1 upvotes, 3 direct replies (showing 3)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
How long it will take for the current research papers to be converted to readable form with just a high school knowledge.
Comment by F0sh at 06/03/2025 at 16:23 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Are you asking how long it will take for research papers to be made readable by high school graduates? The answer to that is "never" because there's no incentive to.
To get to the point of understanding research papers, you have to have the background information. That background consists of **at least** a university course, each one of which typically involves information that is longer than one research paper, and may well involve understanding an entire textbook. The majority of research papers also are best understood in the context of other research you need to read.
To bring the high-school graduate reader up to speed, then, would require adding information to the paper that is longer than the paper itself. Why bother, when that information exists elsewhere?
Comment by 170rokey at 06/03/2025 at 18:20 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Most research papers will never be converted into readable form for someone with high school knowledge. Most of the science that one learns in high school has been known for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
The main exception to this is probably stuff related to AI. There are some videos you can watch on YouTube that explain how something like chatGPT works, and you can understand these videos with just a high school education. The foundational technology on which chatGPT is based (called a Generative Pre-trained Transformer, AKA GPT) came out in a paper around 2017.
So to answer your question more directly, it highly depends on the field.
Comment by miraska_ at 07/03/2025 at 00:11 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Core concepts would eventually be available for wider audience. Math is good example - school math covers medieval times. Universities - right after medieval times.
Also concepts would be simplified by scholars who tries to understand it, but failed to understand it and find new ways to understand it and explain it to others. Then new generation of scholars would do the same. At some point it would be digestible for highschoolers