But it's the technical person's responsibility to figure out the appropriate level of abstraction, if one cares about an accurate and thorough answer, since they are the ones holding the expertise.... but I agree that it would be absurd to expect an speech on networking fundamentals if the question is "why is my website down?".
But if they have to give a "yes*" or "yes, but..." answer, than some of those fundamentals might be relevant. But you wouldn't expect the discussion to get into signalling theory, again, unless it was relevant.
Given that nontechnicals have such a hard time grasping something as basic as abstraction, I certainly would not trust them to make judgement calls on it effectively.
Which again leads to the question of just how accurate an answer is the nontechnical person looking for?
But if they have to give a "yes*" or "yes, but..." answer, than some of those fundamentals might be relevant. But you wouldn't expect the discussion to get into signalling theory, again, unless it was relevant.
Given that nontechnicals have such a hard time grasping something as basic as abstraction, I certainly would not trust them to make judgement calls on it effectively.
Which again leads to the question of just how accurate an answer is the nontechnical person looking for?