h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This article, although scientific, is not exactly written for the lay person. Does that not defeat the object for this piece appearing in H2G2? Is it possible for you to write it in such a way that it would any reader to pick it up and understand it? Or is it because the science behind it is complex anyway and the reader has to to be able to have some grounding in physics to comprehend the article?

It is definately not for the reader who is not prepared to do the work at some point.

First, Godel's theorem deals with self referential systems, which a lot of people have difficulty understanding.

then you have the interaction between that and knowledge modelling, which is another complex subject which is not as well understood as people would like to believe.

finally you have the interaction between godel's theorem, knowledge modelling, and physics, especially quantum physics, which is also hard to understand.

However it is one of those trick articles to form an editorial decision about.

On the one hand, you could say that if it isn't understandable to everyone, it shouldn't go into the edited guide. this leads to the edited guide only containing stuff which 6 year olds would understand, and isn't really a desirable outcome.

another choice would be to allow anything which was accurate, but this has the tendence for things to be accepted before they have been simplified enough.

so you are left with the final option. you allow stuff which is as simple as it can get without making it impossible to be accurate, and ask that if the users want to look at complex stuff, they have the minimum background needed to understand it.

A side effect of this last option is that it encourages the author to provide copious links to that background material, and sometimes causes some of it to get added to h2g2.

I hope this helps.