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How To Explain Things Real Good 👌 (Stanford mini-talk) (Patreon)

Published:
2022-06-30 16:12:13
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

(3 min read – new talk, patreon housekeeping, upcoming projects, misc)

Hi folks, thanks for your patience! My Stanford mini-talk, on how to explain complex ideas accessibly, is out now!

👌 HOW TO EXPLAIN THINGS REAL GOOD 👌 (18 minute video)

It took me way longer than I'd thought to edit this video. My slides weren't recorded, so I had to edit them back in. While I was at it, I also made the talk punchier & more concise. I hope you like it, and find it useful in your own educational creations!

One-slide summary:

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Patreon Housekeeping:

  • June 2022's rewards are up! Thank y'all~ 💖
  • Inflation is finally biting my butt – I haven't edited my Patreon tiers' $-thresholds since launching in 2014 – so I'll update my tiers soon but don't worry, Patreon lets me have legacy tiers to "grandparent" you in. So, it won't affect current patrons, but you should know anyway!

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Upcoming Projects:

1) In July, I'll [try to] finally release Nutshell, my "expandable explanations" thing. After two years of teasing about it. Gah.

(If I don't release it in July, I'll pause this Patreon for that month to not charge you. The biggest blocker is that I'm still traveling the States & trying to see as many US friends as I can, who I haven't seen in 3 years coz of [gestures around])

2) I started making an Econ 101 explainer! This is ultimately so I can explain Georgism, or: why the rent is too damn high, and what to do about it. (shift taxes from productive activity onto land speculation + maybe a citizen's dividend)

3) I'm finally writing an essay I've wanted to write for years, but have been too cowardly to. It's going to be a one-hour long read. I'm only finally doing it now for my own dignity's sake, to state it on my record. The title of the essay is “Burning Out on the Social Justice Movement – and some solutions”. The fact that I feel nervous about giving even constructive criticism, even when I'm a trans person of color, to the point I have to shoehorn mentioning "I'm a trans person of color" any time I hint at it – that should tell you how toxic this all is. (My longform essay will also explain: secular virtue ethics, restorative justice, probabilistic/critical thinking, and more!)

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Miscellaneous:

  • I finished Slime Mold Time Mold's POTATO DIET experiment. Ate (mostly) potato for 40 days! Signups are closed for now, but you can sign up for future studies. I hear they'll have their first published results next week; stay tuned!
  • 3Blue1Brown's Summer of Math Exposition 2 "contest" is GO! This time they're trying two new things: 1) a separate judging category for non-video works, like explorable explanations. And 2) matchmaking between domain experts & content creators! I'm not sure if I'll join this year, but there are things I've wanted to explain, but need domain experts on (Gödel's proof, mechanism design/"inverse game theory"). Plus some of the domain experts' pitches are tempting. (Busy Beavers, you say??)

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Anyway, let me know what you think of my new talk! (or anything above!)

🌞 H.A.G.S,
~ Nicky Case

Files

Previews only

How To Explain Things Real Good (Stanford mini-talk)

🖼 Slides & Transcript at: https://ncase.me/StanfordTalk 💸 Patreon for sneak peeks at & to support my educational work! https://www.patreon.com/ncase 🦆 Credits music from my free dumb album: https://ncase.itch.io/cute-gay-nerd 00:00 Introduction 01:05 Tricks over Theory 02:51 1) Show what made you care 05:05 2) Show, then tell 08:03 3) Therefore & But, not And Then 12:25 4) Write a draft, cut 10% 12:47 5) Do real tests, early & often 15:24 Conclusion 16:37 Credits

Comments

Jay Treat

Great talk! (as usual)

AP

So useful. Thank you!

AP

Also apropos pausing if you don't release Nutshell. Personally I support a healthy work and life balance and I don't expect you to pause this Patreon even if you just go relaxing and travelling for a month and relax. Just saying. Thanks for the transparency though.

Joe Marasco

Your talk was excellent. I continue to learn a lot from you.

Ted

Fantastic talk. Some tricks, I do on purpose and they're reliably great ("write a draft, cut 10%", "PEA"). Others, I think I do without thinking about it, but being able to clearly explain why they work is super valuable to do them more reliably, and explain to others ("therefore, but"). Others are entirely new, and I can't wait to apply them ("show what made you care", or this idea of testing a talk before I even have a draft for it). Really brilliant; I'll share this video around. Thanks for the link to SoME 2; I didn't know about it and you inspired me to try and participate (https://github.com/leios/SoME_Topics/issues/206) =)

Hed Bar-Nissan

Just had an Aha moment where I realized an area where I always missed the but=> therefore step. I'm reading Shape by Jordan Ellenberg, and he describes how Poincare in 1904 discussed physics state: "There are symptoms of a serious crisis," Poincaré said, "which would seem to indicate that we may expect presently a transfomation." ... "Now here's the crisis: physics didn't actually seem to work that way. Maxwell's equations, which splendidly unified the theories of electricity, magnetism, and light, were not invariant under the symmetries as they ought to have been" A very big BUT which leads to Einstein's Relativity theory (Therefore step)