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Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

lettersofnote.com

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Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#11

Post by bmitc »

krastanov wrote: post #4
mkolodny wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods." It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit. He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of…

Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

I think it's likely they are two different types of humility in Feynman's case, whether it's external vs internal humility or problem solving vs social humility or what have you. It does seem to me that Feynman had a humility in how he approached problems that was bolstered by confidence, or perhaps lack of social humility.

The advice he gives in the letter is to be humble in how one approaches which problems to solve. I think it's good advice.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#12

Post by pengaru »

Taek wrote: post #10
erulabs wrote: post #2

Great read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that som…

Ego is important because it allows you to seriously attempt problems that many people would consider beyond them. If you genuinely believe that you can achieve something, you might be willing to sink many months of nonstop work into it despite zero tangible progress. Someone without that ego may not have the tolerance to last that long without progress while still believing it's a good use of time.

> Ego is important because it allows you to seriously attempt problems that many people would consider beyond them.

This implies that a lack of ego will prevent you from attempting the same thing.

One doesn't need ego to have a healthy awareness of how significant factors like self-discipline, timing, opportunity, privilege, access to resources, and myriad others can be when it comes to success.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#13

Post by coeneedell »

aazaa wrote: post #9

> ... Feynman replied with an enquiry about Mano’s current job, to which Mano responded that he was “studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere […] a humble and down-to-earth type of problem.” Feynman responded with this letter. I must be missing something. Feynman's letter is full of good advice about the crucial importance of choosin…

I think the error was that Mano referred to his coherence theory problem as "humble and down-to-earth". Feynman sought to correct the implicit assumption that there is some natural dividing line between "humble" and "great" problems. I think he would reject that such a thing as a humble problem does not exist.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#15

Post by hitekker »

Sometime ago, I made a MVP for a video game that captured the attention of my peers. They liked playing it, I liked coding it, and I felt very much that it contained a story that deserved to be heard.

But I let grandiosity distract me. “This is just a video game, isn’t it? I mean, it's really cool but shouldn’t I be spending my spare time on something, I don’t know, bigger?”

So I decided to stop and apply myself onto bigger & better (& vaguer) problems whatever they may be. A year passes and, surprise, I found no problem worth my time, and nothing that was fascinating to me as the fruit of that silly little side-project.

The OP’s letter clarifies the lesson I learned: “No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it”. The video game may have been small, but not only did I care for it, I could also solve it. And If I want to get better at problem-solving. I have to actually solve problems. To paraphrase Feymann, that means figuring out the problems I _can_ solve, not just care to solve, first and then building up the meta-skill from there.

A simple lesson that took me a long, long time to learn.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#16

Post by flywheel »

erulabs wrote: post #2

Great read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that som…

I think you misread this because he certainly did not say or imply "I was working on problems close to the gods", in fact the phrase he used was "when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods", meaning that others considered the things he worked on as being "close to the gods" only because they did not understand them at the same level he did - his list of experiments/problems was about how mundane the problems he was solving actually were. It did not read as him having much of an ego. Most of the problems he worked on have little to no impact on society or people's daily lives, most people still have never even heard of Feynman, and he knew most people wouldn't. That's not ego. If Feynman did have any ego it came from the pleasure he got from living an interesting life, not by how smart he was compared to the rest of humanity.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#18

Post by petejames »

erulabs wrote: post #2

Great read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that som…

True, it's inflated ego which is a problem. From what I've read about Feynman, I doubt his ego was inflated.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#20

Post by mimhoff »

aazaa wrote: post #9

> ... Feynman replied with an enquiry about Mano’s current job, to which Mano responded that he was “studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere […] a humble and down-to-earth type of problem.” Feynman responded with this letter. I must be missing something. Feynman's letter is full of good advice about the crucial importance of choosin…

The error mentioned is that Feynman (as PhD supervisor) supplied an important thesis topic to Mano. Mano didn't get the experience of how to evaluate a problem and find motivation within it:

"I accepted [someone else] as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about)."

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