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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)

#211

Post by dessimus »

encipriano wrote: post #190
somenameforme wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>E.g. poland is pou luhnd and polish is paa lish.

There's two pronunciations of 'polish' though: the one you mentioned being what one does to grandmother's candlesticks, and 'pou lish' referring to someone or something from 'pou luhnd'.

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

#213

Post by yarekt »

stahorn wrote: post #173
fouronnes3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm french and I have a great memory about that quote. In high school my litterature and physics teachers had a disagreement about it, although I believe they didn't know about each other's point of views. Only us the students did, as they each hand waved great insights about the world with this quote. One was arguing, much like you, about the profound truth there is to it. The other was quick to explain that they pe…

I took up social dancing in my 20s, including salsa and Argentinian tango. I think that it is a very good way to experience the difference between being very good at something and being able to teach. I've been on courses with some people that are clearly exceptionally good at dancing but are a bit lacking when it comes to teaching. Then I've had the pleasure of having teachers that, while still very good at dancing,…

Great insight, it actually aligns with the conversation above: Yes, teaching is its own skill regardless of the subject matter, but to teach you really have to understand the subject matter really well, and isn’t at all related to “doing it well” in some cases.

For example, in film, being a great director requires a deep insight about acting, so they can explain what’s needed from a performance to an actor. A director may know what they need despite being unable to perform it themselves.

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

#214

Post by CSMastermind »

Xelynega wrote: post #186
CSMastermind wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What has been censored in them?

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman? is the most heavily edited.

Gell-Mann famously threatened to sue Feynman if he didn't alter his book which he did in later printings.

The parts of the Cargo Cult Science chapter that referenced specific scammers were removed out of fear of a defamation lawsuit.

The Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Path chapter in which he discusses picking up women at bars was removed after the first edition.

All of Surely You're Joking received a pass to change the language of the book in order to "remove sexist and misogynistic language".

What Do You Care What Other People Think? was also altered to remove his descriptions of his first wife and broadly the language of the book was also updated.

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

#215

Post by pkoird »

gitremote wrote: post #156
pkoird wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

You should watch the video. People who are not Ralph Leighton published books about Feynman posthumously without his knowledge and made money off of it.

Many people write books on interesting subjects posthumously (biographies come to mind). I believe it would be up to the descendants of Feynman to sue if due legal etiquettes were not maintained. Having said that, all famous Feynman books like the Feynman lectures, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, Please of finding things out, etc are edited pieces of Feynman's recorded audio, no doubt about that.

Honestly, my problem with the video in question is that its tone unjustly attempts to denigrate Feynman (starting with the clickbaity title itself, a sham legacy? really?) by trying to frame the narrative that his supposed works were not his to begin with. The comments in that video validate this sentiment to the point that people joke about him not existing at all? If this is the central takeaway of the video then I'm honestly glad that I didn't waste precisious few hours of my life on such misleading content. Feel free to correct me though.

To me, Feynman is iconic because of the way he communicates. Of course, there is a disjunction between the man and his ideas and I'm not unwilling to believe that he had some flaws.

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

#216

Post by [deleted] »

halgir wrote: post #205
baxtr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Personally, I experienced a rude awakening when reading his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". I've read part of his lectures, and heard great things about him in general. So I was extremely surprised when his own collection of anecdotes painted him as kind of a shitty human, in my opinion. Very much an example of "never meet your heroes" for me.

[deleted]

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

#217

Post by gitremote »

fromMars wrote: post #95
speff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly I'm having trouble believing you watched the video if you make the assertion: > He’s inspired many people to go into physics and other sciences, which she herself states in the video, but somehow she makes that out to be a bad thing by implying the Feynman fans are weird, calling them “Feynman Bros”. There were multiple points in the presentation on her experience with Feynman fans and why they deserved the B…

Did you read the book? Some of those are distortions. Regarding the negging incident, she left out important context in her summary of this part of the book. Feynman went to a bar where it was clear that some of the women at that bar were intending to use men to get free drinks and food. In the incident he described, a woman asked him to buy three sandwiches and a drink at a diner and then says she has to run to go m…

It's misogynistic, because the ghost writer of Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman!, Ralph Leighton, ultimately put into print narratives that encouraged men to see "ordinary" women as "worthless bitches". In the character of "Feynman":

Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren't worth anything, and all they're in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they're not going to give you a goddamn thing; I'm not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.

...

On the way to the bar I was working up nerve to try the master's lesson on an ordinary girl. After all, you don't feel so bad disrespecting a bar girl who's trying to get you to buy her drinks but a nice, ordinary, Southern girl?

We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said, "Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing: Will you sleep with me tonight?"

"Yes."

So it worked even with an ordinary girl!

The story about direct consensual sex with one "ordinary girl" doesn't validate that men should have misogynist attitudes towards ordinary women. It's just confirmation bias. It matters, because training your mind to be misogynist until it's automatic would spill over into other aspects of your life, like how you treat female coworkers.

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

#218

Post by vacuity »

stahorn wrote: post #173
fouronnes3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm french and I have a great memory about that quote. In high school my litterature and physics teachers had a disagreement about it, although I believe they didn't know about each other's point of views. Only us the students did, as they each hand waved great insights about the world with this quote. One was arguing, much like you, about the profound truth there is to it. The other was quick to explain that they pe…

I took up social dancing in my 20s, including salsa and Argentinian tango. I think that it is a very good way to experience the difference between being very good at something and being able to teach. I've been on courses with some people that are clearly exceptionally good at dancing but are a bit lacking when it comes to teaching. Then I've had the pleasure of having teachers that, while still very good at dancing,…

I think teaching requires not only that you understand how to do something, but also what someone else's incomplete understanding is. You need to address the root cause as to why the other person's understanding is so lacking, like your examle with the tango dancer, instead of pointing out that a move is wrong and not giving the tools to prevent it. There may be many paths to reaching similar understandings, and a teacher needs to be able to tame this sprawling diversity. That's one reason why we don't just get blog posts or films that are exceedingly short, because if everyone could just understand a dry delivery of the core points instead of needing to think through multiple examples and reasons, we wouldn't be so pressed about teaching.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

furyofantares wrote: post #33
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…

It's also easy to dunk on someone without watching their content. You should probably watch the video if you want to dunk on it. It does not dunk on his physics. It's extremely thoroughly researched and it's about "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" which is specifically about the legacy of anecdotes about his personality, and is different from the actual physics legacy of Richard Feynman, and it is extremely clear…

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by gitremote »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #209
gitremote wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is not about how to do physics, and the book was ghostwritten, by a non-physicist.

It's “ghostwritten” by the same measures interviews are. There exist recordings of Feynman telling the stories to Ralph Leighton.

As the video points out, Feynman was telling tall tales to impress a much younger man, Ralph Leighton. Ralph Leighton decided to publish stories that told a specific narrative, that being an asshole was cool, and he omitted more wholesome stories about Feynman being supportive of women.
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