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My understanding of it is somewhat similar, although I'd argue that's where our mental imagery breaks down: the "weight on fabric" metaphor works to a point then stops conveying what's really happening and becomes misleading.

I think of it like "magnets as rubber bands", and what I call "Feynman lies":

> I can't explain [magnetic] attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we’d said the magnets attract like as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands, I shouldn’t be in trouble, you’d soon ask me about the nature of the bands… and secondly if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly, you see.

> [...]

> But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with, because I don’t understand them in terms of anything else that you are more familiar with.

direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc&t=1263s

but the whole chapter is worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc&t=894




That last sentence is a phenomenal explanation of why it can be harder for experts to teach a subject than non-experts.




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