31 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
31 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
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# Beware of those who don't speak plainly
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When I was young, I would frequently not understand what someone was trying to explain to me. This happened frequently when listening to engineers, economists, journalits, business leaders, scientists, and other sorts of "experts". As a young and humble padawan, I often assumed I was dumb and whatever was being presented was just above my pay grade.
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As life progressed, I kept on expanding my brain, which led me to become knowledgeable in areas I previously wasn't and were the explanations of "experts" were flying over my head. This lead me to observe that, often times, the blame was not on dumb young me when I didn't understand the allegedly experts. Instead, they were either explaining stupid gibberish that sounded great but was wrong, or they were lying, bullshiting or pretending.
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On the other hand, sometimes I stumbled upon people who explained important, brilliant and relevant truths in extremely simple and understandable ways. Young dumb me used to not appreciate this people, because being young and dumb, I mistakenly assumed if something was simple and easy to understand, surely it wouldn't merit attention nor would it be relevant. School taught us that learning is hard and boring, so the harder and the more boring something is, the more we should focus on it. Because otherwise... why would through the ordeal of traditional education?
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Now I'm old enough to appreciate the value of simplicity. It took many spins around the sun to come to this, but I'm grateful I eventually did it. I've learned that most things can be explained if done with care and time, and thus whenever I encounter someone explaining something convoluted, I immediately become skeptical and try to read the situation to understand on whose end is the fault sitting. I obviously still consider that the fault may be on my end, and I also think that many things to be known will forever be above my paygrade. But often times, the problem is on the other end.
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Here's a few situations that showcase this in specific examples.
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## Confusing business models
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It shouldn't be hard to explain how a business makes money. Typically it's as simple as explaining the pains and needs of your customers and how you solve them. Sometimes it needs a long-ish explanation if the audience is unfamiliar with the context of your customers, but once a bit of context is provided, the value should be easy to explain.
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My experience when someone has a hard time explaining how their business makes money is that one of these is likely happening:
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- It is not making money but there is a need to pretend it does.
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- It is making money in a dishonest way and they want to put make up on it.
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## Economics
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## Management gurus
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## Academia
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## Politicians
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