"You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram • Hacker News Board

Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram

#81

Post by apmee » Thu, Jun 10, 2010, 5:40 PM UTC

Kliment wrote: post #79

apmee wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Can I ask what you're basing that on? I'm not disbelieving you, just skeptically curious :)

http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/science.h... When he talks about his time at Cornell: "She went on and said, "Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect. Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start…

Interesting, thanks. But, without meaning to excuse it, I do wonder how much of that was

a) tongue in cheek (given that it was an informal talk rather than an essay or article)

b) just a reflection of the general attitudes of the era

c) indeed down to personal prejudice

I'm guessing though that whatever prejudices he had must have been re-evaluated by the time he encouraged his sister to go into science

Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram

#82

Post by Perceval » Thu, Jun 10, 2010, 5:40 PM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #75

BRadmin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting because Wolfram quotes Feynman as saying: "Peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." Niels Bohr

Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli once dismissed a muddled analysis of a physics problem saying, "It's not right. It's not even wrong."

Re: "You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram

#83

Post by sundarurfriend » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:44 AM UTC

apmee wrote: post #81

Kliment wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/science.h... When he talks about his time at Cornell: "She went on and said, "Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect. Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start…

Interesting, thanks. But, without meaning to excuse it, I do wonder how much of that was a) tongue in cheek (given that it was an informal talk rather than an essay or article) b) just a reflection of the general attitudes of the era c) indeed down to personal prejudice I'm guessing though that whatever prejudices he had must have been re-evaluated by the time he encouraged his sister to go into science

This is not an isolated case either. There are quite a few incidents in print where Feynman shows he had the traditional mindset about females (to put it mildly).

Quoting [1]: 'The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.'

However, afaik that was mostly because of (b), the general attitudes of the time.

[1]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A... (Google cache since the original page seems down)