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Study Tips from Richard Feynman
- paulpauper 5y agoIt also helps greatly to be as smart as him.
- whatshisface 5y agoIt's nice to get free stuff from nature but you can't go back and ask for more.
- amelius 5y agoHow do we know if that is true?
- whatshisface 5y agoBecause right now nootropics (pills that make you smarter) don't actually work and performance enhancing drugs shorten your lifespan and damage your health in various different ways. Furthermore based on the way drug discovery goes you're not likely to go off and invent a safe and effective version of either of those. That means that for now, a philosophically resigned stance combined if you're contributing to research with curiosity to motivate you rather than an expectation of any results, is the most appropriate stance as far as anyone knows.
- willis936 5y agoRichard Feynman might disagree. https://youtu.be/IIDLcaQVMqw https://youtu.be/IIDLcaQVMqw
- paulpauper 5y agohis humbleness is why he's so popular. But you don't win Putnam by studying. you got to be really brilliant too.
- willis936 5y agoWell if you consider him brilliant then perhaps you would believe him when he says that talent isn't nearly as important as studying.
- solveit 5y agoLots of people study really hard. Few go on to become Feynman.
- Kranar 5y agoPlenty of people are also brilliant and don't go on to become Feynman.
- Shugarl 5y ago"Study" is also a pretty vague word, that could describe a lot of different activities. Lots of people study hard, buy how many follows the exact same process as Feynman ? Not every studying techniques are equally effective, the same is true for problem solving techniques. Not to say his genetics didn't have _any_ impact, but we don't know the extent of the impact it had
- harry8 5y agoYou don't actually know this. I acknowledge it might be true but it also might not. How do you know what you're calling brilliance isn't a different kind of study, for example? Feynman suggests he got a buzz out of puzzles his whole life from a very early age and sought them out. With his local reputation among family, friends, school others brought them to him as well. He did inter-school stand-up math competitions, if I remember that story correctly, and described how he learned to "relax into the solution" not try to force it but look at it in a different way until it just all falls out and so on. Then he also studied math and then won the Putnum. How would he have gone without doing all that "non-study" about problem solving and looking at problems from different ways and just doing math quite well? Maybe he was so brilliant he still would have won? I suspect not. How many others sitting for the Putnum had done similar amounts of the same quality work by way of preparation? Genius? Or learned and honed? Both? In what proportions? Whatever I think about it is "Just like my opinion, man." Right?
- felix318 5y agoI didn’t believe in talent until after I spent over ten years trying to learn music, and then seeing 5 year-olds on YouTube doing stuff I can only dream of. True, some, perhaps most of it is hard work, but talent makes the process a lot easier.
- dominotw 5y agoeasier to learn as a kid
- v-erne 5y agoI suspect that there is some overgeneralization going on with the term "talent". We see something that is hard for us and we immediately throw it in the same bag. Even if there can be some better explanation. There is a lot of micro abilities that goes into any complex thing and if You skip on any of is it can change things from easy to impossible. Just look at any disabled person - and compare how hard is for them to do easy things - I believe that the same is going on with Your comparison to talented people - You just do not see those micro abilities that are compounded to create illusion of talent.
- hatmatrix 5y agoI think "talent" can be interpreted as being the amalgamation of those relevant microabilities. But in addition to innate talent, there is luck as well - besides being lucky enough to have been born into the first world, I think connecting with the right teacher or the right material that speaks to the way you learn makes a big difference.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoTry any sport and see how some new people come in and start at a level that others won’t achieve even after years. This makes you believe in talent quickly. With physical abilities this is more accepted but I don’t see a reason why mental capabilities would be any different. Some people just have more powerful brains by birth. You can achieve a lot by exercise and discipline but some people can achieve higher levels than others.
- sydthrowaway 5y agoThere is no such thing as smart, only time and learning.
- paulpauper 5y agoso what accounts for variability in ability, outcomes when you control for time & practice?
- supportlocal4h 5y agoI'm not sure those things have ever been controlled. I have been around many many many smart people. So many of them seem naturally gifted. It's effortless how easily they solve things. But if you hang around long enough, it's also impressive when they reveal their magic: they just used so-and-so's technique from some discipline I've never heard of. Oh. Of course! How easy, when you put it that way. How long did it take them to read, digest, and master all those techniques? Hard to say. Nobody followed them around with a stopwatch 24x7x365 for years. So, lacking data, I fall back to antecdotes. I personally know very intimately a handful of valedictorian smartest person in the room type people. The kind that everyone knows is just naturally smart. I know their family life intimately. I know that none of it came without enormous time and effort. We have the testimony of the man himself about the price he paid. I'd be interested in anyone at his level in any endevour who claimed they were just born with it. I do believe that different people are born with different abilities. But I have seen those "smartest person in the room" people fail elementary math, then spend 100s of hours drilling flash cards to master simple arithmetic tables. I have seen them with reading (I hate the word disabilities) challenges spend 10 years reading 100s of books, then get perfect scores on college entrance exams. I have seen in person some poor child spend 3 hours every single night for a year to master 5 spelling words a week. Just to be average. Then have people think they were born knowing the dictionary. I believe that if you randomly choose any 20 students from any elementary school in the United States and let me select 10 people from that group, then subject them to what I have seen... those students will graduate high school with perfect grades and nearly perfect standardized test scores. I am certain of it. But I do not condone doing such a thing. Of course, that doesn't make them Feynman. But I believe Feynman when he says that he was once ordinary and that time and effort transformed him.
- pkoird 5y agoThere's the famous Feynman method i.e. Study hard, Teach it to others, Identify the gaps in your own knowledge, and Simplify/Synthesize. But people often also forget that there is another method associated with Feynman aka The Feynman Algorithm (which was outlined by his colleague Murray Gell-Mann, a noble prize winning physicist himself). This method goes as follows: 1. Write down the problem. 2. Think real hard. 3. Write the solution. Not to discount or discredit anything (or anyone) here but we must understand that Feynman was no average person and that his advice on anything related to learning or problem-solving must be viewed through an optics that adequately adjusts for his intellect as well.
- WalterBright 5y agoMy variation on that method: 1. load my brain with all the context of the problem 2. go out for a run, which bounces it all around in my brain until things fall into place 3. write the solution when I get back
- BurningFrog 5y agoA lazier step 2 that works for me is to sleep for a full night.
- finalfantasia 5y agoThis is also well known in the Clojure community as Hammock-Driven Development [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc
- bitexploder 5y agoThis diffuse mode learning (vs focused). Barbara Oakley’s book and course go into detail about leveraging the science of how we learn.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
- yarky 5y ago“The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love to the best of your ability.” That's sums it up pretty well.
- throwawayboise 5y agoI think there are some (perhaps many) people who just don't have this level of passion in themselves. When I was younger, I liked working in software. It was fun, and interesting, but did I "love" it? Honestly I don't think so. Looking back on my time as a student, I can't think of any subject that I loved so much that that studying was something I wanted to do. It was always a chore, always something I did because it was a means to getting to a point in life where I didn't have to do it anymore. Now, at halfway through my 50s, I would not be able to answer the standard interview question "what are you passionate about?" Nothing comes to mind. Everything I do day-to-day is either stuff that I need to do to pay the bills and support my family, or is in some way procrastinating on stuff that isn't yet so urgent that I have to do it. I think people like Feynman are born with a burning passion for learning that most people just don't have.
- gridspy 5y agoI believe that all children are born with a burning passion for learning. Some then have it beaten out of them by a slow, routine, inhuman education system that crushes individual creativity. I try to make up for it with my own children by sending them to regular school, but then encouraging them to self-teach the things that interest them. I'm sorry that you are unsatisfied in your work. Perhaps if it were economically viable, a long sabbatical would allow you to find more meaning in your life and perhaps a new career. I wish we could all do that when nescessary.
- yarky 5y ago> Some then have it beaten out of them by a slow, routine, inhuman education system that crushes individual creativity. ...created by/for those who are trying to get it, not by those who did.
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- fennecs 5y agoI can teach plenty of things to a first year student, it will just take a few years.
- k1ll3r 5y agoYou sound like a fun teacher.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- f7ebc20c97 5y ago"At some point in this series of lectures, I will slip in 1 fact that is completely false. Take care!"
- ar_imani 5y agoDelighted when I see any article about Feynman. Remember 2014 when the idiots thought they successfully canceled this remarkable scientist.
- usgroup 5y agoI study a lot . I’m ok at it —- certainly no great talent. I haven’t learned any methods worth a damn and not for lack of trying, but I feel I know things about my own learning machinery which has made me much better at it over time. In my opinion, learning how to learn is nuanced and operator specific. Lots of us are in the long tail of people for who highlighting, skimming, Anki, etc makes no difference. So, the advise from Feynman and generally I usually find is insufficiently meta — or overly first order if you prefer. You’ll get more purchase starting at the second order, but few articles are titled “learning how to learn how to learn”.
- drewcoo 5y agoSo now that a little time has gone by, I can read all of this. I think the most important thing to learning like Feynman is not trying to take motes abuot how to emulate Feynman. The most important stuff is curiosity. About everything. Even things off limits! Everything meaningful. And don't try to define that - just be curious! To poke at it or try to trap it or create simulacra are not the same things as being Richard Feynman. It's the intended legacy that matters. Learn from it, sure, but you're not gonna be it. And the unintended stuff - we all have that 'casue we're human. Ignore it.