Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

digital.archives.caltech.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 284 posts

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

#71

Post by roadbuster »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #28
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

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…

You can add to the list, "Putnam Fellow." And, not only was he a fellow, he apparently trounced the scores of the other 4 fellows:

    "Anyway, I was among the first five. I have since found out from 
     somebody from Canada, where it was scored, who was in the scoring 
     division—he came to me much later and he told me that it was 
     astonishing. He said that at this examination, 'Not only were you 
     one of the five, but the gap between you and the other four was 
     sensational.' He told me that. I didn’t know that. That may not 
     be correct, but that’s what I heard."
https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral...

Feynman's grasp of mathematics was astounding

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

#72

Post by jmcgough »

Sincere6066 wrote: post #61
Molitor5901 wrote: post #3

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

It makes me so sad to read opinions like this.

Recently started to read his book, and was shocked at how much my interpretation of Feynman seems to differ from the frequent praises. Smart and a gifted science communicator, but even these embellished stories told in the most flattering light, he comes across as an egotistical jerk and misogynist. How many female physics majors changed studies after enduring his extremely creepy behavior?

I hope that people who read this book in the future are able to recognize some of his truly toxic traits, and not think that being a jerk is part of his genius like the Steve Jobs mythos.

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

#73

Post by speff »

Dig1t wrote: post #49
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

I watched this video and honestly did not find any of her points very compelling. Her best point is basically her own subjective opinion that Feynman does not belong amongst the greatest physicists of all time like Newton and Einstein. And like yeah I guess that’s sort of true. But most of the video is just stating that Feynman’s fans are weird. Feynman is super popular because he made very impressive contributions t…

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 Bros title.

* Having an unearned superiority complex while having misogynistic beliefs (6:50->8:23) - followed by examples of personal experiences by the video creator

* Making up stories about him (1:42:XX->1:44:XX)

* Thinking that negging is cool? I realize I already said misogynistic beliefs, but feel like this should be re-iterated (24:20->25:50). The example given about the Feynman and the waitress was particularly rage-inducing to me. I'm picturing my mother or wife in that scenario and some jackass doing that to them.

> Like the thing about brushing teeth and seeing things from a different point of view. She completely missed the entire point of why people think his point of view is interesting on it. Basically he’s just saying in a video that most people brush their teeth every morning, and if you view all the humans doing this from a higher vantage point, like from space, you see this line creeping across the earth and most of the people right on that line are engaged in the same ritual. It’s interesting to think about this one phenomenon from the perspective of individual humans and also from someone watching from space. She doesn’t provide a reason why this is dumb she just basically says it’s dumb and moves on to the next point. It kind of feels like she either didn’t think about it enough or is just being disingenuous.

This is a mischaracterization of this section of the video. 37:33-> 39:45 for anyone else who wants to make their own judgement. The point was that people watch the clip of Feynman and come out with the wrong/harmful conclusions.

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

#74

Post by zelphirkalt »

gitremote wrote: post #8
Molitor5901 wrote: post #3

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

"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

The person talking in the video lost me, when she criticized pupils asking about air resistance. Basically that was me, literally, without having known anything about Feynman. I simply asked, because I was interested in how one would calculate that, rather than the boring "use formula from book, plug in values, get result". I wanted to know more. Not because I wanted to "seem smart because I know air exists". That's such very silly take. And in fact there were many people, who would not have even thought about air possibly having an effect on a falling object. Basically she is raving on against curious students. Maybe she is herself not so curious and cannot stand it. Who knows.

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

#75

Post by cyberax »

pdonis wrote: post #48
sho_hn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see ... Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Pauli, Heisenberg, Bohm, Dirac, Schroedinger, de Broglie, Ehrenfest?

I'd put Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Pauli, and Dirac ahead of Feynman. I'm not so sure about the others; not that they weren't world class physicists, but so was Feynman.

Planck? His greatest achievements were a bit before the 20-th century.

Feynman also became active in physics right at the end of the heroic era. So he's disadvantaged by it.

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

#77

Post by FredPret »

gitremote wrote: post #8
Molitor5901 wrote: post #3

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

"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

Someone making a 2h 48 min rant about how a dead, great physicist was "not that great" is oddly the opposite of convincing

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

#78

Post by everly »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59

There'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.

I'm reminded of a passage from the last psychiatrist blog:

“One of the great insights of psychoanalysis is that you never really want an object, you only want the wanting, which means the solution is to set your sights on an impossible ideal and work hard to reach it. You won’t. That’s not just okay, that’s the point. It’s ok if you fantasize about knowing kung fu if you then try to actually learn kung fu, eventually you will understand you can never really know kung fu, and then you will die. And it will have been worth it.”

I don't think it's sad at all.

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

#80

Post by speff »

jmcgough wrote: post #72
Sincere6066 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me so sad to read opinions like this.

Recently started to read his book, and was shocked at how much my interpretation of Feynman seems to differ from the frequent praises. Smart and a gifted science communicator, but even these embellished stories told in the most flattering light, he comes across as an egotistical jerk and misogynist. How many female physics majors changed studies after enduring his extremely creepy behavior? I hope that people who rea…

Reminds me of this quote by Stephen Gould

> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops

How many women or other discriminated-against people didn't have the chance to make a difference in the world because of attitudes of people like Feynman?

Post reply on HN