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Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

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Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#61

Post by dfeliej »

pavas wrote: post #9
DuskStar wrote: post #7

This feels like the sort of advice that increases the variance of outcomes more than the mean , if that makes any sense. It'll help some people, but also really won't help others. It's like... You'd need some serious disregard for the rest of the physics community to think you can figure out a reactionless drive. This is great if you actually can, but otherwise it's going to lead you to failure. In a lot of ways, get…

I think it would be very desirable to increase the variance of outcomes without significantly decreasing the mean. The way research funding is structured now, researchers are incentivized towards taking small publishable steps without too much risk. This is needed of course, but it isn't going to bring about another Newton. I think we desperately need a few more Newtons if we're to prosper in the next hundred years.

I came to suggest something similar.

I often wonder how much this applies today. Academic science is currently heavily driven by funding of popular, low-risk research.

Also, without meaning any disrespect to Feynman or the advice, it's easy enough to say something like "disregard what others are doing" when you've won a Nobel. It's another thing to say this to people in just about any other inequivalent scenario, which is nearly everyone.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#62

Post by emiliobumachar »

pbnjay wrote: post #59
emiliobumachar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? Specifically, is there any doubt about Watson's contribution to the discovery of the double helix structure?

Well since Rosalind Franklin did the majority of the work, yes.

Did Watson and his co-author fail to credit her in their paper? If they credited her, but the media failed to give her attention, it's not his fault.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#63

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

kragen wrote: post #54
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When does weird become too weird? I’m building a non-instant messenger, for example.

I don't know! That sounds like a worthwhile project to me; I'm on one email mailing list which only comes out in a nightly digest in order to remove the incentive for instant responses and promote thoughtful response instead. Harvard's Rotisserie system ( http://h2oproject.law.harvard.edu/ ) was another effort in that direction. And I was also on Slashdot starting around 1997, and I observed the incentive structure o…

I hadn't heard about Gresham's Law. Thanks a lot for that. And I definitely hadn't heard about Rotisserie:

> The Rotisserie implements an innovative approach to online discussion that encourages measured, thoughtful discourse in a way that traditional threaded messaging systems cannot. In contrast to the completely asynchronous, broadcast-to-broadcast mode of existing threaded messaging systems, the Rotisserie adds structure to both the timing and the flow of the discussion.

Thanks for that too. That's exactly the communication platform I made/am making. For me there's also the "human" element as described in Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism [0]. Like how "human time" is not "modern life time," but we're still humans so wouldn't it be nice to have a space where we communicate in human time. But yes Gresham's Law... hmmm...

[0] https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/projects/anthropo...

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#65

Post by chimprich »

hooloovoo_zoo wrote: post #16
LeonB wrote: post #2

This resembles the titular lesson from (Feynman’s second set of memoirs) “Why do you care what other people think?” ... when he had a breakthrough by stopping himself from caring about expectations and just started playing with what interested him. That led to the discovery which led to his Nobel prize.

Eh, Feynman put a lot of effort into caring about what other people thought for his whole life. As Murray Gell-Mann said in his obituary, “He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself.”

If he really didn't care what people thought, he wouldn't have told anecdotes and written books telling people how he didn't care what people thought about him. He wanted other people to think that he didn't care what other people thought.

In general, caring about what other people think is a good thing. The alternative is to be a sociopath.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#66

Post by asdfman123 »

DuskStar wrote: post #7

This feels like the sort of advice that increases the variance of outcomes more than the mean , if that makes any sense. It'll help some people, but also really won't help others. It's like... You'd need some serious disregard for the rest of the physics community to think you can figure out a reactionless drive. This is great if you actually can, but otherwise it's going to lead you to failure. In a lot of ways, get…

I think the advice here is "get as good as you can, get as smart as you can, and then, when you decide to set off on embarking on a calculated risk, try to forget all the noise around you and stay the course."

I feel like the problem is there's a lot of wannabes who skip the steps of actually gaining competence and then disregard the advice of others. That's not going to work. The first step is years of hard work. For instance, crank physicists who don't really understand graduate level physicists are not going to accomplish anything by disregarding the advice of others.

However, if you know what you're doing, don't second guess yourself when embarking down a risky path. It's probably not as dangerous as it may seem.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#67

Post by golergka »

DuskStar wrote: post #7

This feels like the sort of advice that increases the variance of outcomes more than the mean , if that makes any sense. It'll help some people, but also really won't help others. It's like... You'd need some serious disregard for the rest of the physics community to think you can figure out a reactionless drive. This is great if you actually can, but otherwise it's going to lead you to failure. In a lot of ways, get…

> increases the variance of outcomes more than the mean

So, it makes sense to apply it in circumstances where worse outcomes cost you the same as just bad ones, but best outcomes bring in much more than ordinary good ones.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#68

Post by asdfman123 »

threatofrain wrote: post #25
WalterBright wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not caring about what other people think is truly freeing. 1. young people worry about what others think of them 2. middle age people stop caring what others think of them 3. old people realize that nobody is thinking of them

But #3 is a reality that slowly blossoms, not something you're born into as a young person. We are also all judging each other to different degrees, and some of these judgments do matter.

I feel like the advice "stop caring about what people think" is pretty useless for a lot of people.

Really, how much you care about what other people think depends on what phase of life you're in. In your adolescence, your social survival and who you get to date largely depends on the opinions of others.

When you hit your 30s, usually you have your own family and your own tribe, and other people just don't matter so much. You're in a different phase of life with different goals.

I guess it's possible to find a way to not care what people think in your 20s, too, but for those who DO care a lot, telling them not to care isn't helpful.

Re: Feynman’s Breakthrough, Disregard Others (2017)

#69

Post by pontifier »

taeric wrote: post #6

It is subtle that he didn't just dismiss others, per se. He specifically disregarded what they were working on. If he was brought in to consult or help, he was now working on it so would help. That is, he did not dismiss people. Or problems brought to him. He just did not worry about reinventing wheels. Odds are, other people are working on something and have made really smart contributions. Don't worry about that. T…

The subtlety feels a bit more complex to me. It seems as though it's more about not blindly accepting the conclusions of others.

Creating his own understanding of underlying truth was his true talent.

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