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"You Don't Understand Ordinary People" - Feynman Gives Advice to Wolfram
- teilo 16y agoClassic Feynman: "with one exception, fall madly in love!"
- albertcardona 16y agoSomeone once said that madness was necessary for creating. Does anybody know who it was? Can't find it.
- mustpax 16y agoMaybe this is what you're thinking of, it's by Nietzsche. One must have chaos within oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.
- albertcardona 16y agoIf it isn't, it is in any case a great sentence. Thank you.
- Saint_loup 16y agoLot of people said that, in a way or another.
- mturmon 16y agoOne version, by John Dryden (1681): Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
- axod 16y ago"A little madness now and then, is relished by the wisest men" - Mr Willy Wonka.
- albertcardona 16y ago"Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" must have been where I read it, ages ago. Thank you!
- BRadmin 16y agoIt'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/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/feynman/
- danielnicollet 16y agoI think you can be a peaceful nut-case though. I am the living proof ;-) No seriously though, "peace of mind" and "madness" or insanity are not necessarily contrary to one another.
- JCThoughtscream 16y agoPeace of mind can just as easily be interpreted as "comfort within one's madness."
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- hugh3 16y ago"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
- Perceval 16y agoAustrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli once dismissed a muddled analysis of a physics problem saying, "It's not right. It's not even wrong."
- icey 16y agoEither Aristotle or Seneca said "There was never a great genius without a tincture of madness".
- fizx 16y agoPerhaps: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
- hassenben 16y agoI believe this is what you're thinking of. “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.” -- Aristotle “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” -- Seneca
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- javanix 16y agoI'm pretty sure he was just quoting the letter.
- pasbesoin 16y agoYes, take another look at the punctuation used in the comment containing the quote.
- asnyder 16y agoI stand corrected. Would be nice to not have been down-voted to oblivion for a misunderstanding.
- pasbesoin 16y agoNo downvote from me. :-) Just the comment, which I almost didn't make except that the punctuation had not previously been noted and appeared to be the cause of the misunderstanding.
- nzmsv 16y agoWhy limit yourself to falling in love only with non-technical people? :)
- manvsmachine 16y ago"...as little contact with non-technical people, with one exception..." Meaning: when it comes to love, don't shy away from people just because they're non-technical.
- bluedanieru 16y agoThe comments on that make we want to tear my hair out. About half the posts are people convinced Feynman is implying that all women are necessarily non-technical.
- Confusion 16y agoThat is partially true: during the first part of his life, Feynman really didn't have a high opinion of the intellectual capabilities of women.
- apmee 16y agoReally? Can I ask what you're basing that on? I'm not disbelieving you, just skeptically curious :)
- Kliment 16y agohttp://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/science.htm 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 twenty steps apart," etc.--I was flabbergasted. She figured out where the intersection was. It turned out that one girl was explaining to the other how to knit argyle socks. I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it."
- apmee 16y agoInteresting, 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
- rntz 16y agoI'd like to see a transcript of the letter this was written in response to.
- abstractbill 16y agoHere's both letters: http://elzr.com/posts/wolfram-feynman http://elzr.com/posts/wolfram-feynman
- arketyp 16y ago"Wolfram did not follow Feynman's advice. Not only did he establish an institute but he also founded the company Wolfram Research, makers of the widely used Mathematica software system. Contrary to Feynman’s expectation Wolfram has been a successful CEO for many years. Within this environment he has managed to pursue ambitious directions in basic science, particularly through his 2002 book A New Kind of Science. He has also been happily married since the early 1990s."
- T_S_ 16y agoThat was a priceless post. Turns out Feynman was wrong on one thing though. Wolfram does like being the boss. Possibly very much.
- kunley 16y agoWolfram learned to like it in the process..
- dhs 16y agoCitation, please.
- arebop 16y agoThe impression I got from this talk: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/ycombinatorschool/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/recent/ycombinato... is that he became a businessman reluctantly.
- T_S_ 16y agoI don't read reluctance into those comments at all. Just look at the comments on personnel management. It's clear he likes it. The early remarks about the "stupid decisions" being made at the first company are a clear sign. Most business leaders know it's culturally not cool to talk like they enjoy leadership. To me, Wolfram went to the enfant terrible school of management. At least he turned out to be competent enough to last.
- mkramlich 16y agobrilliant man, and one of my heroes/idols
- pclark 16y agoi thought this was in response to Wolfram Alpha.
- chollida1 16y agoFeynman was dead for many years before Wolfram Alpha came out. That would have been some feat to communicate with him then:) The letter is also dated: October 14, 1985.
- aswanson 16y agoI think the grandparent meant for the comment to be taken in jest.
- albemuth 16y agoHe passed away long before WA
- mcav 16y agoWhat does the "RPF;ht" at the bottom stand for? (I vaguely recall this being an old convention of something?)
- apowell 16y agoThey're the initials of the author (in caps) and the typist (in lowercase).
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kscaldef 16y ago'ht' is Helen Tuck, the secretary at Caltech's Theory Group for many years; that mark indicates she typed the letter. I was there many years after Feynman passed away, but I have fond memories of Helen and some of the stories she had to tell about the "old days".
- mturmon 16y agohttp://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/336/articles/Volume%202/05-16-02/tuck.html http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/336/articles/Volume%202/05...
- jackfoxy 16y agoFeynman is one of my few heroes. This is an interesting situation. Feynman was right and Wolfram did what he wanted and was successful. Perhaps by taking Feynman's advice to heart. Who knows?
- reitzensteinm 16y agoThe advice was good; however, you can take a path that is not sensible yet succeed by sheer willpower, huge amounts of luck or to a lesser extent great ability. Advice like this is intended to maximize the probability of success. To put it into a HN familiar example, don't be a single founder because single founders are x% less likely to succeed. The fact that single founders can and do succeed all the time does not make the advice bad, it just shows it to be the generalization that it is.
- kunjaan 16y agoI wonder if we will ever get to read such transcripts in this age of private emails and ephemeral conversations.
- GFischer 16y agoWell, Gmail will archive most of those :P (or Hotmail, Yahoo or your webmail provider of choice).
- DrSprout 16y agoFor every person who has gchat set to never document anything, there's another neurotic packrat like my brother who saves all of his chat history so he can go back and show people how prior conversations went whenever there's a disagreement over what was said.
- traskjd 16y agoI used to do this. I have a wonderful memory for conversations I've had with people. I ended up turning off chat logging in every app I used because it just became a little too destructive to relationships. Calling somebody out with cold hard facts works better on to-catch-a-predator than when it's people you enjoy being around :-)
- ErrantX 16y agoThe bit I particularly like is the fact that Feynman was also one of the great minds who did understand ordinary people. I regularly dig out his lectures on pop-physics for a refresher :D
- mistermann 16y agoExactly....I swear Feynman could have encountered the proverbial pig farmer and talked for several hours and left, and if someone told the farmer who they were talking to later, they wouldn't believe them, they'd just say he was an extremely interesting guy. He could find interesting things about almost any subject, and get everyone excited about them.
- orborde 16y agoDespite ignoring Feynman's advice, Wolfram seems to have done well enough, at least financially. Whether his sanity has lasted is another question entirely.
- col_kurtz 16y agoThis part is excellent: You don’t understand "ordinary people." To you they are "stupid fools" - so you will not tolerate them or treat their foibles with tolerance or patience - but will drive yourself wild (or they will drive you wild) trying to deal with them in an effective way. It seems like Feynman is carving a broader archetype here as well. So often in intellectual circles, programming/tech forums & comments this happens, where you are talked down to simply because somebody feels intellectually superior by birth or right, usually discounting other forms of intelligence but their own. How many times have you seen comments prefaced by "I know this is a stupid question, but", "I am new to so and so technology, so", "Understand that this is not my area of expertise, and"? All roughly translated to "Please don't rip me a new one because I might not know what you do" (though probably get out more).
- SkyMarshal 16y agoVery cool site. <3 HN for these little gems.
- F_J_H 16y agoMy favorite Wolfram "dig" went something along the lines of: "The question is who will become self aware first: Wolfram or Wolfram Alpha.", eluding to the fact that apparently he is pretty impressed with himself and happy to share it. Can't remember who said it though. Anyway, this post just made me remember it.
- pedoh 16y agoIf you haven't read any of Richard Feynman's books, I highly recommend them. They're not only fascinating, but with a wonderful sense of humor, as well. I particularly love the chapter in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" about his safecracking exploits. Not only did it show his physical skills and dexterity, but his ability to do social engineering, as well. Great stuff. In "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" he talks a lot about the investigation into the Challenger explosion. Amazing writing on such a serious topic, in my opinion.
- sbierwagen 16y agoWolfram is damn smart. I'll give him that. He also made a pile of money on Mathematica. I'll give him that as well. It was classic "solve your own problem" entrepreneurship. He needed a better computer algebra program, so he wrote one, then started selling it.[1] But he's a crank. He wrote a couple good papers in the 80s, then hasn't done anything decent since. He published A New Kind Of Science in 2002, which was supposed to change the world; except that half of it was nonsense and the other half was stolen from other people. (http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/ http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/) Feynnman (kinda) calls him out on this: Complexity research doesn't need its own institute, because complexity research is a pseudoscience that means whatever you want it to mean, like how the homepathy quacks have latched on to the word "quantum". 1: Wolfram Alpha is the same thing. Wolfram wanted a natural language parser, so he wrote one. Except it doesn't work worth a damn, because natural language parsing is a hideously difficult problem, which probably requires strong AI.
- nandemo 16y agoDid Feynman said that elsewhere? A more generous interpretation is that "complexity" is a genuine interdisciplinary subject, but for administrative/academic/whatever reasons it doesn't need its own institute.
- mistermann 16y ago> He published A New Kind Of Science in 2002 I read it, back in 2002, and was quite excited before starting, but I honestly can't recall a single thing from that book. I can't even remember if I was disappointed after reading it.
- sperry 16y agoWho is the Feynman of our time?
- danbmil99 16y agoThe NKS seminars and forums Wolfram has tried to create are exactly the sort of thing he said he wanted to do back then. They are weak institutions because they are dominated by him and his ideas; they're like a debating society in North Korea. Maybe you'll get a new angle on how awesome is the Glorious Leader, but there will be no surprises.
- koeselitz 16y agoRichard Feynman is kind of a jerk. Edit: What I mean is: How condescending is it to write someone a letter saying that they don't understand people, and they should try falling in love?
- nailer 16y agoI don't think he's a jerk, but yes, many people would 'cushion' that assessment with 'it seems like' or 'I don't mean to offend, but I suggest'. Others don't get the need to do that. Personally I find there's a balance between being direct and handling people's egos.
- hugh3 16y agoHow condescending is it to write someone a letter saying that they don't understand people, and they should try falling in love? Under ordinary circumstances, pretty condescending. However remember that: a) Wolfram was a 26-year-old at the start of his career and Feynman was 68 years old and easily one of the most respected scientists in the world. b) Wolfram wrote to Feynman for advice. To get any response from someone that many levels above you is doing pretty well. c) Wolfram started it -- he was the one who talked about ordinary people being "stupid fools" whom he couldn't tolerate.
- leej 16y agoFrom YC speech: "I think I had about 15 employees by then."
- mike463 16y agoI think Feynman gave him HIGHLY ACCURATE advice, but you have to dig deeper to understand. Although Wolfram has done quite well for himself, this is beside the point. You might want to read both sides of the conversation: http://elzr.com/posts/wolfram-feynman http://elzr.com/posts/wolfram-feynman and then read this article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/wolfram_pr.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.06/wolfram_pr.html in particular, starting here: "in the spring of 1992, he became, in his own words, a "recluse." So, he figured out a way to get away from the administration and concentrate on the science. I suspect that Feynman's advice probably helped Wolfram steer a clear course through all this.