Live data from Hacker News

The best teacher I never had (2016)

gatesnotes.com

21–24 of 24 posts

Re: The best teacher I never had (2016)

#21
post #12

Putting Feynman aside, this is how -all- teachers should be. I had maybe two in all my years of public school that came anywhere close. It's sad that teaching is not a highly paid and prestigious job. And it's a two way street, most of the teachers now are the same awful ones I had, latching on to statements like mine, yet demanding more money. It's a race to the bottom, and a detriment to our country.

In the county I live in you’ll actually make more as a door dasher than a public school substitute teacher.

Re: The best teacher I never had (2016)

#22

I feel like I'm being very negative today, but it feels like this post gets more attention because Bill Gates has become somewhat of a celebrity and he wrote it. I'm not saying I dislike Gates, I'm not saying his celebrity status hasn't been earned, etc. Just saying the content itself is kind of...unremarkable? I feel like every friend I have from highschool absolutely loves Feynman, we all read and discussed his "Si…

Because of his efforts, the lectures are free to watch online.

Re: The best teacher I never had (2016)

#23
Here's what actually happened. Bill Gates acquired the rights and made them unavailable to anyone who wasn't using Microsoft Silverlight. I was sitting in a public library and wasn't able to download these videos to watch later, while I was no longer at the library, because of Silverlight.

Re: The best teacher I never had (2016)

#24

"...While helping develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, he entertained himself by figuring out how to break into the safes that contained top-secret research..." I did not know he helped develop the atomic bomb. That really nice to know that he helped the States obliterate thousands of people who did not need to die afterall.

The world isn't black and white. Work began on the bomb when there was an existential threat to the country in the form of Nazi Germany.

What little Feynman spoke about the bomb after the war makes it seem like he didn't agree with the way it was used either.

Additionally, many other physicists fought the way it was used at the time.

Post reply on HN