Wittgenstein started one public lecture with a disclaimer to the effect, "This will not be one of those popular science lectures where you come out of the talk thinking you understand a topic that you understand nothing about."
With all due respect to Feynman, if at the end of his lectures lay people couldn't do the math behind the physics he described, they didn't really "understand" it. They understood a simplified picture of it that captured most of the important details in a really vivid way. But they were still missing something important.
That said, you're right. In the general case, we shouldn't allow ourselves the "out" of "oh, this is soooo complex that I can't speak clearly" without some pretty damn strong motivation. It's just that in this particular case, I didn't think the essay was especially jargon laden, so the OP's comment seemed misplaced. How much more simply can one explain that cities affect how you think?
With all due respect to Feynman, if at the end of his lectures lay people couldn't do the math behind the physics he described, they didn't really "understand" it. They understood a simplified picture of it that captured most of the important details in a really vivid way. But they were still missing something important.
That said, you're right. In the general case, we shouldn't allow ourselves the "out" of "oh, this is soooo complex that I can't speak clearly" without some pretty damn strong motivation. It's just that in this particular case, I didn't think the essay was especially jargon laden, so the OP's comment seemed misplaced. How much more simply can one explain that cities affect how you think?