What does the "RPF;ht" at the bottom stand for? (I vaguely recall this being an old convention of something?)
'ht' is Helen Tuck, the secretary at Caltech's Theory Group for many years; that mark indicates she typed the letter. I was there many years after Feynman passed away, but I have fond memories of Helen and some of the stories she had to tell about the "old days".
"You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
41–50 of 83 posts
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#42I'd like to see a transcript of the letter this was written in response to.
Here's both letters: http://elzr.com/posts/wolfram-feynman
"Wolfram did not follow Feynman's advice. Not only did he establish an institute but he also founded the company Wolfram Research, makers of the widely used Mathematica software system. Contrary to Feynman’s expectation Wolfram has been a successful CEO for many years. Within this environment he has managed to pursue ambitious directions in basic science, particularly through his 2002 book A New Kind of Science. He has also been happily married since the early 1990s."
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#43I wonder if we will ever get to read such transcripts in this age of private emails and ephemeral conversations.
For every person who has gchat set to never document anything, there's another neurotic packrat like my brother who saves all of his chat history so he can go back and show people how prior conversations went whenever there's a disagreement over what was said.
I used to do this. I have a wonderful memory for conversations I've had with people. I ended up turning off chat logging in every app I used because it just became a little too destructive to relationships.
Calling somebody out with cold hard facts works better on to-catch-a-predator than when it's people you enjoy being around :-)
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, take another look at the punctuation used in the comment containing the quote.
I stand corrected. Would be nice to not have been down-voted to oblivion for a misunderstanding.
No downvote from me. :-) Just the comment, which I almost didn't make except that the punctuation had not previously been noted and appeared to be the cause of the misunderstanding.
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone once said that madness was necessary for creating. Does anybody know who it was? Can't find it.
Maybe this is what you're thinking of, it's by Nietzsche. One must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
If it isn't, it is in any case a great sentence. Thank you.
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
The impression I got from this talk: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/ycombinato... is that he became a businessman reluctantly.
I don't read reluctance into those comments at all. Just look at the comments on personnel management. It's clear he likes it. The early remarks about the "stupid decisions" being made at the first company are a clear sign. Most business leaders know it's culturally not cool to talk like they enjoy leadership. To me, Wolfram went to the enfant terrible school of management. At least he turned out to be competent enou…
you make it sound like a good thing.
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone once said that madness was necessary for creating. Does anybody know who it was? Can't find it.
"A little madness now and then, is relished by the wisest men" - Mr Willy Wonka.
"Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" must have been where I read it, ages ago. Thank you!
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#48Wolfram is damn smart. I'll give him that.
He also made a pile of money on Mathematica. I'll give him that as well. It was classic "solve your own problem" entrepreneurship. He needed a better computer algebra program, so he wrote one, then started selling it.[1]
But he's a crank. He wrote a couple good papers in the 80s, then hasn't done anything decent since. He published A New Kind Of Science in 2002, which was supposed to change the world; except that half of it was nonsense and the other half was stolen from other people. (http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/)
Feynnman (kinda) calls him out on this: Complexity research doesn't need its own institute, because complexity research is a pseudoscience that means whatever you want it to mean, like how the homepathy quacks have latched on to the word "quantum".
1: Wolfram Alpha is the same thing. Wolfram wanted a natural language parser, so he wrote one. Except it doesn't work worth a damn, because natural language parsing is a hideously difficult problem, which probably requires strong AI.
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone once said that madness was necessary for creating. Does anybody know who it was? Can't find it.
It's interesting because Wolfram quotes Feynman as saying: "Peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/
Peace of mind can just as easily be interpreted as "comfort within one's madness."
Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
#50Feynman is one of my few heroes. This is an interesting situation. Feynman was right and Wolfram did what he wanted and was successful. Perhaps by taking Feynman's advice to heart. Who knows?
The advice was good; however, you can take a path that is not sensible yet succeed by sheer willpower, huge amounts of luck or to a lesser extent great ability.
Advice like this is intended to maximize the probability of success. To put it into a HN familiar example, don't be a single founder because single founders are x% less likely to succeed. The fact that single founders can and do succeed all the time does not make the advice bad, it just shows it to be the generalization that it is.