Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Feynman’s Razor

defenderofthebasic.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#31

Post by sublinear »

To be great is to be misunderstood, and Feynman was a great man. I'm still not sure who decided to abuse some quotes and invent this "razor".

I don't believe Feynman ever meant to overconstrain and corrupt information based on (likely incorrect) assumptions about his audience. There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children.

The information is either there or it isn't regardless of who can comprehend it. Losslessness is non-negotiable. The real problem is how you present that information, not whether you should leave it out. The only time you should leave something out is if it has little to no relation to the rest of what you're trying to say.

> This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently deleted.

Oh yeah also let's solve the "puzzle" from the middle of the blog post in Microsoft-y language everyone is familiar with by now.

"This message was deleted due to your organization's retention policy, spam filter, or administrator. It temporarily remains on this device, but is at risk of being lost forever. Do you want to save a copy?"

I believe in the real world Outlook doesn't even bother and has you and your message eat shit. If it was deleted it will never tell you about a cached copy and to the layperson it's just gone. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and indecision only makes communication harder.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#32

Post by exe34 »

admax88qqq wrote: post #7
drewcoo wrote: post #3

Feynman 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…

Maybe. I think Feynman had a point. From my experience “experts” who are unable to explain well typically have an incomplete understanding. Language and knowledge are linked to a degree. Personally I have had subject I thought I was an expert an and when I went to explain them I realized the shortcomings of my understanding. Later when I was truly an expert my ability to explain them improved.

My biggest challenge with explaining things to people is the stuff they already know that's either wrong or not relevant. To save the effort of finding out later, I now ask people to explain it to me first, tell me everything they know about this, before I can figure out how far back I have to step before explaining it all.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#33

Post by hifrote »

jarvist wrote: post #16
hifrote wrote: post #8

Funny 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 number…

> Or are you arguing that you should always try and teach complex numbers and the Euler identity to avoid strained analogies?

I think it’s okay to be explain complex numbers. I think it’s just best to additionally explain why. That is, show why (real, imaginary) is a better numerical system than the more broadly taught (x,y) of the 2 dimensional space being explored.

As for the Euler identity I suppose you could include that when explaining why we use the exp() function, which is because it plays nicer with integration and derivation than other numerical representations.

I want the analogies to be representative of the work rather than my own mental model of it.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#34

Post by blargey »

civilized wrote: post #27
ajkjk wrote: post #17

Sometimes 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 respo…

Many of you will be familiar with this story: military pilot gear was once designed for the average person, but then they realized that actually, most people deviate significantly from the average in at least one way. So they made the gear adjustable, and that greatly improved performance and reduced mistakes. Why is it that in tech we are often told a seemingly contrary narrative -- that everything is better, or at…

Might be that military pilots are much more engaged with the product than the average google-user with search.

Or how these digital tools pervade spaces where everyone has to be able to use them, even if they're the type that refuses to engage with the text displayed in message boxes or technical jargon like "files" and "tabs", because they have the expertise that is more valuable to the business than the peripheral software. A greater expectation and insistence that things "just work", that the tools get out of the way instead of integrating with the user.

Maybe adjusting some straps and seat positions is more intuitive than digging for advanced options. Maybe it's significantly more difficult to surface options in digital mediums without introducing friction as a side-effect, because you're always fighting over screen real estate and screen legibility, instead of being able to just add a latch on the strap that's there when you need it and invisible when you don't.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#35

Post by directevolve »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #21

>what the hell does this mean? The message doesn’t exist, but I can copy its contents? If I can copy its contents…why can’t I save it?? If it doesn’t exist why do I have to discard it?? Maybe it should be even less descriptive. "This message will soon no longer be available. Make sure you copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want to use them later." Talking about the cache doesn't help the user.…

The message could also give both this actionable advice and lisper's more technical explanation. You could label the more in-depth explanation or even put it on a second screen accessed via an 'advanced explanation' button.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#36

Post by mbivert »

civilized wrote: post #27
ajkjk wrote: post #17

Sometimes 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 respo…

Many of you will be familiar with this story: military pilot gear was once designed for the average person, but then they realized that actually, most people deviate significantly from the average in at least one way. So they made the gear adjustable, and that greatly improved performance and reduced mistakes. Why is it that in tech we are often told a seemingly contrary narrative -- that everything is better, or at…

The military in general seem to be more rationally grounded than civilians, as far as work is concerned. Promiscuity with death must encourage a different "work culture".

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#37

Post by red75prime »

hifrote wrote: post #28
jarvist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 number…

> What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" / rotating clock hands in the QED book? It’s difficult to articulate, but two aspects are: The amount of times I have only confused people more by trying to explain even modular arithmetic by calling on the clock analogy. And the fact that the little “clock hands” are a complete abstraction from both the physics being described and the mathematical models that de…

And after you'll learn negatives, reals, periodicity, etc., you'll find that a rotating clock hand is a completely fine analogy. So, maybe it's not that bad to have this analogy from the beginning to not lose the forest behind the trees.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#38

Post by klabb3 »

hifrote wrote: post #28
jarvist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 number…

> What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" / rotating clock hands in the QED book? It’s difficult to articulate, but two aspects are: The amount of times I have only confused people more by trying to explain even modular arithmetic by calling on the clock analogy. And the fact that the little “clock hands” are a complete abstraction from both the physics being described and the mathematical models that de…

> As I noted in the gp I think code implementations or numerical methods should be the goal.

I’m 100% with Feynman on this one. I loved the book because of the intuition it gave me about quantum physics. He even has this amazing analogy for how to teach arithmetic without numbers. Now, you could absolutely claim that he fails in his analogies (I’m not among the .1% of people if not less who can debate that), but I can still say claim confidently that math is not the goal. Abstraction is not intuition.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#39

Post by ioblomov »

scarmig wrote: post #6

I 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.

The quest for clicks has definitely aggravated the problem but, as Murray Gell-Man once noted, journalism and dumbing down are almost synonymous…

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#40

Post by GuB-42 »

pier25 wrote: post #25
ajkjk wrote: post #17

Sometimes 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 respo…

Maybe at some point Google will release a Classic version of the algo like Coca-Cola did.

It would be interesting to see, but my guess is that it would be exploited to death very quickly. There is a constant cat and mouse game between search engine and those who want to "optimize" their results. Going back and staying there would be like having the mouse stand still, not good.

It would have to be a different product, developed in parallel, rather than a snapshot of the past.

Post reply on HN