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Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

lettersofnote.com

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Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#31

Post by giantDinosaur »

watwut wrote: post #25
Aeolun wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases he probably was the smartest person in the room. If he managed to stay lighthearted and friendly while making fun of others he’s doing a better job than me, because I’ve lost much of my patience for stupidity.

I don't know. I remember realizing when reading some of his stories, that they are fun to read but I would find that obnoxious/annoying in person.

He seemed to be remarkably charming - so I'm not sure how annoying such behaviour actually would have been.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#33

Post by akiselev »

erulabs wrote: post #22
petejames wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, it's inflated ego which is a problem. From what I've read about Feynman, I doubt his ego was inflated.

Indeed - if anything his ego was _accurate_ - he correctly thought of himself as the smartest in the room. The question is, did his success lead to his ego, or did his ego lead to his success? I certainly do not mean to defame him - I practically worship Feynman - I've just been exploring the idea that a little bit of ego can really aid in accomplishing big tasks.

One of the earliest stories of his career was breaking into people's offices at Los Alamos and picking their safes to get access to their Manhattan project reports when he was impatient and didn't want to wait for them. I think he's had a healthy does of ego right from the beginning.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#34

Post by imranq »

Funnily enough, I was reading this letter last week as part of the excellent compilation, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (which has many more letters).

I've always admired Feynman's ability and perseverance to "see" something immediately as opposed to doing the long and drawn out calculations that are a badge of honor among engineering grads. Actually he mentioned this need to "see" through problems in one of his stories with John Wheeler who was able to immediately understand the ideas of self-action of an electron that Feynman was presenting with equations were just describing reflected light.

I imagine that in this case, Feynman saw immediately what problems the student was grappling with and had the words to communicate those thoughts in an unpretentious way. It certainly struck a chord with me.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#35

Post by sradman »

> The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.

This feels like Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage applied to a philosophy of Living the Good Life. The pleasure comes from contributed your unique insight to a solution that enhances the greater good.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#36

Post by tropdrop »

erulabs wrote: post #2

Great read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that som…

Too few engineers eschew ego - this is Feynman's point.

Most people are not Feynman. Most engineers today think they have the capability of being Feynman one day - of course, statistics dictates that most will not be.

This is why Feynman's advice is powerful -

The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.

Feynman here is instructing someone with too much ego, not too little. Koichi Mano thinks the problems he's working on are beneath him - that he should already be working on Feynman level problems! This is why he writes with shame to Feynman about his "humble" problem. Feynman demonstrates to him that no, no problem is too small, and backs it up with how he chipped away at "lesser" problems for a long time to build up confidence and competence. Finally, he closes with advice that could be ported to a middle manager at the smallest bureaucratic company who thinks they don't do anything important -

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office.

If you do not have too lofty of an opinion of yourself (less ego, not more), then you will not be ashamed of the problems you succeed in, and only then might you have the chance to do something important.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#37

Post by moksly »

erulabs wrote: post #2

Great read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that som…

I think you do him a disservice when you quote it out of context. “You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods.“ doesn’t read like hubris to me, in fact it kind of reads like to opposite. A professor does seem impressive to his students, and Feynman points out its even at the hight of his career which is where he would have appeared the most impressive.

I think that goes well with the encouraging message of finding your place in the world, because you need it to progress.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#38

Post by eris_agx »

hitekker wrote: post #15

Sometime ago, I made a MVP for a video game that captured the attention of my peers. They liked playing it, I liked coding it, and I felt very much that it contained a story that deserved to be heard. But I let grandiosity distract me. “This is just a video game, isn’t it? I mean, it's really cool but shouldn’t I be spending my spare time on something, I don’t know, bigger?” So I decided to stop and apply myself onto…

I appreciate the example. Often times I find myself in this thought pattern as well: is this problem beneath me?

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#39

Post by phonon »

Feynman talks about this in his book, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"

-----------

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?"

I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.

I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, "Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it's two to one is ..." and I showed him the accelerations.

He says, "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?"

"Hah!" I say. "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it." His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was "playing" - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#40

Post by tmsh »

Perhaps Mano was making a pun on "down-to-earth" and Feynman in his single-minded arrogance simply missed that.

The arrogance of physicists is so "normalized" at this point. Perhaps there are exceptions, but the most humble that I've seen (was just watching a presentation by Kip Thorne tonight, etc.) are full of humblebrag. It's seriously a problem.

In particular, among a culture that celebrates the Nobel prize. The most non-Nobel prize thing Feynman could've done is instead of saying "take it back, etc, etc." - would've been to keep doing good physics and just ignore it. That's the part so many people miss. It's a culture of obsession over insight. And this letter is more a therapy session for Feynman than anything else.

No problem, no discussion.

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