> So even with 12 years of education, there isn't REALLY a significant barrier of understanding between the average adult an the doctor.
I apologize for saying this, but this kind of statement smells of Dunning-Kruger. You only feel that way because the doctor works hard to make things understandable for you, and a significant part of his training is in the direction.
How much do you think the average adult would understand when the doctor says something like "I suspect a B-cell mediated paraneoplastic disease (not a T-cell one, mind you), possibly affecting your NMDR receptors? If that's the case, surely a 5-methyl perdnisolone (or maybe a 6-methyl one) will provide some help by modulating antibody generation. An intravenous human normal immunoglobulin is also likely to help in this modulation."?
Instead, the doctor is likely to say "You have an autoimmune disease. We have a cheap-with-side-effects treatment, and an expensive-with-less-but-possibly-not-covered-your-insurance one". Just like the IT guy would say "one works within the office, one works across the world, and there's a gateway between them".
Everything your doctor said has been known and codified in medicine for close to 100 years. So while the specific definitions may be missed, it's still followable for a lay person, because it's connected to concepts they get (cell, disease, antibody, intravenous, maybe even receptors.) If you asked an average adult to translate that sentence, I bet it would come close to your doctor translation, minus the side commentary on costs. Certainly a doctor in another field, say, a podiatrist or even just a first year resident, can follow along with what the immunologist said.
Whereas software is such a vast body (pun intended?) That nothing translates. DevOps interns, analytics architects, experience designers, and black hats have entire worlds of jargon to decode. But people pretend all the time it's all just software and if you're good at Angular you'll be good at embedded computing or if you're good at data modeling you can pick up machine learning.
I apologize for saying this, but this kind of statement smells of Dunning-Kruger. You only feel that way because the doctor works hard to make things understandable for you, and a significant part of his training is in the direction.
How much do you think the average adult would understand when the doctor says something like "I suspect a B-cell mediated paraneoplastic disease (not a T-cell one, mind you), possibly affecting your NMDR receptors? If that's the case, surely a 5-methyl perdnisolone (or maybe a 6-methyl one) will provide some help by modulating antibody generation. An intravenous human normal immunoglobulin is also likely to help in this modulation."?
Instead, the doctor is likely to say "You have an autoimmune disease. We have a cheap-with-side-effects treatment, and an expensive-with-less-but-possibly-not-covered-your-insurance one". Just like the IT guy would say "one works within the office, one works across the world, and there's a gateway between them".