Richard Feynman
2009
Why am I brought up on the names Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg, Feynman, Weinberg, etc ....and not flippin' Yang??? Yang=Da Man.
New topic: the importance of "Kung Fu Panda".
To begin with, like a Beethoven symphony, Kung Fu Panda is meant to be accessed on multiple levels with "Believe in yourself" as the lowest.
The voice performances (w/ exception of Jolie) are all strong. Dustin Hoffman is fantastic. Jack Black solid, McShane and Duk Kim brilliant.
But what makes Kung Fu Panda the film of the decade (ergo century, ergo millenium) is that it alone tackles a central issue of science.
Driving Kung Fu Panda is the tension between dual modes of learning: Knowledge Transfer and Discovery. As innovator, Oogway is heirless.
[I know taking Kung Fu Panda seriously will lose followers....but I don't care about those eyeballs as the issue and film are too important]
So while Oogway is master to Shifu who is/was master to both Tai Lung and Tigress he chooses to elevate the ostensibly inexplicable Panda.
In fact, Panda has demonstrated two features in strapping himself to a firework propelled chair: a willingness to innovate and break rules.
The film then shows the presumed successor (Tigress) as willing to break rules but previously shows this liniage to be prestige focused.
Think of the Panda as having a major & minor advisor. The major advisor (Oogway) he meets only twice. To the minor advisor falls training.
So university based PhD advising is based on the failed Shifu-Tigress model. But great science seeks the added Oogway-Panda dimension.
Recommendation: If you must compare "Kung Fu Panda" to "Godfather I" or "War and Peace" do it on a Saturday in late August. #mytwocents
Ever heard an organized religion complain that G-d would never slap some butt ugly quartic potential on the world to give it mass?
To Dave Bacon: "Butt ugly" referred to the present motivation for the Higgs terms as intellectual spackle. Soft mass won't likely stay ugly
Higgs mass is akin to the once poorly motivated "neutral currents" rejected by Feynman as merely invoked for renormalizabilty. Now: not so.
Challenge to my physics followers: what could possibly make the Mexican Hat quartic gorgeous, natural and canonical? #daretodream
Imagine before Watson-Crick I asked you: "Go nuts. What could possibly make Chargaff's Equimolar rules gorgeous, motivated and canonical?"
Fascinated by Feynman fans who don't realize he would have humiliated them just to steal their wives at the end of the seminar.
Here's something I never got. Why did Feynman need Dyson to explain his theory? Did he? Or did he just need a non-Feynman?
I understand the Dyson added value by tying together Schwinger with Feynman. But it seems like RF couldn't get past the resistance.
Q: Was Feynman initially incapable of explaining his theory at a technical or a sociological level? (e.g. w/ Bohr, Oppenheimer)
Q1: Why did Feynman ask to be removed from the National Academy of Sciences? Q2: How common is that?
Debating whether to remind actual physicists of the role of experimenters in the Tau-Theta circus. Feynman's take: http://www.gorgorat.com/
Oppenheimer's famous repeating of Wigner's calling Feynman 'a second Dirac' somehow managed to do no service to any of these heros. #nofecta
2010
"There have been many conferences in the world since, but I've never felt any to be as important as this." -R.Feynman on Shelter Island 1947
Cost of 1947 Shelter Island Conference : $850.
Fixing Quantum Electrodynamics: Priceless.
How GREAT science really looks at the brink. Wrong/Uncredentialed/Glorious. Teller-Gamow-Feynman on genes: http://bit.ly/dcbIxa
The battle for primacy in physics between Hamilton & Lagrange was largely decided by Richard Feynman. But ZZ Top didn't hurt.
Lamentably, ZZ Top took its name from bluesmen BB King/ZZ Hill rather than a Feynman diag. scattering heavy hadrons by neutral currents.
"In what sense is what happens at one place in a string independent of what happens at another?" -Feynman's last BBoard http://bit.ly/FStrng
"Take a risk w/ your lives that you will never be heard of again, & go off in the wild blue yonder & see if you can figure it out."R.Feynman
Ron Unz was one of the smartest & most arrogant young people I met in HS.
One lunch, Feynman ate him for breakfast: http://bit.ly/aUmlvz
If I recall correctly, "Foo" in pig latin is the name Feynman used to sign his artworks. #foocamp #foo
"I detest the National Academy of Sciences. I didn't have the guts to resign as Feynman did." -Freeman Dyson ABD, (All But Dissertation)
Feynman's 10 year correspondence oddessy to resign from the National Academy of Sciences (1959-1969): http://bit.ly/9Axzu9
The subordination of the insobordinate elite: "That Feynman is becoming a real pain" http://bit.ly/moDE (as appendix F)
2011
Oddly, a mural to R. Feynman is built directly into the Ross 'dress for less' at 449 Shoppers Ln Pasadena CA, visible in Google StreetView,
2016
@BikeMath @CIA Dunno. It's often amazing what a single toxic person can do: R Feynman, M Davis, J Watson, W Pauli, etc... Not a short list.
2017
@Aaron__FF Jim Watson rules for succeeding in science. Feynman and Einstein's prose. Double helix and 8th day of creation. Shape of space.
2018
Arguably the second greatest physicist of the 20th century as drawn by another in the top tier (some would argue, top 5). Quite an honor.
The pair (Dirac & Feynman) are pictured at right. Dirac's odd leaning posture always reminds me: introverts need space from extroverts. https://t.co/P0Bjnuy6Hu
In "Lost in Math", @skdh has written a necessary book that I've always hoped someone would never write. It lays out the argument that "Beauty" is a dangerous Siren for physics, which is almost always true. Except, unfairly, for a tiny top tier.
Beauty, it seems, loathes equity. https://t.co/t5QSsDJFyR
@rcanacci @skdh Begin with Dirac, Einstein, Yang, Maxwell, Noether, Newton, Hamilton, Stuckelberg, Feynman as principle authors of the most fundamental equations and principles. And I'm not sure I am not stretching it slightly to appear broad minded.
Was not expecting to bump into one of the most inspiring scientists of our time. Freeman Dysonâs trajectory is a life to study. In particular his defeat of Oppenheimerâs opposition to Feynmanâs Sum-Over-Historys at the @the_IAS taught me a lot about how great minds spar. https://t.co/WVBS8FFSyo
If you want a great introduction to the unusual thinking and sui generis wisdom of this man, you could do worse than his article on âMissed Opportunitesâ:
2019
Under no circumstances should you give this material to kids:
Great Brain Series
Surely Your Joking Mr Feynman
Pippi Longstocking Series
The Double Helix
The Phantom Tollbooth
Old Mad Magazines
Songs by Tom Lehrer
All the Trouble in the World
Harrison Bergeron
The True Believer
Got to geek out on the death of Sydney Brenner.
This is one of my favorite documents. A letter from Gamow to Crick about Richard Feynman & Edward Teller contemplating homoerotic (see drawing) overlapping codon models of the as yet unknown genetic code. Brenner debunked all such!
@willwilkinson @seanilling Itâs not all Feels. Look at E8 and tell me how you âfeelâ. Who came up with that? Killing? Freudenthal? Lie? No way. Not even Grothedieck and Witten with Feynman and Von Neumannâs help. None of us know what it is. Is hemoglobin socially constructed? Who asks this? No one I know.
2020
Thoughts on where we are and why we are stuck. Also, the parable of Feynman and the Rogers Challenger Commission. https://t.co/uSXbLAaxVV
Tom Lehrer
Noam Elkies
@LauraDeming
@MarcusduSautoy
@patrickc
@lishali88
@peterthiel
@thegoodtomchi*
@SamHarrisOrg
@joerogan
@tylercowen
@MsMelChen
James Simons
Jared Diamond
@StephenAtHome
@tferriss
@FutureJurvetson
@naval
Jimmy Kaltreider
@mkonnikova
@pmarca
Etc...
[no family]
Freeman Dyson
@brookedallas
Sydney Coleman
@adamgazz
@balajis
@stephstem
Kevin Harrington
Jordan Greenhall
Daniel Schmachtenberger
@nntaleb
@annakhachiyan
@seanonolennon
@DavidYezzi
Raoul Bott
@DouglasKMurray
@jordanbpeterson
Isadore Singer
R Gomory
R Feynman
And on & on & on...
2021
I have waited 55 years to see the richest man in the world stick it to âThe Richest Man...IN THE WORLD!â
Also: imagine that the worldâs wealthiest person can solve differential equations and knows what a Lagrangian is. Love this.
Mazal tov to @elonmusk for not giving a shit.
Huh. I also have a preference for Hamilton due to geometric quantization using pre-quantum line bundles to explain Heisenberg (cf Woodhouse). Legendre & Feynman not withstanding.
In LA. We should talk âbeyond Marsâ before 4/1. I could really use your..uh..brain. Fine either way.
Weâve never spoken. Lex and Joe have my contact info. I wanna get way outta here. Like yesterday.
âHell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize.â -Richard P Feynman
Moral: A little Feynman is a dangerous thing.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is picking on the wrong guy.
Richard Feynman was remarked upon as being very articulate & seemingly naturally gifted at everything (other than Piano), and famously had great Rhythm. Now what if he had been black?
I am sure Neil gets a lot of BS. Not from BK.
Itâs tough when you see patterns invisible to the đ. Ask any tall woman, and she will tell you all the comments she hears every day. Or any Sikh wearing a Turban. Or any soul who is blind. Or any gay couple with kids..
Brian is well aware of Neilâs hard work. Weird interchange.
They were smart. We were smart. They had Spassky, We had Fischer. They had Shostakovich, we had Van Cliburn. Vysotsky v Dylan. Landau v Feynman.
That was a long time ago now.
Oddly, some things now actually make me miss the Cold War with Soviet Russia:
âIf I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.â - 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 Internetâs take is wrong here.
If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it.
Even the great 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. âHey, if I canât understand you, itâs because YOU donât get it! Ha.â
Except that isnât how this works.
This is a description of how Feynmanâs brilliant âSum Over Historiesâ technique went over at the Pocono conference in the spring of 1948. Feynman wasnât able to explain what he was doing to even the worldâs very top experts in Theoretical Physics!
And how did he explain failure?
Very simply: âMy machines came from too far away.â
The Internet needs to grow out of its expectation that it can use what is possibly Feynmanâs dumbest quote to dismiss those it cannot quickly understand. But it wonât. Why? Because the quote is both powerful and totally wrong.
Disagree? Great. Prove it!
Step I: Get someone who understands âThe Families Index Theorem on Manifolds with Boundaryâ 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 Feynmanâs dumbest take?
If you still love repeating that Feynman quote despite the greater context provided, hereâs some material. Ask your expository heroes to explain it.
Good luck. Because, if Iâm not wrong, youâre gonna need itâŚ
[Until then, hereâs a primary source:
https://imo.universite-paris-saclay.fr/~bismut/Bismut/1990e.pdf]
đ
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."âRichard Feynman. As Quoted in âPeopleâ, 22 July 1985.
@Eluminat1 Witten? Dirac? Did they make the cut?
@karlbykarlsmith Not as I understand it. Feynmanâs diagrams are just an indexing scheme for series terms albeit a provocative one. The apparent classical localization of position & momentum is taking place in the indexing diagram, NOT in the quantum propagator which the diagrams sum to construct.
@NukeBeach Ultimately it required more time, more conferences, and Dyson, Bethe, and Wilson to put the full Theory in a form where it was accepted.
@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.
@theoctobear Itâs 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.
@robnormal Thatâs the beginning. Then that the listeners be *highly* motivated. Also intelligent. Also, that no listeners are trying not to understand. Etc
Pretty soon itâs stone soup. Youâre no longer explaining things quickly at a party but youâre now teaching QFT courses at university.
2022
2025
Yes. Iâm saying that the Jim Simons, Richard Feynman, Jim Watson, Steven Weinberg, Sidney Coleman, Ken Arrow, Linus Pauling, Isadore Singer, Joshua Lederberg, Steve Smale, Paul Samuelson, Mark Ptashne, John Milnor, model of homegrown American scientific genius is being destroyed.
Is anyone concerned about this? It sure doesnât seem it.
Science needs academic freedom. It needs resources. It needs independence.
Fauci and Collins would have been impossible if we were healthy.
It is not safe to make scientists into mere employees.
Itâs way too dangerous.
Itâs as if we, the U.S., hate being the worlds premier homegrown scientific community. All it takes is reversing self inflicted damage. Thatâs it. Thatâs all.
We seem to hate our own scientists.
It makes no sense. At least to me.
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