That isn't a razor...
nods to Crocodile Dundee . . .
Just physicists havin' fun.
Feynman’s Razor
11–20 of 138 posts
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#12[flagged]
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#13I agree this is true if your goal is to inform. If, however, your goal is to increase clicks, decrease support tickets, and get engagement, I'd be surprised if being technically descriptive and accurate is better than dumbing it down to the point of inaccuracy. None of that is to say that I agree with the goal of engagement over conveying information.
It's important to begin violently opposing, not just disagreeing with, the theory of engagement and revenue creation. It must become dangerous indeed for those who decide to pursue those goals.
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#14The original message is enough information to deduce what’s probably going on as an expert and not feel alien to the customer base.
What’s the point of conveying root causes to the user? In this case the error tells you what you need to know: copy the message. Send it again if you want.
The point of communication isn’t always education. This isn’t a razor. It doesn’t do anything to help you consider audience. It will lead you to bad conclusions.
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#15Feynman confused pedagogical skill with expertise in a given field. He insisted that experts could explain things. No, that's what a teacher does. Feynman was good at both and apparently had no one to challenge him on his claim that they were the same. It's possible to be a great teacher without being an expert on given subject matter. And it's possible to have the most expertise but be inscrutable. In the case of th…
Feynman was not a great teacher. Lots of people love his lectures now. But they're not getting graded on it. Actual students were considerably more mixed. Obviously individuals vary so if I post how most of his students were totally lost in class, they'll post how one student went on to win a Nobel prize and say gotcha.
There are two types of teaching. One is teaching things to a complete beginner. The other is teaching things to someone who has already mastered the mechanics of a subject.
Feynman was a world class second type teacher. If you already know how to work with physics equations and solve problems, then Feynman's lectures will improve your understanding considerably. The simplification process he does, gives you a grand understanding of the theory.
Due to this, much of Feynman's pedagogy is not suitable for the first type of teaching. And should not be used as such.
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#16Funny thing is I think this about Feynman’s own writing for “the layperson”. I think things like Feynman’s “little arrows” descriptions in QED only muddied and added to the mystique and mysticism of the physics he loved. Which is interesting because his written lectures[1], though, in their breadth and complexity require effort, seem as if they are intended for experts while being approachable to ”the layperson“. My…
What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" / rotating clock hands in the QED book? I can't think of a more simple metaphor for the exponential of a complex phase, exp(i omega t). I suppose you could try and do it with more commonplace trigonometric functions, but then you lose the simple vector interpretation of adding the contributions. Or are you arguing that you should always try and teach complex numbers and the Euler identity to avoid strained analogies?
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#17Sometimes it feels like the trend online right now is to design everything to make you stupider, on the theory that if it asks less of you will go along with it more easily. For instance, Google results seem more "least common denominator" every month. No longer can I search for something subtle and get subtle results; their algorithm pushes me towards and unhelpful answers. Maybe it's because lots of people do respond better to this, so it shows up better in the data. Anyway I hate it. I would like to gradually learn more as I interact with things, and engage with the complexity in systems, not have it hidden from me.
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#18Funny thing is I think this about Feynman’s own writing for “the layperson”. I think things like Feynman’s “little arrows” descriptions in QED only muddied and added to the mystique and mysticism of the physics he loved. Which is interesting because his written lectures[1], though, in their breadth and complexity require effort, seem as if they are intended for experts while being approachable to ”the layperson“. My…
In fact he didn't like the lectures and thought they largely failed at pedagogy. The actual Caltech students who listened to them didn't get much out of them. Instead they were primarily useful in explaining the subject to other physicists. I think he says this in the foreword? (if not, I read it somewhere else).
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#19The original message is enough information to deduce what’s probably going on as an expert and not feel alien to the customer base. What’s the point of conveying root causes to the user? In this case the error tells you what you need to know: copy the message. Send it again if you want. The point of communication isn’t always education. This isn’t a razor. It doesn’t do anything to help you consider audience. It will…
> The original message is enough information to deduce what’s probably going on as an expert
I dunno, I had no idea what the original message was trying to convey; it wasn't until I read lisper's comment that I got what was going on.
Re: Feynman’s Razor
#20I miss Norton Disk Doctor, not because I work on drive recovery but because it had an interface that respected the user’s intelligence.
Every other storage-related system I’ve ever used either had inscrutable gibberish like:
“Mode 5/7?” [Y]
Are you sure? [N]
Norton meanwhile had several paragraphs of text explaining what every decision meant. It explained concepts inline. It provided an explanation of the benefits and risks. It let you make an informed choice instead of just hitting Y over and over and hoping for the best.
This kind of respect for the reader / user applies to all forms of technical writing such as manuals, user interfaces, blog articles, and API docs.
Instead of trying to dumb down the text for a “lay” audience, try to educate all audiences to become more technical after having read and understood what you wrote.
[1] That is verbatim from a Hitachi SAN array that was holding all of the data for a government department. The manual helpfully explained that this option toggles between mode 5/7 being either on or off. If you choose wrong the array will erase itself and kill your cat. Or neither of those things. Who knows?