9 ms·

Ask yourself why you considered him a hero. You don't know this person. He's a person, just like you. I went through a similar process a couple years ago. Rele

Ask yourself why you considered him a hero. You don't know this person. He's a person, just like you. I went through a similar process a couple years ago. Relevant quote regarding Feynman: …in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm. It's complex. You can respect their achievements while separating the other half. And until you really know someone, it's not good to lump the two halves together in your mind.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago
Feynman was a pig and will be one day stripped from the history books ala Robert E. Lee. All these 'men' will suffer the same fate.
- klodolph 9y ago
  Since when was Robert E. Lee stripped from the history books? Not sure what you’re trying to say.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    He's trying to say that he's the victim here, a white man suffering from reverse discrimination, sick and tired of having to tolerate people writing bad facts about Robert E Lee and tearing down his statues, which deeply effects him every day of his life, because tradition. We've heard it all before.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Huh? General Lee was the Commander of the Confederate States Army. No one is stripping him from the history books; he had an important role in history. It's the monuments glorifying him that are being removed from public spaces. Feynman similarly was responsible for actual important works in physics. He won't be stripped from history books.
- muglug 9y ago
  Last time I checked, Robert E. Lee was still in the history books.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Robert E. Lee is still in history books. He may have a few less monuments than he did a few years ago, but then those who read history books rather than just worshipping graven images of historical figures out of context might realize that Lee himself was opposed to such monuments to either side of the Civil War as barriers to national reconciliation and progress.
  - clementine95 9y ago
    I mean frankly who gives a damn what Lee thought; the issue is the same with feynman in theat it is their fans who romanticize them. That said, it’s not exactly uncommon knowledge that Feynman was terrible to women, especially all the ones who followed his first wife, including his second. People aren’t exactly building statues to him so much as his lectures and story telling ability.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- awj 9y ago
  > and will be one day stripped from the history books ala Robert E. Lee. So, not at all because he was a central figure in that piece of history? I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here...
- Santosh83 9y ago
  Rewriting history is worse than these guys' behaviour. Future generations need to read about both the good and the ugly, if only to avoid repeating the latter.
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    It's rewriting history and the present to claim that Robert E Lee is being stripped from any history books. That's just bullshit. So's the idea that rewriting history is worse than fighting for slavery.
cujo 9y ago
> You can respect their achievements while separating the other half Agree to disagree. If people would tell them to go to hell from the beginning, their achievements would go to someone else and we would all be better for it.
- cagriaksay 9y ago
  > their achievements would go to someone else It doesn't work like that unfortunately.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- rglullis 9y ago
  This would require a very strong assumption that geniuses are a commodity. That all it takes is to be in the right place and be given the right opportunity and anyone could have done what he did.
  - croon 9y ago
    The iPhone wasn't invented by Apple, they just had a great combination of timing on manufacturing processes, great marketing and a decent UI to start with. There is no doubt in my mind that we would've made the same progress with any other company, albeit perhaps cosmetic differences. I think this is translatable to most other advancements. It's nearly always iterational, and either someone's first, different people discover something independently or it's a mashup of separate discoveries. History makes geniuses, smart people exist everywhere.
    - sincerely 9y ago
      With all due respect, I think scientific breakthroughs aren't really comparable to innovations in consumer goods
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's probably true. Given enough time and people, someone's going to do it. You just gotta look at ancient civs and how they often would independently come up with really complex stuff. Given the spread of knowledge since that time, some discoveries might be easier. Billions of people over hundreds of years produces lots of opportunities.
9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
Wow, I wasn't aware. I did some searching and his own writing is even more damning (the chapter "You Just Ask Them?" in "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!") > Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic. Further excerpts and discussion here: https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-called-a-woman-worse-than-a-whore/ https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...
- whatshisface 9y ago
  The fact that he said "during the next day" makes it sound like the rest of the story might change the situation. Can someone who has read the book please weigh in?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    The context of the story is that he keeps buying drinks for women who flirt with him at nightclubs (e.g. one or another traveling singer) who then near the end of the night make some excuse why they can’t spend more time with him and leave. He notices one of the women who made some excuse about a party that night has been talking with the MC frequently, and surmises correctly that they are married – turns out the woman wasn’t actually looking for romance and was just leading Feynman on to get free drinks out of him. The permanent singer at the club had been introducing women to him after first telling the women he was a big spender. Feynman befriends the couple (singer and MC), and they talk about how plenty of rich men at the bar keep spending money on the girls there without getting anywhere romantically. The MC tries to teach Feynman about the social roles people take on at a bar. The key lesson is that a man who buys a woman a drink up front is unlikely to end up getting the one night stand he wants, but if he refuses to buy her anything, his chances will be better. Feynman tried it out by getting a girl to pay him back for a sandwich, and a few hours later she came by at the end of the night and invited him to her room, so the lesson apparently worked. The “bitches” part is some kind of temporary psychological reprogramming he’s doing on himself for a day or two so that he can bring himself to objectify people against his usual inclination, so that he can try the experiment. It’s clear in context that he doesn’t think all women are “bitches”. Feynman tried it one more time some while later on someone who wasn’t a traveling singer, flirting a bit with a girl but then asking if she would sleep with him before he would buy her a drink. She agreed. His conclusion at the end is: “So it worked even with an ordinary girl! 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.” Note: I’m not making any value judgments here, just recounting the story.
whiddershins 9y ago
I think it is even more complex than that. Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects. Hopefully over time we all learn to temper the bad while growing the good. Some do a better job than others, but also we can never know the totality, bad or good, of any person. In my opinion that’s important to bear in mind when people disappoint us, or we disappoint ourselves.
- dorian-graph 9y ago
  > Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects. Exactly! Is there a single person who doesn't have good and bad aspects? Nope. The balance isn't the same between everyone, sure, but 'no one is perfect'.
  - ebola1717 9y ago
    But the point isn’t the individual. The questions we need to ask are - why did people feel empowered to do what they did? Why wasn’t there anything in place to hold these people accountable for their actions? And what are the larger patterns and their consequences (e.g. widespread sexism and sexual harassment pushes women out of the workforce/positions of power)
    - Santosh83 9y ago
      Usually the answers are the same. People feel empowered most often by the prevailing attitude of their societies. If we want to see less of something then we (all) need to speak up against it. Can we raise our hands when someone asks us if we ever went against prevailing culture and stood up for someone (or ourselves), even at a grave cost? Also some are psychologically disturbed due to various reasons and those people need therapy and mere reactionary punishment will not improve matters in the long run (for society).
    - FooHentai 9y ago
      Seems like the same question as that religious one about what would keep a person honest in lieu the wrath of a higher power/promise of eternal life/whatever external motivator.
oh-kumudo 9y ago
He creates many many good movies. Yes, his bad behavior doesn't nullify his achievements. Many famous/talented people are jerks in history, and 99% won't survive under today's moral microscope. The achievements wouldn't cover what they did personally to other people, however, the reverse is also true.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  At the same time, we cannot excuse his behavior just because he does stuff we like.
clementine95 9y ago
I mean even after you think you know somebody it’s useful to recognize they have good parts and bad, separately. Lasseter can still be a hero for his work as a director (writer? Creator? Honestly not sure about his title.) without looking up to his social behavior at all. It would be weird in any case to assume that, erm, career people are just as heroic in other spheres of their life.
racl101 9y ago
If Richard's behavior is disappointing, Einstein takes the cake. The guy was p00n hound, lousy husband and a shitty father. But the man did revolutionize our understanding of physics. So take the good with the bad.
- senatorobama 9y ago
  Source?
  - theli0nheart 9y ago
    Many exist, but I’d recommend his recent biography by Walter Isaacson.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752395.
andrepd 9y ago
I absolutely think that way, that we can and should separate the person from the achievements (case in point: I love Roman Polanski's films). Nevertheless, it's a natural reaction to be sad when a person you hold in high esteem is revealed to have negative aspects in other areas.
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
I think it's important to separate different types of harassment. Yes, Feynman was probably sexist and viewed women in terms of stereotypical gender roles, but so did probably 70% plus of people in the 60s. I specifically contrast that with the many recent reports of deliberate abuses of power or outright assault. There was still a knowledge, even back in the not too distant past, that those things were wrong, as evidenced by the fact that so many men tried to keep their behavior hidden.
- kelukelugames 9y ago
  Yes! Why do we keeping on calling assault "misconduct" or "inappropriate behavior"?
kercker 9y ago
I think there is a difference between "grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes" and "looking around for the nearest 'girl' and asking if she would fetch it to him".
- prawn 9y ago
  Of course, but they're talking about the risks/results of holding the entirety of a person up as hero when you may not know everything about them. Then they used an example they felt was relevant to them and possibly relevant to many HN readers. There was no suggestion that the actions were as bad.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

Feynman was a pig and will be one day stripped from the history books ala Robert E. Lee. All these 'men' will suffer the same fate.

klodolph 9y ago
Since when was Robert E. Lee stripped from the history books? Not sure what you’re trying to say.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  He's trying to say that he's the victim here, a white man suffering from reverse discrimination, sick and tired of having to tolerate people writing bad facts about Robert E Lee and tearing down his statues, which deeply effects him every day of his life, because tradition. We've heard it all before.
CydeWeys 9y ago
Huh? General Lee was the Commander of the Confederate States Army. No one is stripping him from the history books; he had an important role in history. It's the monuments glorifying him that are being removed from public spaces. Feynman similarly was responsible for actual important works in physics. He won't be stripped from history books.
muglug 9y ago
Last time I checked, Robert E. Lee was still in the history books.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Robert E. Lee is still in history books. He may have a few less monuments than he did a few years ago, but then those who read history books rather than just worshipping graven images of historical figures out of context might realize that Lee himself was opposed to such monuments to either side of the Civil War as barriers to national reconciliation and progress.
- clementine95 9y ago
  I mean frankly who gives a damn what Lee thought; the issue is the same with feynman in theat it is their fans who romanticize them. That said, it’s not exactly uncommon knowledge that Feynman was terrible to women, especially all the ones who followed his first wife, including his second. People aren’t exactly building statues to him so much as his lectures and story telling ability.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
awj 9y ago
> and will be one day stripped from the history books ala Robert E. Lee. So, not at all because he was a central figure in that piece of history? I'm really not sure what point you're trying to make here...
Santosh83 9y ago
Rewriting history is worse than these guys' behaviour. Future generations need to read about both the good and the ugly, if only to avoid repeating the latter.
- DonHopkins 9y ago
  It's rewriting history and the present to claim that Robert E Lee is being stripped from any history books. That's just bullshit. So's the idea that rewriting history is worse than fighting for slavery.

cujo 9y ago

> You can respect their achievements while separating the other half Agree to disagree. If people would tell them to go to hell from the beginning, their achievements would go to someone else and we would all be better for it.

cagriaksay 9y ago
> their achievements would go to someone else It doesn't work like that unfortunately.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rglullis 9y ago
This would require a very strong assumption that geniuses are a commodity. That all it takes is to be in the right place and be given the right opportunity and anyone could have done what he did.
- croon 9y ago
  The iPhone wasn't invented by Apple, they just had a great combination of timing on manufacturing processes, great marketing and a decent UI to start with. There is no doubt in my mind that we would've made the same progress with any other company, albeit perhaps cosmetic differences. I think this is translatable to most other advancements. It's nearly always iterational, and either someone's first, different people discover something independently or it's a mashup of separate discoveries. History makes geniuses, smart people exist everywhere.
  - sincerely 9y ago
    With all due respect, I think scientific breakthroughs aren't really comparable to innovations in consumer goods
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's probably true. Given enough time and people, someone's going to do it. You just gotta look at ancient civs and how they often would independently come up with really complex stuff. Given the spread of knowledge since that time, some discoveries might be easier. Billions of people over hundreds of years produces lots of opportunities.

9935c101ab17a66 9y ago

Wow, I wasn't aware. I did some searching and his own writing is even more damning (the chapter "You Just Ask Them?" in "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!") > Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic. Further excerpts and discussion here: https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-called-a-woman-worse-than-a-whore/ https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...

whatshisface 9y ago
The fact that he said "during the next day" makes it sound like the rest of the story might change the situation. Can someone who has read the book please weigh in?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jacobolus 9y ago
  The context of the story is that he keeps buying drinks for women who flirt with him at nightclubs (e.g. one or another traveling singer) who then near the end of the night make some excuse why they can’t spend more time with him and leave. He notices one of the women who made some excuse about a party that night has been talking with the MC frequently, and surmises correctly that they are married – turns out the woman wasn’t actually looking for romance and was just leading Feynman on to get free drinks out of him. The permanent singer at the club had been introducing women to him after first telling the women he was a big spender. Feynman befriends the couple (singer and MC), and they talk about how plenty of rich men at the bar keep spending money on the girls there without getting anywhere romantically. The MC tries to teach Feynman about the social roles people take on at a bar. The key lesson is that a man who buys a woman a drink up front is unlikely to end up getting the one night stand he wants, but if he refuses to buy her anything, his chances will be better. Feynman tried it out by getting a girl to pay him back for a sandwich, and a few hours later she came by at the end of the night and invited him to her room, so the lesson apparently worked. The “bitches” part is some kind of temporary psychological reprogramming he’s doing on himself for a day or two so that he can bring himself to objectify people against his usual inclination, so that he can try the experiment. It’s clear in context that he doesn’t think all women are “bitches”. Feynman tried it one more time some while later on someone who wasn’t a traveling singer, flirting a bit with a girl but then asking if she would sleep with him before he would buy her a drink. She agreed. His conclusion at the end is: “So it worked even with an ordinary girl! 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.” Note: I’m not making any value judgments here, just recounting the story.

whiddershins 9y ago

I think it is even more complex than that. Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects. Hopefully over time we all learn to temper the bad while growing the good. Some do a better job than others, but also we can never know the totality, bad or good, of any person. In my opinion that’s important to bear in mind when people disappoint us, or we disappoint ourselves.

dorian-graph 9y ago
> Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects. Exactly! Is there a single person who doesn't have good and bad aspects? Nope. The balance isn't the same between everyone, sure, but 'no one is perfect'.
- ebola1717 9y ago
  But the point isn’t the individual. The questions we need to ask are - why did people feel empowered to do what they did? Why wasn’t there anything in place to hold these people accountable for their actions? And what are the larger patterns and their consequences (e.g. widespread sexism and sexual harassment pushes women out of the workforce/positions of power)
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    Usually the answers are the same. People feel empowered most often by the prevailing attitude of their societies. If we want to see less of something then we (all) need to speak up against it. Can we raise our hands when someone asks us if we ever went against prevailing culture and stood up for someone (or ourselves), even at a grave cost? Also some are psychologically disturbed due to various reasons and those people need therapy and mere reactionary punishment will not improve matters in the long run (for society).
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    Seems like the same question as that religious one about what would keep a person honest in lieu the wrath of a higher power/promise of eternal life/whatever external motivator.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

He creates many many good movies. Yes, his bad behavior doesn't nullify his achievements. Many famous/talented people are jerks in history, and 99% won't survive under today's moral microscope. The achievements wouldn't cover what they did personally to other people, however, the reverse is also true.

s73ver_ 9y ago
At the same time, we cannot excuse his behavior just because he does stuff we like.

clementine95 9y ago

I mean even after you think you know somebody it’s useful to recognize they have good parts and bad, separately. Lasseter can still be a hero for his work as a director (writer? Creator? Honestly not sure about his title.) without looking up to his social behavior at all. It would be weird in any case to assume that, erm, career people are just as heroic in other spheres of their life.

racl101 9y ago

If Richard's behavior is disappointing, Einstein takes the cake. The guy was p00n hound, lousy husband and a shitty father. But the man did revolutionize our understanding of physics. So take the good with the bad.

senatorobama 9y ago
Source?
- theli0nheart 9y ago
  Many exist, but I’d recommend his recent biography by Walter Isaacson.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

sctb 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752395.

andrepd 9y ago

I absolutely think that way, that we can and should separate the person from the achievements (case in point: I love Roman Polanski's films). Nevertheless, it's a natural reaction to be sad when a person you hold in high esteem is revealed to have negative aspects in other areas.

hn_throwaway_99 9y ago

I think it's important to separate different types of harassment. Yes, Feynman was probably sexist and viewed women in terms of stereotypical gender roles, but so did probably 70% plus of people in the 60s. I specifically contrast that with the many recent reports of deliberate abuses of power or outright assault. There was still a knowledge, even back in the not too distant past, that those things were wrong, as evidenced by the fact that so many men tried to keep their behavior hidden.

kelukelugames 9y ago
Yes! Why do we keeping on calling assault "misconduct" or "inappropriate behavior"?

kercker 9y ago

I think there is a difference between "grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes" and "looking around for the nearest 'girl' and asking if she would fetch it to him".

prawn 9y ago
Of course, but they're talking about the risks/results of holding the entirety of a person up as hero when you may not know everything about them. Then they used an example they felt was relevant to them and possibly relevant to many HN readers. There was no suggestion that the actions were as bad.