Comment by munificent

People interpret your words in context of an existing framework of understanding.

If I tell you "we're adding a button to the help page", you understand that "button" means "software GUI element" and "help page" means "hypetext page on the world wide web". You do not immediately get out needle and thread and start poking holes in paper.

The challenge, then, is telling people that the framework itself is wrong. In order to understand what you're saying, your words have already gone through and been filtered by the very framework you are trying to change.

VR really suffers from this. How do you get someone excited about VR by showing them flat images of it on a typical display? You can't. If you could translate the experience to a flat display then, by definition, VR wouldn't really be adding anything.

By letting a person experience the thing itself directly, you sidestep a lot of that framework and context. You don't need to get the point across in metaphor, analogies, or simulation. You don't need a persuasive map when you can literally drop them into the territory and let them both draw their own map and directly see for themselves in what ways the map is lacking.