Editing Richard Feynman

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|content=@robnormal That’s the beginning. Then that the listeners be *highly* motivated. Also intelligent. Also, that no listeners are trying not to understand. Etc 

Pretty soon it’s stone soup. You’re no longer explaining things quickly at a party but you’re now teaching [[Quantum Field Theory|QFT]] courses at university.
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|content=“If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.” - [[Richard Feynman|Feynman]]

[[Richard Feynman|Feynman]] was not able to simply explain a great deal of things to many people. Including experts. I know that many of you find that shocking.

But Internet’s take is wrong here.
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|nameurl=https://x.com/ProfFeynman/status/955081219108061185
|name=Prof. Feynman
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|content=If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it.
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|timestamp=2:14 PM · Jan 21, 2018
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|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=Even the great [[Richard Feynman|Feynman]] said a great many meretricious things about science. Mostly because he wanted to speak in a powerful and overly simplistic fashion that lay people loved. “Hey, if I can’t understand you, it’s because YOU don’t get it! Ha.”

Except that isn’t how this works.
|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=This is a description of how [[Richard Feynman|Feynman’s]] brilliant “Sum Over Histories” technique went over at the Pocono conference in the spring of 1948. Feynman wasn’t able to explain what he was doing to even the world’s very top experts in Theoretical Physics!

And how did he explain failure?
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|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=Very simply: “My machines came from too far away.”

The Internet needs to grow out of its expectation that it can use what is possibly [[Richard Feynman|Feynman’s]] dumbest quote to dismiss those it cannot quickly understand. But it won’t. Why? Because the quote is both powerful and totally wrong.
|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=Disagree? Great. Prove it!

Step I: Get someone who understands “The Families Index Theorem on Manifolds with Boundary” to fully explain it simply to you.

Step II: Explain it to us all!

I look forward to conceding to you. Until then? Maybe go easy on [[Richard Feynman|Feynman’s]] dumbest take?
|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=If you still love repeating that [[Richard Feynman|Feynman]] quote despite the greater context provided, here’s some material. Ask your expository heroes to explain it.

Good luck. Because, if I’m not wrong, you’re gonna need it…

[Until then, here’s a primary source: 

https://imo.universite-paris-saclay.fr/~bismut/Bismut/1990e.pdf]

🙏
|timestamp=6:39 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=Note: The quote in the original tweet has a typographical error. It should be:

"Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize."—[[Richard Feynman]]. As Quoted in “People”, 22 July 1985.
|timestamp=6:47 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=@Eluminat1 Witten? Dirac? Did they make the cut?
|timestamp=6:53 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=@karlbykarlsmith Not as I understand it. [[Richard Feynman|Feynman’s]] diagrams are just an indexing scheme for series terms albeit a provocative one. The apparent classical localization of position &amp; momentum is taking place in the indexing diagram, NOT in the quantum propagator which the diagrams sum to construct.
|timestamp=7:02 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=@NukeBeach Ultimately it required more time, more conferences, and Dyson, Bethe, and [[Ken Wilson|Wilson]] to put the full Theory in a form where it was accepted.
|timestamp=7:05 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=@rolfascending @travislambirth Great. Just apply your critique in the terms you understand it to the challenge problem of the thread so I can fully appreciate the point of what you are saying. Thanks.
|timestamp=8:36 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|content=@theoctobear It’s a test. Show us what it means to explain a proven theorem in simple terms. So easy. Find the experts who understand it and have them explain it in these simple terms that all interested parties can understand. Piece of cake I would think.
|timestamp=8:40 AM · Dec 15, 2021
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|timestamp=2:55 PM · Dec 15, 2021
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== Related Pages ==

* [[Quantum Field Theory]]

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