14 ms·
Do not remain nameless to yourself (1966)
- erulabs 6y agoGreat read. I've always loved Feynman - but the word "ego" might apply. "I was working on problems close to the gods", and his list of solved (and to be fair, unsolved) investigations remind me of his "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman". Clearly the most brilliant man, and also clearly with a healthy regard for himself. One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that some ego about oneself might be more or less required for success. I think we all want to believe that success can "go to your head", but I am beginning to believe the opposite: it's those with temerity and a certain precise lack of hubris who go on to do great things and do not "remain nameless" to the human race. Too many engineers eschew ego as much as possible, but (as Feynman points out) sometimes it's important to congratulate yourself.
- mkolodny 6y ago"You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods." It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit. He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of his career. That gave his former student some examples of worthwhile problems to start out with. Personally, I think Feynman was very humble. Especially for a Nobel Prize winner.
- krastanov 6y agoFeynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.
- bmitc 6y agoI think it's likely they are two different types of humility in Feynman's case, whether it's external vs internal humility or problem solving vs social humility or what have you. It does seem to me that Feynman had a humility in how he approached problems that was bolstered by confidence, or perhaps lack of social humility. The advice he gives in the letter is to be humble in how one approaches which problems to solve. I think it's good advice.
- Aeolun 6y agoIn most cases he probably was the smartest person in the room. If he managed to stay lighthearted and friendly while making fun of others he’s doing a better job than me, because I’ve lost much of my patience for stupidity.
- watwut 6y agoI don't know. I remember realizing when reading some of his stories, that they are fun to read but I would find that obnoxious/annoying in person.
- giantDinosaur 6y agoHe seemed to be remarkably charming - so I'm not sure how annoying such behaviour actually would have been.
- jacobush 6y agoDuring the encounter you’d perhaps laugh. Afterwards you’d find yourself dazed and confused, wondering what happened and what steamrolled you in front of everyone.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> In most cases he probably was the smartest person in the room. Excepting the times, of course, when John von Neumann was there.
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- dorkwood 6y agoI got the opposite impression regarding the list. To me it seemed to be trying to illustrate that he was not always working on grand ideas (one of them was a theory of how to fold paper to make a children's toy, after all).
- vertbhrtn 6y agoEgo is necessary to protect a rather fragile flame of intelligence. When the flame becomes stable, the ego can be discarded. Some do, and in case of Feynman, if he did that, he would be called St. Richard; while some choose to turn their ego into a blast furnace, so the fire would turn inwards.
- Taek 6y agoEgo is important because it allows you to seriously attempt problems that many people would consider beyond them. If you genuinely believe that you can achieve something, you might be willing to sink many months of nonstop work into it despite zero tangible progress. Someone without that ego may not have the tolerance to last that long without progress while still believing it's a good use of time.
- pengaru 6y ago> Ego is important because it allows you to seriously attempt problems that many people would consider beyond them. This implies that a lack of ego will prevent you from attempting the same thing. One doesn't need ego to have a healthy awareness of how significant factors like self-discipline, timing, opportunity, privilege, access to resources, and myriad others can be when it comes to success.
- foldr 6y agoEgo probably helps in cases where the investment of time and effort is irrational. Of course, for most people, that's not really 'helping' at all, since they end up investing too much time and effort in hopeless projects. But I guess a few egotistical people luck out and succeed at something which they had very little chance of succeeding at.
- atq2119 6y agoThis is the definition of start-up culture :)
- flywheel 6y agoI think you misread this because he certainly did not say or imply "I was working on problems close to the gods", in fact the phrase he used was "when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods", meaning that others considered the things he worked on as being "close to the gods" only because they did not understand them at the same level he did - his list of experiments/problems was about how mundane the problems he was solving actually were. It did not read as him having much of an ego. Most of the problems he worked on have little to no impact on society or people's daily lives, most people still have never even heard of Feynman, and he knew most people wouldn't. That's not ego. If Feynman did have any ego it came from the pleasure he got from living an interesting life, not by how smart he was compared to the rest of humanity.
- sukilot 6y ago> Most of the problems he worked on have little to no impact on society or people's daily lives Only because he solved so many problems that his side work is more substantial than most successful people's careers. "Physicist Richard Feynman helped create the atomic bomb, shared a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics, and helped to figure out the source of the space shuttle Challenger explosion" -+livescience.com
- petejames 6y agoTrue, it's inflated ego which is a problem. From what I've read about Feynman, I doubt his ego was inflated.
- erulabs 6y agoIndeed - if anything his ego was _accurate_ - he correctly thought of himself as the smartest in the room. The question is, did his success lead to his ego, or did his ego lead to his success? I certainly do not mean to defame him - I practically worship Feynman - I've just been exploring the idea that a little bit of ego can really aid in accomplishing big tasks.
- akiselev 6y agoOne of the earliest stories of his career was breaking into people's offices at Los Alamos and picking their safes to get access to their Manhattan project reports when he was impatient and didn't want to wait for them. I think he's had a healthy does of ego right from the beginning.
- sukilot 6y agoFeynman's beginning was very early. Before he joined the Manhattan Project he had already published work that appears in textbooks today. What you call who I call a healthy disrespect for bad rules that impede people trying to get real work done.
- theonemind 6y ago> Too many engineers eschew ego I'd like to work wherever you do. ;x
- atq2119 6y agoMaybe you just don't notice the ones who eschew ego? After all, that's precisely the conundrum here.
- LordHumungous 6y agoHe had a gargantuan ego... and gargantuan accomplishments to back it up. The Michael Jordan of late 20th century physics, in more ways than one.
- lioeters 6y ago"Michael Jordan is the Richard Feynman of late 20th century sports." (Sorry, couldn't resist.. :)
- tropdrop 6y agoToo few engineers eschew ego - this is Feynman's point. Most people are not Feynman. Most engineers today think they have the capability of being Feynman one day - of course, statistics dictates that most will not be. This is why Feynman's advice is powerful - The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. Feynman here is instructing someone with too much ego, not too little. Koichi Mano thinks the problems he's working on are beneath him - that he should already be working on Feynman level problems! This is why he writes with shame to Feynman about his "humble" problem. Feynman demonstrates to him that no, no problem is too small, and backs it up with how he chipped away at "lesser" problems for a long time to build up confidence and competence. Finally, he closes with advice that could be ported to a middle manager at the smallest bureaucratic company who thinks they don't do anything important - You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. If you do not have too lofty of an opinion of yourself (less ego, not more), then you will not be ashamed of the problems you succeed in, and only then might you have the chance to do something important.
- amelius 6y ago> Most people are not Feynman. Most engineers today think they have the capability of being Feynman one day - of course, statistics dictates that most will not be. But Feynman, at least in his written works, was more a reverse engineer than an actual engineer.
- fsloth 6y agoFeynman had a key role in engineering the computations of Manhattan Project. I have no idea what could be more like engineering than this. "With Stanley Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis, he assisted in establishing a system for using IBM punched cards for computation." But, on the other hand, physics could be described as a way to reverse engineer nature. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#Manhattan_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#Manhattan_Proj...
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- moksly 6y agoI think you do him a disservice when you quote it out of context. “You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods.“ doesn’t read like hubris to me, in fact it kind of reads like to opposite. A professor does seem impressive to his students, and Feynman points out its even at the hight of his career which is where he would have appeared the most impressive. I think that goes well with the encouraging message of finding your place in the world, because you need it to progress.
- Angostura 6y agoYou filleted the quote. He said. > You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. This is not ego
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoIndeed - "seemed to you". Most the discussion is a bit silly.
- sukilot 6y agoSome people can't escape "crab bucket" mentality, and have to tear down people who've worked hard to do great things. Perhaps it's unsurprising that those people post in online forums to take cheap shots at dead people.
- seesawtron 6y agoQuoting Ernest Becker from his The Denial of Death: "In man a working level of narcissism is inseparable from self-esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of words, sounds and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper." "It is natural for a man to strive to be a hero, it goes deeply in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, and yet the society gets chills when someone admits the honesty of it."
- melling 6y ago"I was working on problems close to the gods" He’s saying that he’s working on the important stuff, figuring out how the universe works. I imagine he was simply trying to be poetic.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago>> One has to look out at the world and, taking in the successful and unsuccessful, conclude that some ego about oneself might be more or less required for success. Well, if you don't think you pack a punch or can take a beating, you don't throw your hat into the ring. The problem is always to know how to strike a balance- believe in yourself, know what you can achieve, but don't become an overblown bag of farts. Why? Because obviously nobody can stand knowing they're an overblown bag of farts, so if someone is, they don't know the first thing: who they are. Socrates, the wisest of men, knew how to get out of this one. "I know one thing, and I know it well: I know nothing at all", he said [1]. And, he said, "know thyself" [2]. A scientist is driven by what she doesn't know, and wishes to know. But she must know the immensity of the task, lest she become an idiot who thinks she knows and knows nothing, John Snow. ________ [1] my liberal translation of his laconic "εν οίδα οτι ουδέν οίδα", "I know one thing, that I know no thing". [2] "Γνώθι σαυτόν".
- Zenbit_UX 6y agoIt's a shame that your reading comprehension is so low that you've convinced hundreds of other readers here that Feynman was egotistical and other engineers should follow. You've butchered his quote and misrepresented him to an incredible degree. Re-read his letter, specifically the quote about problems close to the gods, the word 'seemed' is present and shifts the tone dramatically into humble.
- ricardo81 6y agoFeynman's quality (apart from home obvious intellect and contributions to science) is that he has a knack for dispelling pretense. There's a clip of him on YT in a BBC documentary explaining he can admire a flower just as much if not more than an artistic mind. He wanted to drop the pretense of an analytical mind somehow being less expressive or emotional. He goes on to explain how the science behind the flower is beautiful.
- totorovirus 6y ago"You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself – it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher’s ideals are." Something I am going to share with my engineering/science related friends. You can't be shy forever as long as you are going to be a responsible father.
- jonahx 6y agoAs I read it, this letter isn't about the problem of shyness. It's about feeling unsuccessful and unknown ("nameless") because of the small scope of what you're working on.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIt took me a while to realise that following Dijkstra's dictum "do only, what only you can do" not only means tackling intellectual problems that one is uniquely suited to address, but also means being the husband and the father. (the latter being unique up to isomorphism, but if we're not willing to accept a strict equality, it leads us into Ship of Theseus questions about personal identity...) TIL Al was not only Feynman's student but also a possible inspiration for the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons , upon reading the wonderful: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/10/24/dressing-up-science-richard-feynman-and-the-costume-parties-of-al-hibbs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/10/24/dres...
- unkulunkulu 6y ago> "do only, what only you can do" This also reminds me of the famous Theodore Roosevelt’s quote “do what you can with what you have wherever you are”. This ties quite well with the letter too, it doesn’t make much sense to dream about bigger deeds, problems and achievements instead of really applying yourself to the things at hand.
- aazaa 6y ago> ... Feynman replied with an enquiry about Mano’s current job, to which Mano responded that he was “studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere […] a humble and down-to-earth type of problem.” Feynman responded with this letter. I must be missing something. Feynman's letter is full of good advice about the crucial importance of choosing problems to work on carefully, and how to do that. But Mano's inquiry doesn't seem to warrant Feynman's response, which seeks to correct an error. I can't find one in the short quote from Mano's letter. Where is the original?
- coeneedell 6y agoI think the error was that Mano referred to his coherence theory problem as "humble and down-to-earth". Feynman sought to correct the implicit assumption that there is some natural dividing line between "humble" and "great" problems. I think he would reject that such a thing as a humble problem does not exist.
- sukilot 6y agoIn one of Feynman's books he talks about being dispirited and in a rut in his career, and breaking out of it by working on a toy problem inspired by something like plates in a cafeteria.
- mimhoff 6y agoThe error mentioned is that Feynman (as PhD supervisor) supplied an important thesis topic to Mano. Mano didn't get the experience of how to evaluate a problem and find motivation within it: "I accepted [someone else] as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about)."
- elygre 6y agoYes, this! Saying that your work is “Humble and down to earth” doesn’t necessarily days that it’s beyond yourself. Haven’t we all been told that it’s good to be humble? To me, the reply goes way beyond what this statement warrants.
- glacials 6y agoCan someone explain why Mano's job description prompted this response from Feynman? I don't know enough to understand what this problem is, or why Feynman thinks any person solving it would be sad.
- dwaltrip 6y agoFeynman was sad that Mano seemed to have a low view of himself. He had described his work as trying to solve a “humble and down-to-earth type of problem” — in contrast to the supposedly more majestic problems that he had seen Feynman solve.
- elygre 6y agoI’m thinking Feynman is a bit high on himself. He assumes that someone who states that his own work is “humble and down-to-earth” has a low view of yourself. Some Michelin Star chef might ask me what I had for dinner, I’d reply “burgers!”, they’d go “don’t be sad”. I’d go, “eff you, I didn’t say I don’t like burgers! I love burgers!”
- bjornsing 6y agoIsn’t it Mano’s self-description as “a nameless man” that Feynman is objecting to?
- hitekker 6y agoSometime ago, I made a MVP for a video game that captured the attention of my peers. They liked playing it, I liked coding it, and I felt very much that it contained a story that deserved to be heard. But I let grandiosity distract me. “This is just a video game, isn’t it? I mean, it's really cool but shouldn’t I be spending my spare time on something, I don’t know, bigger?” So I decided to stop and apply myself onto bigger & better (& vaguer) problems whatever they may be. A year passes and, surprise, I found no problem worth my time, and nothing that was fascinating to me as the fruit of that silly little side-project. The OP’s letter clarifies the lesson I learned: “No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it”. The video game may have been small, but not only did I care for it, I could also solve it. And If I want to get better at problem-solving. I have to actually solve problems. To paraphrase Feymann, that means figuring out the problems I _can_ solve, not just care to solve, first and then building up the meta-skill from there. A simple lesson that took me a long, long time to learn.
- eris_agx 6y agoI appreciate the example. Often times I find myself in this thought pattern as well: is this problem beneath me?
- andrewnicolalde 6y agoA great read and a lesson many of us can take solace in.
- qserasera 6y agoI needed this today, thanks.
- imranq 6y agoFunnily enough, I was reading this letter last week as part of the excellent compilation, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (which has many more letters). I've always admired Feynman's ability and perseverance to "see" something immediately as opposed to doing the long and drawn out calculations that are a badge of honor among engineering grads. Actually he mentioned this need to "see" through problems in one of his stories with John Wheeler who was able to immediately understand the ideas of self-action of an electron that Feynman was presenting with equations were just describing reflected light. I imagine that in this case, Feynman saw immediately what problems the student was grappling with and had the words to communicate those thoughts in an unpretentious way. It certainly struck a chord with me.
- sradman 6y ago> The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. This feels like Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage applied to a philosophy of Living the Good Life. The pleasure comes from contributed your unique insight to a solution that enhances the greater good.
- phonon 6y agoFeynman talks about this in his book, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" ----------- Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, "Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?" I don't remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one. I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, "Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it's two to one is ..." and I showed him the accelerations. He says, "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it? Why are you doing it?" "Hah!" I say. "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it." His reaction didn't discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked. I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was "playing" - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things. It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.
- tmsh 6y agoPerhaps Mano was making a pun on "down-to-earth" and Feynman in his single-minded arrogance simply missed that. The arrogance of physicists is so "normalized" at this point. Perhaps there are exceptions, but the most humble that I've seen (was just watching a presentation by Kip Thorne tonight, etc.) are full of humblebrag. It's seriously a problem. In particular, among a culture that celebrates the Nobel prize. The most non-Nobel prize thing Feynman could've done is instead of saying "take it back, etc, etc." - would've been to keep doing good physics and just ignore it. That's the part so many people miss. It's a culture of obsession over insight. And this letter is more a therapy session for Feynman than anything else. No problem, no discussion.
- bitwize 6y agoSome advice that I give to aspiring game programmers is: Start small. You're not going to remake Fallout on your first go. Your first project should be something like a text adventure game -- something that you can reach the end of quickly with the skills you have. If you reach the end of that project quickly, you will taste victory early and this will be nitro in your motivation tank that will help you complete the next-bigger project.
- johannesg 6y agoI wonder if Koichi Mano's phrasing "a humble and down-to-earth type of problem" is simply Japanese politeness. And this beautiful letter a chance result of two cultures not entirely understanding each other. That is a nice thought.
- lioeters 6y agoI grew up in Japan as well as in the U.S., and I'm inclined to agree with your take. This brilliant letter is the result of a cross-cultural exchange of ideas, philosophy, ways of life. There's a strong Buddhist influence in Japanese culture, and in that value system, it's emphasized that selflessness is a virtue. "The nameless" is one of the phrases in this tradition, for pointing at the "ineffable mystery" - similar to how other religions like Christianity have words to talk about God indirectly, in deference, as "the Lord" or "the Highest". In American culture, there's a strong tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and self-respect. Also, generally speaking, there's a sense of society as a competition. On both sides, there are unhealthy extremes. The self-effacing approach can lead to loss of confidence and purpose, and to suppress the fullest expression of one's unique nature. And being "full of oneself" can lead to arrogance, blindness to one's own limitations, lack of empathy, and so on. Personally, I read Feynman's letter and feel his humanity, the care and consideration for fellow thinkers, to encourage and support each person to value who they are. Maybe the Japanese colleague did not need that advice, with a whole another understanding of the value and pride of being nameless - but, I tend to believe that Feynman sensed something, and had empathy to feel that this person needed to hear positive words to be confident in who they are and what they do.
- sukilot 6y agoEven if Koicho Mano didn't need the letter, the world is lucky Feynman wrote it.
- z5h 6y ago“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.” The ones we can solve right now? Or the ones we might solve eventually... if we make the right choices and exert the right effort?
- mysterypie 6y agoI’d like to know what the modern substitute is for long personal letters like Feynman’s? It’s not just Feynman; look at this list from the featured website: > written correspondence includes letters from: Jane Austen, Richard Burton, Helen Keller, Alan Turing, Albus Dumbledore, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry James, Sylvia Plath, John Lennon, Gerald Durrell, Janis Joplin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hunter S. Thompson, C. G. Jung, Katherine Mansfield, Marge Simpson, David Bowie, Dorothy Parker, Buckminster Fuller, Beatrix Potter, Che Guevara, Evelyn Waugh, Charlotte Brontë. These are some important and busy people. Yet they wrote long personal letters. Whenever I write a long personal letter (by email), the most I get back is 3 or 4 sentences. And forget about having a real discussion by IM or WhatsApp — the replies are two-word sound bites. As far as I can tell, the only place real personal discussion takes place now is in person. Kind of ironic that we have far greater communication power than any of those letter writers did. I’m wondering if my experience is an outlier or if this is pretty much what everyone experiences today?
- mam2 6y agoLong letters have no value. You can find depth in long back and forth discussions because there is an actual exchange. Long letter were conveying / creating little value compared to the amount of words they are using. As said president macron about a philosopher "he was light because he was profound" (ligth in the french sense of not being "heavy" / painfully laborious and annoying). Learn the value of saying less.
- sunsetSamurai 6y agoAlbus Dumbledore?!
- mysterypie 6y agoYeah, Marge Simpson too. It probably refers to a letter that the character wrote. But ignore those. Most of the list are real people.
- Anthony-G 6y agoI guess the Marge Simpson letter is notable because of Barbara Bush's warm and humble reply. https://lettersofnote.com/2011/09/19/with-great-respect-marge-simpson/ https://lettersofnote.com/2011/09/19/with-great-respect-marg...
- _bxg1 6y agoOr to put it differently, "put your own small dent in the universe" A couple years ago I built a new website for a local shop. It was a straightforward project - a problem I "could really solve easily" - but it had a real and material impact on the lives of some wonderful people who in turn had a material impact on their community. I sometimes look back at that work as being, in certain ways, more fulfilling than any of the more challenging work I've done since.
- h0p3 6y agoI like to write letters with people. HMU.