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Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

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Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#101

Post by Dig1t »

reducesuffering wrote: post #96
Dig1t wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't do anything wrong, you can read his book where he talks about his dating life in great detail. He was just successful at flirting. Our puritanical culture just doesn't like it.

"Didn't do anything wrong" is sleeping with married woman and saying in his autobiography: > those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything > I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches > I think to myself, “Typical bitch" > I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!" Ya, it's just our puritanical culture...

Anything sounds bad if you take sentences out of context. Read the rest of chapter and pages leading up to this part.

He talks about how he struggled getting back into dating after his wife died and initially he tried dating very chivalrously, being kind and buying drinks for ladies. He found that most women would take his free drinks and ditch him.

The lines you quoted from his book are about his mental shift, and after he started doing that it actually worked! He was successful with that tactic, women wanted to sleep with him after he started thinking and acting like that.

He didn't break any laws, force anyone to do anything against their will, or hurt anyone. If that's the case, and the women actually responded to it, then what's wrong with it?

That's why I think everyone is being puritanical about it. Yes our cultural sensibilities don't like it, but nobody was hurt and he's being honest about something that actually worked, why is that bad?

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#102

Post by pyuser583 »

growingkittens wrote: post #82
BigTuna wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A long time *ago I read re: Feynman's divorce that false accusations of abuse were common back then because no-fault divorce didn't exist. Couples that wanted a divorce would have to concoct a story in order to get a judge to sign off. I don't have strong feelings either way because it's impossible to know what really happened between them, but I found it an interesting counterpoint.

Do you remember what paper in particular? I would like to read the study about rates of false abuse accusations in areas with strict divorce laws.

I doubt you’re to find good statistics on domestic abuse in the 1950s.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#103

Post by pyuser583 »

slowhadoken wrote: post #67
jjulius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Note that I have no opinion here, just answering someone's request for a source. A cursory Google reveals... > Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0] Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2]. A…

We alway cut great minds a lot of slack. I have a mental experiment for this: imagine a man beats his wife. Terrible right? Now imagine the same man cures cancer. Well suddenly everyone is curious about the complexities of his marriage. That’s morality for most people.

Albert Einstein being a perfect example.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#104

Post by DigiDigiorno »

Small story about the time I read the collection Feynman's letters (I think it's a book called Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track)

The beginning of the book contained a lot of cute letters between him and his wife Arline. I was curious how much of the book would be this, considering I know she died of TB, so I flipped ahead and saw a letter to her quite a few more pages in, so I figured she must survive until at least that point. I continued reading and was emotionally caught off guard when she died only a couple of pages later. I'm not sure why I was so distraught at the death of someone I did not know who died 80 years ago, but I was looking forward to, and had the expectation of, a few more cute letters between them.

When I got to the letter that I had originally flipped to, it was the one he was writing after her death as a form of therapy to himself.

FWIW, they had a very cute relationship and the letters are worth reading for that alone.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#105

Post by TaylorAlexander »

distant_hat wrote: post #97
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m polyamorous. Being poly involves clear communication and consent of all parties involved. It involves respect for the other people. If Feynman was sleeping with his students wives and openly denigrating women, that sounds much more like the behavior of someone cheating than the behavior of someone practicing ethical non monogamy. Remember that back then, ethical non monogamy was much less common. The foundational…

Where are the flaws? That the guy was attractive and managed to seduce others? He may have gone with other people's wives but that is on the wife to say no, not on him.

Ethical non monogamy requires ethical behavior. If you’re seeking out students wives, that is predatory and unethical behavior. If you’re also denigrating women that is unethical behavior. While it’s possible that Feynman, the students, the students wives, and Feynman’s wife all consented to this behavior, it seems unlikely.

I do not believe “that is on the wife to say no, not on him”. If these allegations are true, he was a teacher engaging in predatory behavior. That is simply unethical due to the power imbalance. And the fact that he was asking people to cheat is unethical.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#106

Post by reducesuffering »

Dig1t wrote: post #101
reducesuffering wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Didn't do anything wrong" is sleeping with married woman and saying in his autobiography: > those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything > I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches > I think to myself, “Typical bitch" > I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!" Ya, it's just our puritanical culture...

Anything sounds bad if you take sentences out of context. Read the rest of chapter and pages leading up to this part. He talks about how he struggled getting back into dating after his wife died and initially he tried dating very chivalrously, being kind and buying drinks for ladies. He found that most women would take his free drinks and ditch him. The lines you quoted from his book are about his mental shift, and a…

> but nobody was hurt

You actually have zero idea who or how people were hurt because this is one side from Feynman. It's bad for the same reason that a goal of making lots of new friends and then backstabbing them is bad. Sure, it can be highly successful to making new friends. Not so long term beneficial, friendly, or moral though...

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#107

Post by avani »

the_af wrote: post #77
fractallyte wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://lithub.com/what-to-make-of-isaac-asimov-sci-fi-giant... https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/01/08/isaac-asimov-p... https://daily.jstor.org/asimovs-empire-asimovs-wall/ ...and those are just the first few that came up on Google. I'm too sad to look for more... :-(

I wouldn't be too sad though; that was my point. Asimov made many women uncomfortable with his behavior, yes. He was also an all-around friendly and approachable guy, a bright mind, one of the giants of sci-fi, and also a great science communicator. He had this flaw. It's on us to deal with it, and not let it mar his otherwise great memory. (It's not like he raped women either, however bad his behavior was. Not all s…

To the majority of humans (women), he was distinctly not all around friendly and approachable. That is the point.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#108

Post by the_af »

avani wrote: post #107
the_af wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be too sad though; that was my point. Asimov made many women uncomfortable with his behavior, yes. He was also an all-around friendly and approachable guy, a bright mind, one of the giants of sci-fi, and also a great science communicator. He had this flaw. It's on us to deal with it, and not let it mar his otherwise great memory. (It's not like he raped women either, however bad his behavior was. Not all s…

To the majority of humans (women), he was distinctly not all around friendly and approachable. That is the point.

I'm not condoning his behavior, I'm saying it didn't define him or his impact on literature, science or science fiction; therefore it's not particularly sad.

The majority of humans -- or even the subset of most of his readers, women or men -- never even met him personally and so this personality flaw never affected them. I acknowledge it was however a very uncomfortable experience for young women who got to meet him face to face (or hand to butt, I suppose), which is unfortunate. I also see how his behavior would have discouraged women who wanted to write and would have sought his mentorship; that is truly unfortunate.

I wish he hadn't behaved like this, but this doesn't define Asimov. His contributions far exceed this personality flaw, and therefore I don't feel particularly sad.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#109

Post by the_af »

monknomo wrote: post #28
the_af wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just these criticisms are not generally welcomed or amplified for figures in the prime of their accolades. Which is an interesting subject itself, I think. Yes, this is a fair assessment. The criticisms are given voice and spread once the person falls in disgrace. They are sometimes declared "unpersons", which I find deeply irritating. I suppose this happens to artists or scientists nearer in time; nobody care…

It might be different if you could go talk to the boys - with these modern folks you can often literally interview the victim(s) and I think that makes a difference for the reaction

Yes, this is a good point. Talking to victims or aggrieved parties is something ancient history denies us.

On the other hand, what if we could -- would we cancel all those Greek philosophers, or artists and scientists of antiquity? Strike them from the classroom, or focus the lesson entirely on how bad they were as people? Would mankind be better if that were the case?

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#110

Post by alecst »

growingkittens wrote: post #66

Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!" His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty." [1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/…

I tend to agree with "where there's smoke, there's fire," but I'm also cautious reading too much into what a single person -- in particular, an ex-lover -- has to say when forming an opinion about someone. Obviously if it's a pattern, that's another story. But I've lived through some things, and witnessed people make claims that were stronger than what was justified.
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