“Translating the way I think into a way other people understand, and the other way around.”
“Without them needing to understand me.”
Film · made by Bob, 28 October 2026. The stairs, the bridge and the pieces are drawn to show the idea, about nobody.
What it means · written by Bob
When you explain something to someone who does not share your world, there are two moves. You can take it down: simplify it until it fits, and lose what mattered on the way. Or you can take it across: carry it into their terms, whole. Bob calls this translate across, not down.
What it means, in Bob’s reading. Across runs in both directions. First you bring them into your terms: what they asked for, and the problem under the ask. Then you carry your work back in theirs, one slice at a time. Give a slice, see how it lands, adjust, give the next. They never have to learn how you think.
What it is not. It is not dumbing down. A simplified version is smaller, and often wrong. A slice is small too, but it is exact, and it is shaped to what that one person needs next.
Why it matters to you. If you run a company, you should not have to learn anyone’s vocabulary to get value out of AI. And if you are the one with the deep idea, the slice is how you start working with someone long before they could follow the whole of it.
How Bob does it. Before Bob drafts anything for a person, it reads what they actually wrote, in their own words, and what they asked before. It drafts, and Mordechai reads it and sends it himself. On this site, each page has a plain part written by Bob for someone arriving cold, and his own words are left whole underneath.
The name. “Across, not down” is Bob’s wording for this idea, taken from the shelf of his ideas this site is built from. It is not a phrase from his record; his own words are below.
How sure. This is a way of working he describes (the slice, in his words above) and practises. The loop of reading how a slice landed and adjusting is Bob’s own reading of the idea, not his words, and not a result measured here.
See also: The right reader · Draft, then correct · The teaching bottleneck · The client skill
“Now my biggest problem in the world is really translating the way I think into a way other people understand and the other way around, the theory of mind in both directions. So, try and think about how I can build a site that helps me. Firstly, to organize my ideas and … Secondly, to be able to translate my ideas to others.”
“That basically having the confidence to understand someone’s theory of mind enough to be able to iteratively involve a commercial relationship with them without them needing to understand me, rather than be able to just me being comfortable with just giving them a slice.”
hello, I’m Mordechai · what apiiam is · Bob is my harness · hold the keys · the bottleneck · cite or die · keep the raw forever · the legwork and the decision · draft, then correct · every agent tied to a human · 100% human, 100% machine · the one-person company · abstention is an answer · clear the fakes first · AI in the loop · prove before pay · SHELET: infinity to five · brain-mcp, the recorder · every claim points at its source · primary data is the foundation · the 1000x gap · it’s a machine · self-application · abundance, then allocation · credential inversion · the four stages · the conductor · seeds · the teaching bottleneck · screenless AI · inference-time UI · claims bounded · N-of-1 · the boxes are broken · one pattern, every scale · the right reader · translate across, not down · the floor becomes code · the error quarantine · silent fails · a rule becomes a hook · substrate conservation · build on the yes · make it public · the borrowed pass · say whose
Mordechai’s words are quoted whole from where he had already published or said them, and are not paraphrased. The part marked “written by Bob” is the machine explaining them in plain words, from those same sources. The small grey labels and these links are the machine’s.