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Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

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Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#91

Post by happytoexplain »

noobface wrote: post #25
happytoexplain wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good summary example of something I find distinctly dangerous about the way people think of figures they don't personally know (i.e. how people on the social web treat public figures, or even just any stranger they see on the web). We see snapshots and assemble a person in our head. We can barely do that with any degree of fidelity regarding people we personally know , much less public figures. People do go…

The topic here specifically is his love life. If a person I personally knew was accused of half of what Feynman has been, I'd have second thoughts about inviting them over for dinner. If you're going to argue for a gradient of perspective while assessing the character of a person there are better examples than Feynman.

Just a correction: I am not making a gradient argument. The word brings to mind a one-dimensional scale. That is a measly one-step-up from black-and-white. The implication of a "gradient" is that there is "good" on one side and "evil" on the other, and everybody falls somewhere on the gradient. This is not strictly false in all senses, but it is almost always a gross oversimplification and, effectively, a useless measure. A core part of my point is multi-dimensionality.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#92

Post by jjulius »

flkenosad wrote: post #81
jjulius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Note that I have no opinion here, just answering someone's request for a source. A cursory Google reveals... > Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0] Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2]. A…

Gosh! A male mammal is obsessed with it's female counterpart. What could explain such odd behaviour? It's funny how we like to think we're not animals when we really are.

It's not wrong to have those animalistic instincts, it's how you act on them and treat/speak to your sexual counterparts that is important.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#93

Post by growingkittens »

waterhouse wrote: post #89
growingkittens wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember what paper in particular? I would like to read the study about rates of false abuse accusations in areas with strict divorce laws.

Wikipedia says: > In many other states, especially California, the most popular allegation for divorce was cruelty (which was then unavailable in New York). For example, in 1950, wives pleaded "cruelty" as the basis for 70 percent of San Francisco divorce cases.[41] Wives would regularly testify to the same facts: their husbands swore at them, hit them, and generally treated them terribly.[41] This procedure was desc…

I'm not seeing sources that try to separate "real" cases from "false" cases in that section. Both types are included in that 70 percent figure.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#94

Post by WendyTheWillow »

flkenosad wrote: post #81
jjulius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: Note that I have no opinion here, just answering someone's request for a source. A cursory Google reveals... > Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0] Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2]. A…

Gosh! A male mammal is obsessed with it's female counterpart. What could explain such odd behaviour? It's funny how we like to think we're not animals when we really are.

Name one other mammal that has shown an understanding of their behavior’s long term emotional impact on their life partner…

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#95

Post by TaylorAlexander »

distant_hat wrote: post #51
shmde wrote: post #33

Didnt he cheat on wife with his PhD students, had numerous flings and flirted with other peoples wives ?

Not all couples subscribe to monogamy. There is no reason to be judgemental about this in the absence of other information.

I’m polyamorous. Being poly involves clear communication and consent of all parties involved. It involves respect for the other people. If Feynman was sleeping with his students wives and openly denigrating women, that sounds much more like the behavior of someone cheating than the behavior of someone practicing ethical non monogamy. Remember that back then, ethical non monogamy was much less common. The foundational books on the subject came out in the late 1990’s or after, and before that people didn’t even have the language to describe and negotiate what they were doing. It was much more common for one person inclined to this behavior to just cheat.

Feynman has been a huge influence on me. His outlook on science and the world helped shape my own. But we can’t ignore the flaws of our heroes, and it really sounds like he had a dark side.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#96

Post by reducesuffering »

Dig1t wrote: post #38
andy_ppp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t realise he did anything wrong? Was he forcing himself on women or merely flirting successfully?

He didn't do anything wrong, you can read his book where he talks about his dating life in great detail. He was just successful at flirting. Our puritanical culture just doesn't like it.

"Didn't do anything wrong" is sleeping with married woman and saying in his autobiography:

> those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything

> I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches

> I think to myself, “Typical bitch"

> I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!"

Ya, it's just our puritanical culture...

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#97

Post by distant_hat »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #95
distant_hat wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all couples subscribe to monogamy. There is no reason to be judgemental about this in the absence of other information.

I’m polyamorous. Being poly involves clear communication and consent of all parties involved. It involves respect for the other people. If Feynman was sleeping with his students wives and openly denigrating women, that sounds much more like the behavior of someone cheating than the behavior of someone practicing ethical non monogamy. Remember that back then, ethical non monogamy was much less common. The foundational…

Where are the flaws? That the guy was attractive and managed to seduce others? He may have gone with other people's wives but that is on the wife to say no, not on him.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#98

Post by enraged_camel »

yedava wrote: post #73
growingkittens wrote: post #66

Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!" His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty." [1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/…

Plenty of people lose loved ones and manage to remain decent human beings. We can admire Feynman's contributions to physics, but when it comes to personal life, he was just an asshole. There's no point in looking up to him in matters of how to love another human being. Your everyday nobody is far more inspirational in that regard.

>> ...but when it comes to personal life, he was just an asshole

I don't know about you, but physical abuse (e.g. choking his spouse if she interrupted him while he worked) goes way beyond asshole territory IMHO. We're talking about someone who was essentially an incredibly cruel, if not monstrous person.

But what generally happens with these types of things is that history tends to treat famous men very kindly and overlook or even completely erase their dark sides. That is indeed what has happened with Feynman.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#99

Post by ilc »

distant_hat wrote: post #97
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m polyamorous. Being poly involves clear communication and consent of all parties involved. It involves respect for the other people. If Feynman was sleeping with his students wives and openly denigrating women, that sounds much more like the behavior of someone cheating than the behavior of someone practicing ethical non monogamy. Remember that back then, ethical non monogamy was much less common. The foundational…

Where are the flaws? That the guy was attractive and managed to seduce others? He may have gone with other people's wives but that is on the wife to say no, not on him.

If he knew the woman was married, he shares in that blame. At some point you know you are pushing someone else into doing something wrong, so you share that blame.

This is how the crime of "Solicitation of Murder" came to be.

Re: Love after life: Richard Feynman's letter to his departed wife (2017)

#100

Post by munificent »

jjulius wrote: post #53
Dig1t wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a lot about Feynman and have never read that. Would love to see a source.

Edit: Note that I have no opinion here, just answering someone's request for a source. A cursory Google reveals... > Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0] Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2]. A…

It's worth including the conclusion Feyman makes in his autobiography about that episode:

> But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.

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