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Feynman’s Razor

defenderofthebasic.substack.com

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Re: Feynman’s Razor

#101

Post by lupire »

exe34 wrote: post #32
admax88qqq wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the the special skill of a teacher. But any expert should be able to competently explain something to someone who isn't harboring a mistaken belief.

Look at the ABC Conjecture catastrophe.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#102

Post by lupire »

imabotbeep2937 wrote: post #9
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…

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.

His famous lectures were a first draft experiment for a class, not a "write a book on Sabbatical" textbook.

For a first draft, they are incredible.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#103

Post by immibis »

tredigi wrote: post #71
sublinear wrote: post #31

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 compreh…

> There's no need to "dumb down" anything ever, not even for children. This is so wrong that I can't imagine you actually meant it in the way that it quite obviously reads like. When my 3-year old just saw is favorite toy fall from the sofa because he put it in an .. unstable position, then obviously it won't help if I explain the theory of relativity to him, cause ultimately it was gravity causing the mess. It won't…

If your child doesn't understand falling, you are still saying "things fall down" instead of just saying "it's on the floor now"

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#104

Post by amelius »

wszrfcbhujnikm wrote: post #87

Nah I like New Scientist and Quanta Magazine etc… to give me an insight into a complicated topic. It isn’t adequate for a professor to understand the subject to write a thesis sure, but there is no harm in more people kinda understanding something. This is especially true of the sort of dumbing down the big short film did, when the impact on society means everyone should sort of understand what happened Nd why the ec…

I dunno. We now have ChatGPT to dumb things down for us __and__ allow us to ask questions. I think the importance of these popular science magazines may be disappearing.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#105

Post by OmarShehata »

wszrfcbhujnikm wrote: post #87

Nah I like New Scientist and Quanta Magazine etc… to give me an insight into a complicated topic. It isn’t adequate for a professor to understand the subject to write a thesis sure, but there is no harm in more people kinda understanding something. This is especially true of the sort of dumbing down the big short film did, when the impact on society means everyone should sort of understand what happened Nd why the ec…

Quanta is a great example! They don't dumb things down. It passes feymans razor because the professor can read it and know what it's talking about

I think it'd be a fun follow-up and talk a quanta article, and some PhD in the topic, and walk through why it does (or does not) pass this razor.

I think one very simple but important thing they do is they don't shy away from mentioning the technical terms. I just opened a random one and in the first paragraph they say the word "Hamiltonian cycle", and explain it. The explanation is probably super simplified, but that's fine, it's (1) an anchor for the curious layperson to read more/Google it (2) it's a marker for the expert, he immediately knows what they're talking about, and doesn't have to try to reconstruct it/guess

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#106

Post by DavidPiper »

kohbo wrote: post #77
nicbou wrote: post #74

I struggle a lot with this in my work. I can’t assume that my readers are fluent English speakers, nor that they understand the topic. I can’t even assume that they care to understand. I have adopted a plain and unambiguous writing style that hopefully accounts for it. I am now experimenting with formatting that allows them to skim everything and still get the gist of it. In my opinion, nhs.uk is the best example to…

How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?

That's a cool observation - it could just be GP's natural turn of phrase. I know a few people who never use any contractions when they speak. I assume it's a local/familial style.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#107

Post by [deleted] »

kohbo wrote: post #77
nicbou wrote: post #74

I struggle a lot with this in my work. I can’t assume that my readers are fluent English speakers, nor that they understand the topic. I can’t even assume that they care to understand. I have adopted a plain and unambiguous writing style that hopefully accounts for it. I am now experimenting with formatting that allows them to skim everything and still get the gist of it. In my opinion, nhs.uk is the best example to…

How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?

[deleted]

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#108

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

The web the original algo was designed for no longer exists.

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#109

Post by sfink »

cde-v wrote: post #2

That isn't a razor...

How so? If you have a pile of explanations, you now have a way of dividing up the pile into ones you may want to keep and ones you should discard. That way is by asking whether an expert would understand what you're talking about.

Occam's Razor takes a pile of explanations and discards all those with extra assumptions or components. Feynman's discards all those that don't convey anything to an expert. I once told my son that any good story involves surprise, a relatable character, and some mention of a giant talking carrot. All of those are razors. (Some razors might be more useful than others...)

Re: Feynman’s Razor

#110

Post by Aspos »

zexbha wrote: post #95
kohbo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come you're avoiding every contraction, except "can't"?

I would not have observed this on my own. Do contractions make English harder to comprehend for non-natives? I'll have to avoid using y'all'dn't've

Yes they do
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