3 ms·

He was pointing out that where you let it stop depends on the context. And there you have said it. I haven't missed the point. Feynman did by not acting on the

by chm 11y ago

He was pointing out that where you let it stop depends on the context. And there you have said it. I haven't missed the point. Feynman did by not acting on the context of the interviewer's question. Of course he had to stop somewhere in his explanations. But he definitely could have talked about magnetic fields, and electrons, and spin, etc. instead of giving a sermon. Really, by that logic, he could simply have stopped the interview and sent the journalist to college for a physics degree.

simoncion 11y ago
If you go to the linked YouTube video, you will see that this one conversation is one of a series of conversations in a larger production. wtallis pointed out elsewhere in this thread that this was a BBC production for a largely non-technical audience. You have missed the point because you were unaware of the larger context in which that one conversation sat. :)
- chm 11y ago
  You have missed the point because you were unaware of the larger context in which that one conversation sat. :) Why are you so sure? Most commenters who don't agree with me have wrong preconceptions/assumptions about me. I have watched this whole series of videos multiple times over the years. I have always felt that Feynman's sermon was not useful.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    You're not just claiming that his answer wasn't useful, you're claiming that it could have been even within the context and constraints of that interview. Feynman, who had far better knowledge than we of both the subject matter and the purposes of the interview, did not think that it was possible.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    wtallis's reply is better than mine, but you asked me a question, so I owe you a response: > Why are you so sure? For several reasons. The best one is as follows: Any video about science for a non-technical audience featuring a well-respected scientist and lecturer is incomplete without a section that explains that "Why" questions are often the most difficult to answer because of the inherent complexity of even the simplest seeming things.
- kybernetikos 11y ago
  > largely non-technical audience A largely non-technical audience who wished to have an expert explain these matters to them.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Yeah. Which makes the objections even more mystifying.
wtallis 11y ago
> But he definitely could have talked about magnetic fields, and electrons, and spin, etc. instead of giving a sermon. Name-dropping magnetic fields and electrons and spin isn't an explanation. Neither is telling someone that Bohr had proved 70 years earlier that classical mechanics was insufficient to explain the phenomenon. An explanation that imparted some understanding beyond mere word association, some ability to predict consequences or recognize other manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon, would have been many times longer than that video.
- chm 11y ago
  But then by your definition, name-dropping is what Feynman does during the entire series of videos. How does the train stay on the tracks? Any question asked by the interviewer could have been answered in a lot more time than Feynman took. It just always felt odd to me that he stuck with this particular one. And notice that in the rest of the series we don't always hear what the question was.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    > How does the train stay on the tracks? Since you picked that example: which necessary concepts do you think he mentioned, left unexplained, and aren't familiar from everyday life?
    - chm 11y ago
      I was satisfied with his answer. But along his own logic, answering "why does the train stay on the tracks" is a very much more involved question than at first appears, because our intuition and what we now know about gravity are not always in sync. I still don't understand how you consider talking about "magnetic fields, spin and electrons" is name dropping in the case of magnetism, but is perfectly acceptable in the rest of the series :/
      - wtallis 11y ago
        > I still don't understand how you consider talking about "magnetic fields, spin and electrons" is name dropping in the case of magnetism, but is perfectly acceptable in the rest of the series The distinction is in whether you are pretending to explain those concepts, or merely referring to them as the causes. When answering some other question, you can mention those concepts and then go on to explain the consequences they have. In this case, after mentioning those concepts there's nothing more to say unless you're going to explain those concepts. There are no layers of understanding to be built up from unexplained assumptions about those concepts, because the original question is the very next layer up. And the next layer down is university-level. He didn't balk at giving an explanation about trains, because there was useful progress to be made there. That wasn't the case for magnets. The fact that you can keep digging into either subject given sufficient study is irrelevant.

by chm 11y ago

simoncion 11y ago

If you go to the linked YouTube video, you will see that this one conversation is one of a series of conversations in a larger production. wtallis pointed out elsewhere in this thread that this was a BBC production for a largely non-technical audience. You have missed the point because you were unaware of the larger context in which that one conversation sat. :)

chm 11y ago
You have missed the point because you were unaware of the larger context in which that one conversation sat. :) Why are you so sure? Most commenters who don't agree with me have wrong preconceptions/assumptions about me. I have watched this whole series of videos multiple times over the years. I have always felt that Feynman's sermon was not useful.
- wtallis 11y ago
  You're not just claiming that his answer wasn't useful, you're claiming that it could have been even within the context and constraints of that interview. Feynman, who had far better knowledge than we of both the subject matter and the purposes of the interview, did not think that it was possible.
- simoncion 11y ago
  wtallis's reply is better than mine, but you asked me a question, so I owe you a response: > Why are you so sure? For several reasons. The best one is as follows: Any video about science for a non-technical audience featuring a well-respected scientist and lecturer is incomplete without a section that explains that "Why" questions are often the most difficult to answer because of the inherent complexity of even the simplest seeming things.
kybernetikos 11y ago
> largely non-technical audience A largely non-technical audience who wished to have an expert explain these matters to them.
- simoncion 11y ago
  Yeah. Which makes the objections even more mystifying.

wtallis 11y ago

> But he definitely could have talked about magnetic fields, and electrons, and spin, etc. instead of giving a sermon. Name-dropping magnetic fields and electrons and spin isn't an explanation. Neither is telling someone that Bohr had proved 70 years earlier that classical mechanics was insufficient to explain the phenomenon. An explanation that imparted some understanding beyond mere word association, some ability to predict consequences or recognize other manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon, would have been many times longer than that video.

chm 11y ago
But then by your definition, name-dropping is what Feynman does during the entire series of videos. How does the train stay on the tracks? Any question asked by the interviewer could have been answered in a lot more time than Feynman took. It just always felt odd to me that he stuck with this particular one. And notice that in the rest of the series we don't always hear what the question was.
- wtallis 11y ago
  > How does the train stay on the tracks? Since you picked that example: which necessary concepts do you think he mentioned, left unexplained, and aren't familiar from everyday life?
  - chm 11y ago
    I was satisfied with his answer. But along his own logic, answering "why does the train stay on the tracks" is a very much more involved question than at first appears, because our intuition and what we now know about gravity are not always in sync. I still don't understand how you consider talking about "magnetic fields, spin and electrons" is name dropping in the case of magnetism, but is perfectly acceptable in the rest of the series :/
    - wtallis 11y ago
      > I still don't understand how you consider talking about "magnetic fields, spin and electrons" is name dropping in the case of magnetism, but is perfectly acceptable in the rest of the series The distinction is in whether you are pretending to explain those concepts, or merely referring to them as the causes. When answering some other question, you can mention those concepts and then go on to explain the consequences they have. In this case, after mentioning those concepts there's nothing more to say unless you're going to explain those concepts. There are no layers of understanding to be built up from unexplained assumptions about those concepts, because the original question is the very next layer up. And the next layer down is university-level. He didn't balk at giving an explanation about trains, because there was useful progress to be made there. That wasn't the case for magnets. The fact that you can keep digging into either subject given sufficient study is irrelevant.