knows how much time he'd do for aggravated assault.

Peeve: People who say "well, it's intuitively obvious" as shorthand for "I am incapable of explaining it to you, mostly because I'm too lazy, and why would an intelligent being ever need that explained to them, you cretin."

I will also mention that I know the "water" model of electricity, including resistors as smaller pipes, capacitors as elastic expansion joints in the pipe, inductors as water wheels, and so on. Unfortunately water still flows from somewhere, and I still didn't understand where it went.

So, as I said, I was bitching to Gustav about this, and said "why don't they all just make a right at the first resistor?" At which point, he thought about it for a second, and explained it thusly.

"Well, Eli, what are wires full of?"
"Metal."
"Right! Now, what is metal full of?"
"Atoms."
"And metal atoms tend to have...."
"Electrons."
"Precisely! So, you have a circuit and turn it off, where do the electrons go?"
"Well, they're still in the wire. They didn't go anywhere."
" Close enough. Now, you know the water metaphor for electricity, right?"
"Yeah, capaci--"
"So if there are still electrons in the wire, then if we used the water model...."
"The pipes are filled with water, and the voltage source is just a pump! The water doesn't come from anywhere!"
"Correct."

The light was blinding. I knew that electrons didn't have a source and a sink, at least in the way I originally thought about them, and I knew how the water model worked, but I was never able to put them together, and I (evidently) wasn't ever able to phrase the source of my misunderstanding well enough to get a meaningful explanation, up until then.

It was around that moment that I started to feel like a complete and total dumbass. When I got home, I started looking online at basic electronics tutorials. Every single one of them made all the sense in the world, now. Dare I say it, it was intuitively obvious how to evaluate a basic DC circuit. However, with some dim idea of the depth of incomprehension that I had only a couple of days before, I knew that I would have never understood them, and experienced the same mental block, if someone hadn't spelled out that the pipes were all pre-filled.

It has taken 15 years from when I started giving a damn about not knowing, until the time when I finally understood. I can't say I'm entirely pleased. I've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm behind.

Comments

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

Please to be recommending some basic electronics tutorials, good sir?

[bouncingleaf.livejournal.com]

mmm, seconded.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Horowitz and Hill, "The Art of Electronics"

muhahahahahaha

(note: this will take you from zero to competent but it's up the black run)

[mama-pipa.livejournal.com]

I did that, and I swore off circuits forever as a result!

[mangosteen]

(note: this will take you from zero to competent but it's up the black run)

Not to mention the implicit "Before reading this next section, please take three years of calculus" somewhere in Chapter 2.

[jss]

You don't need 3 years of calculus. The math should be intuitively obvious!

[sauergeek.livejournal.com]

If you can get me from zero to "calculus is intuitively obvious", you will be doing far better than my college education. Fear the differential. Fear the integral.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

Bah! Differentials are intuitively obvious.

We still fear the integral, though.

[gcuvier.livejournal.com]

But at least you had that "Aha!" moment. Some people go through life without ever having that moment about much of anything.

Huzzah on your conquering of the electron!

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

Knowledge is power!

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

...not to mention half the battle.

[bouncingleaf.livejournal.com]

Peeve: People who say "well, it's intuitively obvious" as shorthand for "I am incapable of explaining it to you, mostly because I'm too lazy, and why would an intelligent being ever need that explained to them, you cretin."

YES, ARGH. Peeve of mine as well. If the answer to my question were so bleeding *obvious*, I wouldn't need to ASK the question in the first place. :P

Akin to this is getting only half an answer to my question, for that exact set of reasons. "I have never done this before and have absolutely no idea what to do. What should I do here?" "Well, you should do X. You may also need to do Y." "Okay, how I do X, or Y, and how I determine whether or not I need to do Y?" "Oh, to determine if you need to do Y, just check Z." "Great. What the heck is Z? And how does Z determine if I need to do Y or not? And what about X, which you still haven't told me how to do?"

Not that I'm going through that at work right now or anything. *grr*

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

This reminds me so much of my experience as an MIT undergrad, and to a lesser extent my tenure at Akamai (which is chock-full of MIT geeks; coincidence?). I would hit a roadblock to my understanding of a crucial concept; typically a key concept that unlocks a whole subdiscipline. Try as I might I just can't wrap my brain around it. When I'd ask, I too would get either the "It's just obvious" response or else an explanation that I Just. Could. Not. Assimilate. And not surprisingly, being on the inside of the brain that can't get it, it's almost impossible to perceive the source of one's confusion. It's only after you finally get the "a-ha" moment that you can see where you were previously lost.

I don't know if this was real or entirely my imagination, but when I was at MIT I definitely got a disparaging vibe out of all this; either the "You shouldn't need it explained to you, you cretin" feeling or the "I explained it to you, why don't you get it, you cretin" feeling. Made me constantly question whether I belonged there or not. One would think that an institution of learning would recognize common failure modes in people's understandings of certain topics and be able to present the material in multiple ways, but this is not the case.

My classic example is Differential Equations. I was having a real hard time in that course, so much so that the day before an exam I went down to the library and pulled half-a-dozen DiffEQ textbooks out to see if any of them presented the material in a way that I could understand. Well, the six books were all virtually carbon copies of each other. Different authors, different publishers, different publication dates, but virtually the same stuff presented the same way in the same order. It's like, why bother writing another DiffEQ textbook if The Book has already been published many times over?

I still don't get 'em...

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I didn't go to MIT, but I used to get that one all of the time as well. I was originally a physicist and they like to use some form of "it's obvious" all of the time. Well, I was a struggling physicist, so it wasn't all that obvious to me. And it really burned me up that sometimes men got their questions answered and a lot of times I got "how could you possibly not understand this!?!?" Oddly enough, I finally went into electrical engineering, a move that many people in my family thought was hilarous since E&M was my worst subject in physics.

I am waiting for my "a-ha!" moment right now. I somehow ended up doing a lot of probability modeling in my current job, and I am not so good with the calculus. Fundamentally, I am more an abstract algebra brain than a real analysis brain -- more control theory than signal processing. It's not like I can't integrate, but I can't look at something and take intuitive leaps as quickly. I get probability, but I usually get a little lost in stochastic processes. So I am reading and reading, and hopefully I will get my "a-ha!" moment.... I'm just a little tired of waiting for it.

[metalfatigue]

It's like, why bother writing another DiffEQ textbook if The Book has already been published many times over?

For money and to satisfy publish-or-perish requirements.

[pir.livejournal.com]

"well, it's intuitively obvious" as shorthand for "I am incapable of explaining it to you, mostly because I'm too lazy

The problem is that if someone just gets it, intuitively, they may not have any idea whatsoever how to explain it nomatter how hard they try. That's not really mostly lazy.

[vatine]

Quite common with knowledge that has been accumulated piecemeal through a long period of time and finally presents itself as "I know this". For me, the biggest stumbling block is probably to explain cooking. Say you want a meal consisting of some assorted veg, one potato dish for bulk, some meat and a sauce. It's quite obvious taht you want everything to be finished at the same time. So you start by making the potato dish (they almost always take longest, see) and then start making the rest at the appropriate time (and the best I can explain that is "the dish tells me so"). This would eb easier if I actually ever did the same thing twice, but (in general) I don't.

[arkady.livejournal.com]

That's a problem I have when trying to teach someone certain things such as knitting or other crafts, or some concepts. I understand it, and I can hold the whole concept in my mind just fine - but I may not have the slightest idea of how to go about explaining it to someone who doesn't understand it, becase it's reached an intuitive level in my mind; I know I know this thing but I can't tell you how I know this thing.

It's a bit like trying to teach someone poi. It works as long as you don't think too hard about how or why it works. The moment you start consciously thinking about what you're doing to show someone else, you lose it until you go back to thinking instinctively again.

I'm not sure that someone truly gets it...

[marrus.livejournal.com]

...until they can teach it to someone else.

How wonderful, Mr. Mangosteen, that you are still capable of having those moments. Thank you for putting the triumph of overcoming your stumbling frustration into such a well considered story!

I love learning that there is still so much to learn.

The quote you're looking for is Einstein

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

You don't really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.

Had that one on the wall of my office for a couple years now.

[marrus.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize I was looking for a quotation, but thank you for your help.

[dariusk.livejournal.com]

Yess. I, electrical engineer, congratulate you! You are now more qualified for a Bachelor's in EE than most of the people I graduated with.

[fes42.livejournal.com]

People who say "well, it's intuitively obvious" as shorthand for "I am incapable of explaining it to you, mostly because I'm too lazy, and why would an intelligent being ever need that explained to them, you cretin."


Can I borrow this quote with 'mad props' to mangosteen of course.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

People who say "well, it's intuitively obvious" as shorthand for "I am incapable of explaining it to you, mostly because I'm too lazy, and why would an intelligent being ever need that explained to them, you cretin."

I think it's shorthand for "I have some level of intuitive grasp of this, but I don't actually *understand* it well enough to explain it or teach it to you."

Some people who like to think of themselves as very smart do not like to acknowledge that their brains may not be as omniscient as they like, and thus react rudely when confronted with a potential hole.

Personally, one of the reasons I love teaching and explaining is that it helps me figure out the parts that I don't actually get in addition to clarifying parts that I do. I used to date someone who was highly non-technical but generally inquisitive (as well as very smart), and it was often an interesting exercise in the above.

[drwex]

I agree with pheromone about this:
I think it's shorthand for "I have some level of intuitive grasp of this, but I don't actually *understand* it well enough to explain it or teach it to you."

One of my favorite Feynman stories is about his assertion that if something was well enough understood it should be explainable to a college freshman. I forget the particular topic someone asked him about but after thinking about it for some time he came back and said that he probably didn't really understand because his explanation would have failed his own test. He then went on to write his Lectures on Physics which left me convinced that I should never have even attempted, let alone passed, any college physics course.

[skreeky]

You automatically win for giving a shit about not understanding. It's not that most people understand electricity, it's that they haven't decided that they should. Recall the "Yeh, whatever" expressions on most of the other people in your classes.

However.

As for calling people who can't explain something that's obvious to them "lazy," that's really overly harsh. First, what makes you so entitled to hours and hours of someone else's time to explain something that you have given them every indication you aren't going to get anyway? If the answer is "because I paid to take this class," what makes you entitled to prevent the rest of the class from learning the rest of the material because you don't get Chapter 1? Second, what makes you so entitled to prod someone into frustration about their own inability to explain something any more clearly than they have explained it, over and over and over? They have done the best they can. You don't get it. It's THEIR fault?? Come on.

I can't count the number of times I have felt like screaming at someone "I cannot explain to you any better until you can tell me what the hell about this you don't understand!" Usually, the person is Jon. Jon is obviously not an idiot. And yet, I will never be able to explain to him how to put in a window screen, which is so fucking obvious that I simply cannot explain it any better than I have done. It is so fucking obvious that most of my friends think he's faking stupidity so as to not have to do it. Am I lazy for just doing it myself, instead of having it not get done at all? Should I keep explaining it over and over all night and all day? Be reasonable.

[also-huey.livejournal.com]

That last paragraph answers your own question, I think. Teaching and learning are completely different -- and almost unrelated -- skills, and a lot of people who have subjects in which everything seems intuitive and easy have a difficult time teaching those subjects to people who are, to put it bluntly, stupid. And while 'blame' is sometimes useful in telling you what problem you need to solve (whether that's "Jon doesn't get this" or "Explaining this to Jon makes me insane") it doesn't actually solve the problem.

If Jon wants to learn, and you want to teach, you'll find a way to explain it.

My "A-ha!" moment came in the Army, at the NCO Academy, during PLDC - the class you have to take before you make Sergeant. I was fourth in my class of 200-some, and agonized over all three of the test questions I missed during the course, because I expected perfection. I was part of the group that the instructors told to fuck off to the pub during everyone else's mandatory study sessions. ...until the written test on land navigation. For some reason, people have trouble with this. I couldn't understand why, it just seems so intuitive. They paired up us "fuck off to the pub" types with one each really stupid guy. I swear, I must have explained every concept six different ways. I spent hours of my valuable pub-time explaining everything over and over to this guy.

At the end of PLDC, I made the commandant's list; they gave me an award. I got back to my unit, and they gave me another award, for "representing the unit well". But, on that land nav test, my stupid guy needed 17 out of 25 to pass, and he scored 19, and I was more proud of that than either of those awards. That was the first time I was told "You will teach him this", and by God, I did.

I've been getting discouraged at work lately. There's a couple people on my team that I'm trying to drag, kicking and screaming, into the scary futuristic world of 1980s technology. Is it because I'm a bad teacher, or because they're all morans? ...truth is, it doesn't matter. They need to learn, which means that I need to teach them. I'll find a way.

[skreeky]

Heh. An ironic chuckle escapes me. Another thing that I simply cannot explain to Jon (who is my husband, by the way, and a reasonably competent medical doctor) is how to read a map. He drives, not because he's sexist, but because he simply cannot navigate and it's completely natural to me. This has smacked us in the head again, because he's starting to play Grand Theft Auto on our PlayStation, and I have been sitting next to him saying things like "Okay, you need to make the next left turn... there... crap, you missed it. Take this left instead." and he's getting increasingly frustrated trying to figure out how I know that. There's a map in the lower left of your screen that shows a map with a dot that's your car, and a dot that indicates the direction of your destination. I cannot understand what it is he doesn't understand. You go toward the dot, usually via those little lines that represent streets. Why is it hard? I have no idea.

[mangosteen]

I concede your point in the instance where you're holding up a class with something that should be taken offline. That's what office hours are for.

One of my more, um, charming traits during my freshman year, was that I just didn't grasp that 300+ person lectures were not the place to ask questions. Needless to say, if I was paying attention and I still got lost, I raised my hand, and the prof would answer, usually explaining things to my satisfaction, once he/she gave an alternate explanation of what was going on.

While there were a 3-4 people who would give me the hairy eyeball after class saying that I was slowing the class down and that if I didn't understand it, then it was own goddamn fault, there were 20 or so who came up to me afterwards saying "I'm glad you had the balls to ask that question... I really wasn't following him, and that cleared it up."

That being said, even at the height of being a very freshman-like freshman, I wasn't deluded enough to think that a large lecture is the place to get personal tutoring.

To address the point of "explaining time and time again", I think it's more that I get very frustrated when a request for an alternate explanation, any alternate explanation, is met with "well, it makes sense to me this way, and it should obviously make sense to you this way, as well." In my case, it was that I had an incorrect assumption at a very basic level, and I had to get an explanation that backtracked far enough to take that into account. It was explaining it as a series of interconnected items and their relations, as opposed to a series of facts, which made it make sense. I've stored this particular fact away for the future when I need to learn stuff next. :)

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Well, the problem is that if you're someone who does get something like this, there are pretty good odds that you get lots of requests to explain it, albeit from different people. So you're sort of in the position of being asked to explain 'time and time again' from the get-go. And it becomes difficult to keep track of which person who didn't quite get it is asking what.

[madbodger.livejournal.com]

If you ever have that "aha" moment about women, let us (or at least me) know. Oh, right,
you're married. Never mind.

Oh Thank god...

[pisicutsa.livejournal.com]

My dad has been trying to exclain electricity to me since I was 4. And your example makes me get it also. *HUGS MANGOSTEEN* *HUGS GUSTAV* *HUGS EVERYONE*

I am insanely happy that you just made my brain go click. :)

Re: Oh Thank god...

[mangosteen]

*HUGS*

w00t!

Glad to be of service. :)

Re: Oh Thank god...

[coraline]

hee!!! that's really cool :)

[lycaena.livejournal.com]

Now that you understand how electricity works, be prepared to join the ranks of people who are annoyed that they labeled the direction of the flow *BACKWARDS*!!!

[bens_dad]

I'm not sure which way it goes where you are, but it goes one way in England, and the reverse way in Scotland. [At least it did in the school exam syllabuses twenty years ago.]

[redcountess]

You're not a dumbass, you just needed someone to make an analogy you understood.

[mangosteen]

Actually, a better description would be that I had an unstated (incorrect) assumption that was so basic, that no one knew that they had to backtrack that far in order to explain it.

I'm feeling much less dumbass-like today. :)

[coraline]

unstated (incorrect) assumption that was so basic, that no one knew that they had to backtrack that far in order to explain it.


this is so often the problem... i know i've had moments like this myself, though i can't currently think of any of them. but i think almost everyone knows that hit-on-the-head-with-a-2x4 feeling of "oh. duh!" when the word "duh" is just not profound enough to express quite the level of world-shift that just occurred.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

And the bit that makes it difficult for someone to correct is that

... you don't know what the misconception is
... they don't know what their assumptions are
... they don't know which assumptions you do have

At which point the only way out is to start at what you think is the beginning and work forward, which is time consuming. Although I can recommend that it works better if the person who doesn't understand tries to do the explaining, and keeps going until the person who does understand says 'aha, you just turned left at albequercue!'