Feynman should not be celebrated.
I'll celebrate him. Stop me! :)
Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
251–260 of 284 posts
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plenty of examples of people getting what they thought they wanted and still feeling unfulfilled. Right, I think that's what might be striking a chord. Modern psychotherapy would tell you that you'd picked something thinking it would solve problems that it never would. A classic example is that if you achieved a certain career objective or measure of success, you would feel loved and approved of and worthy. And the…
It’s possible these are both right. You should pick achievable goals which will actually make you happy, and you should pick impossible goals that you will always enjoy working towards.
The problem with impossible goals is that there's no feedback if you're actually making progress.
Far better to identify achievable goals that have a timespan of a few years max, and with milestones at least every few months to know you're on the right track.
Impossible goals are ultimately a nonsensical proposition. And if you have an activity you enjoy, you just do that activity. Like crossword puzzles. They don't have a goal.
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#253His 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"
This is really more in line to some of the things Feynman communicated in many of his interviews. I feel like it more accurately reflects the way Feynman approached things.
He was such a loss. RIP
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#254His 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" This is really more in line to some of the things Feynman communicated in many of his interviews. I feel like it more accurately reflects the way Feynman approached things. He was such a loss. RIP
Have you ever asked yourself why this version (with 'create' in it) was on his black board?
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 probl…
> 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 video is not about denigrating Feynman. The "sham" legacy refers not to Feynman's legacy as a physicist, which is undisputed. The "sham" legacy refers to Feynman's false legacy written by other people for personal motivations.
> The comments in that video validate this sentiment to the point that people joke about him not existing at all?
Yes, that's the joke, but you're misunderstanding it. The joke is not punching at Feynman, but about how we know so little about him because we have no written primary sources about his views, only secondary sources.
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "What I cannot teach, I do not understand" And the corollary to that, from 17th century French writer Nicolas Boileau: "Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément." - What we understand well, we express clearly, and words to describe it flow easily.
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?
Radioactivity in 1860:
In 1860 Lavoisier and Dalton have already published their work and died, so they know chemistry and atoms. Napier is much older, so they will understand exponential decay. It looks easy to explain.
I'm worry about getting some samples. Let's go to Poland and dig in random sites? Before the time travel I need a few days to study in Wikipedia where I should go and what mineral to look for.
I can try to guess how to purify it because I went to a high school with and specialization in Chemistry. (Let's dissolve everything with Nitric Acid, and then use Sodium Carbonate to precipitate Calcium and then Sodium Sulfide to precipitate all heavy metals including Uranium. I'm not sure if it works.) Anyway, one extra day to study this will be helpful.
To show the radioactivity I guess I can use a photographic plate. Luckily, it look like they already have some. (I was going to use Silver Nitrate and hope the best, but the chances of success are better if some of them already know what they are doing.) Add another day of preparation just in case.
Also, as an application, I'd try to irradiate food. 1860 is just in time for Pasteurization. Can I get enough radiation??? Is it safe???
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Calculus to Archimedes:
That's easy. Archimedes was using Calculus 2000 years before it was cool. The guy calculated the area of a parable slicing it in small parts. Also the volume of a sphere slicing it in small parts. (And then the surface of a sphere with a trick.)
I taught Calculus in the first year of the university, and also in more advanced courses and also in high school. (It will be necessary to start explaining formulas or a translation of formulas to geometric figures. Also, the idea that a formula is related to a graphic in paper is hard, so it will take some time.) I guess I can enter the time machine on the spot.
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feynman was a huge proponent of, whether he knew it or not, compression being a form of modeling. He thought everything settled about physics should be teachable in the freshmen introductory series, and if he couldn’t make it fit that meant we didn’t really understand it yet. I personally like the idea of upper level classes being about things we are still working out. That feels more like preparing people for the re…
You can't reasonably keep compressing centuries of progress into an intro series. I think you are describing undergrad vs graduate, not intro vs upper level, and even that is optimistic. Even tenured professors are still learning new things about what is already known to the world at large.
Whether we want it or not we will have to or else what happens in hundreds of years? is there a limit to human knowledge, will people spend their entire lives studying only to then graduate when they're 80?
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#258There'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.
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."
—Geoffrey Chaucer, Parlement of Foules
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This conservative non-holonomic system has a seven-dimensional accessible configuration space and three velocity degrees of freedom parametrized by rates of frame lean, steer angle and rear wheel rotation. I always adore the split between how my brain does things instinctually, but making it arbitrary completely demolishes the 'natural' flow of it. Same with complex ball throwing / bouncing trajectory calculations.…
Sounds like a problem with your early math tutors: especially with geometry, all the examples you bring up have been taught with "what it means". I mean, squares and cubes are just multiplication by the same factor: I distinctly remember even trapezoid surfaces, pyramid volumes being demonstrated by chopping and piecing parts together.
In the US especially, too many programs have an insistence that doing things with symbols and doing things with shapes and solids are completely different things and don't relate the two.
Re: Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death (1988)
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 probl…
> 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 video is not about denigrating Feynman. The "sham" legacy refers not to Feynman's legacy as a physicist, which is undisputed. The "sham" legacy refers to Fey…
I'm sorry but didn't we already establish that most of his famous books are the edited contents of his recordings with some of those audios available to download as well? Does a person have to actually sit down and write it out and dictations don't count?