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Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

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Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#41

Post by krick »

Aeolun wrote: post #21
krastanov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

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.

In his stories he was. And while it was fun to believe him when I was reading them as a teen, now I'm inclined to take most of it with a huge grain of salt.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#42

Post by Angostura »

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…

You filleted the quote. He said.

> You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods.

This is not ego

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#43

Post by seesawtron »

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…

Quoting Ernest Becker from his The Denial of Death:

"In man a working level of narcissism is inseparable from self-esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of words, sounds and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper."

"It is natural for a man to strive to be a hero, it goes deeply in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, and yet the society gets chills when someone admits the honesty of it."

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#44

Post by bitwize »

Some advice that I give to aspiring game programmers is: Start small. You're not going to remake Fallout on your first go. Your first project should be something like a text adventure game -- something that you can reach the end of quickly with the skills you have. If you reach the end of that project quickly, you will taste victory early and this will be nitro in your motivation tank that will help you complete the next-bigger project.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#45

Post by [deleted] »

krastanov wrote: post #4
mkolodny wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods." It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit. He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of…

Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

[deleted]

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#46

Post by amelius »

tropdrop wrote: post #36
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 w…

> 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.

But Feynman, at least in his written works, was more a reverse engineer than an actual engineer.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#47

Post by russholmes »

krastanov wrote: post #4
mkolodny wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods." It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit. He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of…

Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

Quite. Much of the cult status of Feynman was created by the man himself. He had several books written espousing his genius. As for his charm - salesmen are charming, psychopaths are charming. Charm is a 5 letter word for manipulative, as many of his colleagues wives discovered.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#48

Post by jacobolus »

russholmes wrote: post #47
krastanov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

Quite. Much of the cult status of Feynman was created by the man himself. He had several books written espousing his genius. As for his charm - salesmen are charming, psychopaths are charming. Charm is a 5 letter word for manipulative, as many of his colleagues wives discovered.

Your cynicism is off the charts.

Paying attention to people, listening to them carefully, answering questions and explaining things clearly, talking to them as equals instead of patronizing, etc. is not inherently “manipulative” or “psychopathic”.

Re: Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)

#50

Post by unkulunkulu »

082349872349872 wrote: post #30
totorovirus wrote: post #8

"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. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in t…

It took me a while to realise that following Dijkstra's dictum "do only, what only you can do" not only means tackling intellectual problems that one is uniquely suited to address, but also means being the husband and the father. (the latter being unique up to isomorphism, but if we're not willing to accept a strict equality, it leads us into Ship of Theseus questions about personal identity...) TIL Al was not only F…

> "do only, what only you can do"

This also reminds me of the famous Theodore Roosevelt’s quote “do what you can with what you have wherever you are”. This ties quite well with the letter too, it doesn’t make much sense to dream about bigger deeds, problems and achievements instead of really applying yourself to the things at hand.

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