To expand on this explanation: this is why many physicists use the analogy of a stretchy fabric to describe gravity and warping of spacetime. Such as placing a large mass on the fabric helps draw all other masses towards it. But it is also important to remember that this is an analogy and loses a lot of (important) nuance because it's meant as a simplification to laymen.
There are many complexities that this type of model will not account for and it's worth noting that higher dimensional geometries don't "play nice", in that your visual intuitions will mislead you. Such as the stretchy fabric model is a 2D spacetime fabric stretching into a 3rd dimension that is otherwise not accessible by those flatlanders who experience a pulling force but do not see where that fabric is stretching into. Similarly we can not think of a black hole (or any mass) as a 3 dimensional version of a hold because it is "stretching" into higher dimensions, but the result of this distortion is the gravitational force we feel. Even this is a great oversimplification. If it helps you can think instead think of gravity as an inter-dimensional spaghetti monster that invisibly grabs everything and the closer you are to it the harder it is able to pull (just like you!). That might help remind you that the analogy is incomplete and unrealistic at some level.
I'd generalize the abstracted phenomena here and make sure that when anyone is listening to a scientific explanation they understand that it is incomplete (compared to the level of current understanding or prevailing hypotheses/theories). Truth has a lower limit in complexity and often the complexity is rather high. Physicists __love__ simple theories (they call it "elegant") and the whole goal is to make things as simple as possible. But obviously that threshold is rather high considering the level of math physicists do. So keep that in mind when hearing explanations because if it can be explained to your grandma, you're losing a lot of information. Even if as distilled as possible. (Also, Einstein never said if you understand something you can explain it to a layman. Not sure where that came from but it is a silly notion without addendums akin to what has been said here)
So take analogies for what they are, but do not rely on them as complete or even "good enough" models. They're explanatory aids, not explanations. Maybe scientists can do better on this, but it's a tough job already and requiring being a scientific communicator (to the masses) is too high of an expectation. Scientists are still people too and our brains are small and time is limited. We can only do so much lol
There are many complexities that this type of model will not account for and it's worth noting that higher dimensional geometries don't "play nice", in that your visual intuitions will mislead you. Such as the stretchy fabric model is a 2D spacetime fabric stretching into a 3rd dimension that is otherwise not accessible by those flatlanders who experience a pulling force but do not see where that fabric is stretching into. Similarly we can not think of a black hole (or any mass) as a 3 dimensional version of a hold because it is "stretching" into higher dimensions, but the result of this distortion is the gravitational force we feel. Even this is a great oversimplification. If it helps you can think instead think of gravity as an inter-dimensional spaghetti monster that invisibly grabs everything and the closer you are to it the harder it is able to pull (just like you!). That might help remind you that the analogy is incomplete and unrealistic at some level.
I'd generalize the abstracted phenomena here and make sure that when anyone is listening to a scientific explanation they understand that it is incomplete (compared to the level of current understanding or prevailing hypotheses/theories). Truth has a lower limit in complexity and often the complexity is rather high. Physicists __love__ simple theories (they call it "elegant") and the whole goal is to make things as simple as possible. But obviously that threshold is rather high considering the level of math physicists do. So keep that in mind when hearing explanations because if it can be explained to your grandma, you're losing a lot of information. Even if as distilled as possible. (Also, Einstein never said if you understand something you can explain it to a layman. Not sure where that came from but it is a silly notion without addendums akin to what has been said here)
So take analogies for what they are, but do not rely on them as complete or even "good enough" models. They're explanatory aids, not explanations. Maybe scientists can do better on this, but it's a tough job already and requiring being a scientific communicator (to the masses) is too high of an expectation. Scientists are still people too and our brains are small and time is limited. We can only do so much lol