How do I use dt?

I feel like I've gone down this rabbit hole many times and for the life of me I can't figure out the "accurate" formula for using dt.

In some examples, I've seen it presented as "self.x - 20*dt". And in other examples, I've seen it as "self.x 20(dt/60)" (or something like that. And others have mentioned you need to consider your own refresh rate when you're programming, and not bother with 60.

Can anybody explain like I'm five, how to transition between "move X amount of pixels per tick" to properly using dt for movement/animation. Because no matter how much I read documentation, scour the forums, and look at the examples (even the Kiwi example uses dt in different ways). I just can't wrap my head around it, and literally have become paralyzed by this and feel like I can't move forward with my projects until I make sure they're frame-independent.

dt is the time since the last tick.

So at 60 fps dt is around 16 ms.

If your framerate drops so does dt.

If your framerate goes to zero so does dt.

If your frame rate is halved so is dt.

Anything times zero = 0

So if your speed, a value you come up with(in pixels per second), say 60 is multiplied by dt and dt= 0 then the speed will be zero.

If dt was 0.16 then your speed would be 0.96 pixels per tick, 60 pixels per second in this case.

To test set a sprite's x to self.x+(speed*dt)