I was once helping a child with her homework. She was supposed to write about a place that was important for her, and had chosen her family's summer cottage.

Every now and then, she would get distracted from the writing, tell me something about the cottage, and then complain that she didn’t know what to write next.

Me: “Well, you could write the thing that you just told me.”

Child: “Oh! I can?”

Then she would. After a bit, the same thing happened again: she got stuck, distracted herself by telling me something about the place, and complained about being stuck. I then pointed out that she had just told me something that she could write down. This happened about 3-4 times in total, after which she had enough sentences for the assignment.

It's not just children. On a few occasions, an adult I’d be chatting with would tell me something like, “I want to explain this concept, but I don’t know how”. Then I would ask them what they want to explain, they’d explain it to me, and I’d point out that they just gave a perfectly good explanation.

And lest it sound like I was thinking of [...]

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First published:
November 26th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Gd7HjjF6HsbLB5wdc/just-explain-it-to-someone

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Just explain it to someone

LessWrong (30+ Karma)