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

Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

digital.archives.caltech.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 284 posts

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#131

Post by elteto »

baxtr wrote: post #87
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

His motto "What I cannot create, I do not understand" has been one of the driving forces in my own quest to understand more about the world around me. A good friend had picked up a corollary which was "What I cannot teach, I do not understand" which I think was quite similar. Definitely one of my heroes.

Love his books! Although, it seems like he’s getting a bad rep these days. How did that happen? PS: I’m referring to that video that pops up on top when you google him for example.

He was misogynistic and, by his own admission, did not hold women in high regard. I don’t remember exactly but I think he even admitted that at some point in his life he didn’t believe women could be scientists, or at least not as good as men. I think that by the end of his life he had matured and outgrown this.

He was deeply affected by the death of his first wife. I personally believe that he developed misogynistic traits as a way of self-defense and driven by the pain of her loss. They were deeply in love. His farewell letter to her is so beautiful and touching, and yet so pragmatic, in a way that only Feynman could be.

He is a personal hero but I do understand he was human and as such, a flawed individual like anyone else.

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#132

Post by cutemonster »

ScotterC wrote: post #124
jszymborski wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it can be true that a profoundly wise and consistently effective person holds a belief or utters a phrase that is profoundly unwise and endlessly futile.

Absolutely true. And paradoxically, they may fully understand that the phrase is profoundly unwise and endlessly futile and yet know the benefit of holding the belief anyway.

Isn't there an implicit "... that you stumbled upon, and found interesting".

And to him (and others like him), that might have been possible.

While for other more ordinary people, it'd be profoundly unwise and endlessly futile, to hope to do that

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#133

Post by hattar »

adastra22 wrote: post #119
somat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We(by which I mean a person who knows how to ride a bike) do understand how to ride a bike. The problem in communicating that is a riding a bike is a skilled act. that is you cant get good at riding a bike by reading about it, and it is very hard to describe a well trained skill, it boils down to "practice a lot" which makes nobody happy.

One of the reasons you can’t get good at riding a bike by reading about it is that we literally don’t understand the mechanics of bike riding. It’s a currently unsolved problem in physics. Google it if you do t believe me! So I get what you’re saying, but it is maybe not the optimal example.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2007.185...

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#134

Post by cyberax »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #110
cyberax wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One my personal trick: imagine that you are magically transported into the 19-th century (or earlier). Can you teach the subject to a well-known scientist of that era? E.g. if you want to explain radioactivity to somebody from 1860-s, how would you do that? Or for math, how would you explain calculus to Archimedes?

Those both seem much easier to me than what I usually struggle with: Transported back to a pre-industrial time, is any of my technological knowledge or understanding even remotely useful? Like, sure, germ theory is great I guess, but I have no idea how I'd begin to explain the internal combustion engine (which I'm fairly sure requires pretty advanced metallurgy) let alone something as esoteric as solar panels. Hell,…

> Those both seem much easier to me than what I usually struggle with: Transported back to a pre-industrial time, is any of my technological knowledge or understanding even remotely useful?

That's an interesting topic, and there's a whole community that is interested in this. Mostly for historical and educational reasons.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few things you can reasonably do. You will never be able to build a useful internal combustion engine starting in a pre-industrial time. But you'll be able to introduce the positional decimal notation (took 4000 years to invent!), double-entry bookkeeping, paper making, printing press.

If you know a bit of technology, then you can create water plumbing (just avoid lead), and at least some metalworking.

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#135

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

hattar wrote: post #133
adastra22 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons you can’t get good at riding a bike by reading about it is that we literally don’t understand the mechanics of bike riding. It’s a currently unsolved problem in physics. Google it if you do t believe me! So I get what you’re saying, but it is maybe not the optimal example.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2007.185...

MATLAB Code from the authors:

(There's no rider however)

http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/research/topics/bicycle_mechani...

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#137

Post by pkoird »

krferriter wrote: post #112
vonneumannstan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to dunk on someone unable to defend themselves. Some basic sanity checks: Personally recruited onto the Manhattan Project by Oppenheimer in 1943. Feynman Diagrams, fundamental to QM and became popular in the early 50s. There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom lecture was given in 1959. The Feynman Lectures on Physics were recorded at Caltech between 1961-1964 and became famous throughout the field shortly after…

To be clear that YouTube video is not really a critique of Richard Feynman, especially not his scientific career, it's a critique of people who knew him writing books and making content using his name and making money off it as if it came directly from him. It also critiques some of his behavior around interactions with students or telling what amounts to tall tales or standup comedy jokes and then other people takin…

Without having watched the videos, to say that people made content using his name and made money off of it without Feynman knowing is disingenuous. Ralph Leighton recorded the conversations as Feynman was struggling with cancer. There are even portions of those recordings out in the web [1]. Feynman was fully aware of the books because there was apparently a scandal where Murray Gell-mann threatened to sue Feynamn and Leighton because of some mischaracterization. Feynman was apparently hurt and issued a correction in the subsequent version of the book [2]. So it seems that he was FULLY AWARE and actively endorsed the book.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Tapes-Research-Chemist-storie... [2] https://feynman.com/stories/al-seckel-on-feynman/

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#139

Post by noisy_boy »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59

There's something rather sad, maybe poignant about it. It stands there as a testimonial to our brevity on this planet, to all that we will not see, do, understand. So it goes, I guess.

We don't have much time and it takes too long to get that until there is too little left. The latter is the tragedy.

Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)

#140

Post by fknorangesite »

hcs wrote: post #98
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

His motto "What I cannot create, I do not understand" has been one of the driving forces in my own quest to understand more about the world around me. A good friend had picked up a corollary which was "What I cannot teach, I do not understand" which I think was quite similar. Definitely one of my heroes.

> "What I cannot teach, I do not understand" I tend to agree, but teaching another person is also a whole different set of skills from being able to drive something yourself. One prominent example is the "curse of knowledge"; it may take a lot of practice becoming a beginner to be able to teach for a beginner's perspective in your area of expertise.

God, thank you. I really dislike the old aphorism that if you can't teach something you don't understand it.

Teaching is a whole complicated skill unto itself, especially if one is teaching to beginners. Like (since we're on HN), how easy is it to imagine someone very good at programming but would be a terrible choice as a Comp Sci 101 prof? I'm guessing "very."

The whole idea deeply undermines teachers of all subjects.

Post reply on HN