Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985) • Hacker News Board

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#31

Post by knolan » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

bradrn wrote: post #16

> When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. Out of curiosity, does anyone know the solution to this problem? I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. (I’m an undergraduate physics major; I know nothing about fluid dynamics, but from Feynmann’s description I suspect that isn’t necessa…

Surface tension plays a role. Water wants to reduce its surface area because forces between molecules at the surface pull them together. So a droplet of water will want to form a sphere.

A column of water will first form into a cylinder and then break up into spherical droplets. It’s called the Plateau–Rayleigh instability.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateau–Rayleigh_instability

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#32

Post by jacobmischka » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

chris_j wrote: post #17

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

What is it about those anecdotes that makes you like him less?

I don't know, I don't disapprove of any of those things morally or anything, but it just got old eventually. As an example, somewhere in the later parts of the book he talks about a period where he starts painting, and very shortly afterward he starts trying to convince women to let him paint them nude, including a student at the institution where he was a professor.

Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with nudity, or anything inherently sexual about nudity in art, or even anything morally wrong with the desire to see naked women. But by that point after some of his other stories I started to see him as a somewhat creepy dude and it just came off to me like, oh of course, shortly after taking up this interesting art form you'd go straight to using it as a reason to see naked women, typical Feynman.

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with anything he did in any of his stories, all of the parties were consenting in them all, it just left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#33

Post by robochat » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

Anon84 wrote: post #19

bradrn wrote: post #16

> When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. Out of curiosity, does anyone know the solution to this problem? I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. (I’m an undergraduate physics major; I know nothing about fluid dynamics, but from Feynmann’s description I suspect that isn’t necessa…

It’s not. It’s just conservation of volume. Imagine a thing disk of water just as it comes out of the faucet (pi r^2 v*dt) as it falls, the speed increases so the same volume of what is now thinner and longer (r decreases to account for the increase in v).

I think that you mean pi.r*2.v.dt ?

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#34

Post by nicbou » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

jmfldn wrote: post #6

"The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate." This shows the extreme importance of blue sky thinking and allowing people to follow their whims sometimes rather than not starting something unless it fits into existing research goals and funding. This breakthrough all lead from an observation that had no apparent use beyond fulfilling a whim…

I learned my trade by playing. I suspect that many other people on HN also did. Now I do something very different, and that also came from playing, as did many of the skills that made it possible.

I still write code, but it's entirely for fun. It's a completely different experience from closing tickets in an office.

I do many other things that aren't very cost-effective, just because they're fun. They might not pay the rent, but they keep me sane enough to do the things that do. For Mr. Feynman it was playing the bongos.

Do things that don't matter. Aside from the doors it can unlock, it's just damn fun.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#35

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:37 AM UTC

bradrn wrote: post #16

> When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. Out of curiosity, does anyone know the solution to this problem? I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. (I’m an undergraduate physics major; I know nothing about fluid dynamics, but from Feynmann’s description I suspect that isn’t necessa…

I think it's a power of -1/4: velocity of a falling object is proportional to square root of height, and the stream diameter is inverse proportional to square root of velocity.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#36

Post by jacobmischka » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #25

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

There is some pretty bad sexism in the book (because that era was sexist, I guess), but I think your comment goes too far the other way and treats sex as taboo. What's wrong with naked women, prostitutes, gambling and topless bars?

Please see my other comment; I don't think there's anything wrong with them necessarily, I just didn't particularly enjoy reading about them and his behavior just seemed sleezy a lot of the time.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#37

Post by daukadolt » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #22

hungryforcodes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely inspired me to read it now. The clockwork of Feynman's human and non geeky character is one of the most interesting things about him.

His relationship with women seems pretty immature and very geeky to me.

Can you elaborate?

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#38

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

bradrn wrote: post #16

> When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. Out of curiosity, does anyone know the solution to this problem? I wouldn’t even know how to approach it. (I’m an undergraduate physics major; I know nothing about fluid dynamics, but from Feynmann’s description I suspect that isn’t necessa…

[deleted]

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#39

Post by practicalpants » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:39 AM UTC

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

I don't think Feynman was that different in this masculine or promiscuous respect from many of that era's greats... Schrödinger, von Neumann, Einstein, to name a few.

Feynman at least writes extensively about his deceased wife.

I imagine you would not enjoy reading history too much as the 21st C Western first world attitudes on these topics are pretty unique compared to any other time.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#40

Post by jacobmischka » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 10:39 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #29

jacobmischka wrote: post #7

I read (listened to, technically) this book a few weeks ago because I've always been inspired by the idea of Feynman and didn't know much about him. Honestly, I actually like him less after having read it. As I guess I should have expected, because its subtitle is "Adventures of a Curious Character", it's unfortunately for me filled with many more random personal anecdotes, often involving naked women, prostitutes, g…

Or, just approach it with an open mind, as a window into small parts of a man's journey. The more you judge people, the less you'll enjoy the twists and turns of a human life.

That's a better way of phrasing what I intended in my last sentence, go into it with an open mind. I was expecting differently, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have had I known ahead of time that it would be largely tangential to his scientific life.