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

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

#181

Post by Xelynega »

wholinator2 wrote: post #85
dralley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's hard not to see some truth in what Murray Gell-Mann said, which is that he spent as much time trying to come up with stories about himself as he did working. Also while breaking the rules might be fun, lockpicking desks & sending coded messages out of Los Alamos "for fun" is maybe not for the best.

It wasn't for the worst either. Frankly i think it's essential for people to have experience in some mischeviety. Hacker mindset, etc, etc. I've joined a PhD program recently and you can really tell who's never done anything but study.

You should read some of the more egregious stories that have been published with his blessing.

It's not just "experience in mischeveity", it's "being a general nuisance, then everyone clapped"

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

#182

Post by somenameforme »

stahorn wrote: post #177
toomanyrichies wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a native English speaker who, a lifetime ago, moved to Shanghai to teach English to adults. One of my biggest struggles when I first started was explaining to students not just what the correct English should be in a given situation, but why that was the correct English. This had a profound effect on my view of expertise and experts in general.

As someone that speaks English as my second language, the trick of English is to memorize all the exceptions and then accept that the English spelling is just made up to mess with foreigners. Looking at you, the "b" in debt, that I was pronouncing for a long time growing up and learning a lot of words from reading.

A big one is also "ed" like "jogged". It looks like jog ged, so surely it's pronounced that way. Bahaha, no - gotcha! It's jogd! But we like extra letters and there must be vowels even when completely and absolutely unpronounced. Not sure if this is better or worse than Russian which seems to have no problem with squeezing a half dozen consonants side by side and saying, 'good luck.'

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by Xelynega »

gowld wrote: post #89
gitremote wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" is about Feynman being famous because of this book rather than because of his physics. The YouTuber, an obsessed physicist who had spent months reading all Feynman books, provides a critical analysis and explains the cultural impact of "Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

That YouTuber seems quite bitter, making videos complaining about famous scientists and complaining about people lke Worlfram and Musk who studied physics in school and then became successful in business -- not for being bad businessman or bad people (which some of them may well be), but because she's offended that they say they love physics even though she thinks they don't deserve to.

Elon Musk has a bachelor in science and business, I feel like a PhD scientists is allowed to complain about the media going to Elon Musk for science views rather than scientists

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

#185

Post by Xelynega »

jandrese wrote: post #18
Molitor5901 wrote: post #3

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is one of my favorite books. We lost him much too soon.

How much of that book do you think is the literal truth and how much do you think was embellished? When I read it my impression is that Feynmann is the kind of storyteller that doesn't let the boring real life details get in the way of a good story. Some of it is completely believable, like the general telling people to never have their safes open when he is around, but others came across as a bit fanciful to me, esp…

> When I read it my impression is that Feynmann is the kind of storyteller that doesn't let the boring real life details get in the way of a good story.

Is this not an undesirable trait in non fiction stories?

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

#186

Post by Xelynega »

CSMastermind wrote: post #117
Molitor5901 wrote: post #3

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is one of my favorite books. We lost him much too soon.

I hate how his books have been censored after his death. Always try to find first editions.

What has been censored in them?

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

#187

Post by scintill76 »

baxtr wrote: post #165
adastra22 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the first page results of my Google search are positive, except for the one video (not near the top of the results) that has a provocative title but is 2 hours long. I’m not going to watch that. Can you link to the negative stuff you’re seeing?

That is the one I was talking about. Watching the first 5 minutes is enough I think.

I’ve watched 2 Angela Collier videos on him albeit in the background — you’d probably have to watch the whole thing to truly understand the “bad rep” and I can’t speak to how widespread the bad rep is.

My memory is, misogyny, cringey stories that were surely greatly exaggerated and just happen to make Feynman the smartest guy in every room, kind of a jerk in general, divorce due to claimed domestic violence, never did the work of writing a book personally but has the reputation of being a prolific author, his pop appeal makes people elevate him to the very top minds of physics when the work of others was much more impactful.

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

#188

Post by drewzero1 »

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,…

This thought experiment reminds me of Mark Twain's novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", in which the main character is a 19th-century American man transported back to 6th-century Britain. He used his experience in firearms manufacture to introduce modern weapons and had bicycles constructed for the knights to ride around on. I always thought it was pretty farfetched that he'd be able to recreate such complex technology without the aid of modern tools, much less set up factories to manufacture it in pre-industrial times. But it is a bit fun to imagine someone using knowledge of modern technology to pose as a wizard. As Arthur C Clarke famously said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

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

#189

Post by hinkley »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #153
hinkley wrote: post #21

I finally put my whiteboard back up that’s been down since before Covid. It still had scribblings of a novel merge sort with lower space overhead that turned out to be an artifact of non-representative sample inputs. As Bletchley Park taught us, humans are terrible at randomness. No piece of software replicates the experience of having a board to write things on (or magnet things to, if yours is ferromagnetic like mi…

Great! Would you be able to describe the sorting algorithm as a comment here, to open-source it? Also, if you’d like a free magnet for your whiteboard, I’ll happily send you one from BeWelcome.org;)

Typically you merge a block A and block B into a new block C that has the same length as A + B. I thought I saw a way to use a few extra pointers and some swap operations to turn A and B into C by chipping away at their left ends, and still being a stable sort. The examples I came up with worked and confirmation bias took over. But in real data there were combinations of runs that broke the algorithm.

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

#190

Post by encipriano »

somenameforme wrote: post #182
stahorn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that speaks English as my second language, the trick of English is to memorize all the exceptions and then accept that the English spelling is just made up to mess with foreigners. Looking at you, the "b" in debt, that I was pronouncing for a long time growing up and learning a lot of words from reading.

A big one is also "ed" like "jogged". It looks like jog ged, so surely it's pronounced that way. Bahaha, no - gotcha! It's jogd! But we like extra letters and there must be vowels even when completely and absolutely unpronounced. Not sure if this is better or worse than Russian which seems to have no problem with squeezing a half dozen consonants side by side and saying, 'good luck.'

Honestly English spelling is the worst at least of Western Europe. Its so bad it that unless you know some IPA and learn the words pronunciation one by one youre misunderstood all the time. Its also imposible to guess with 100% accuracy how a word is said unless being told.

Schwas everywhere randomly (why is it adjust (uhd 'juhst) and not ad 'juhst when we have accept (ak 'sept). In German this is way more consistent. Diphthongs everywhere, almost no pure monophthongs. Which is a language feature but in written form is also fucked. I tend to have problems with oh vs aa sounds. E.g. poland is pou luhnd and polish is paa lish. Stress isnt written. Consonants not only can be spelled differently but also said differently. Gif vs djif, cell vs celt, china vs machine

This makes the language way harder in a high level than it should be if it had had some spelling reform at some point. Sorry for not using IPA Im on the phone.

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