3 ms·
There's a clip from a short documentary about Richard Feynman in which the interviewer asks him to explain what's going on when you try to push two magnets toge
by antognini 3y ago
There's a clip from a short documentary about Richard Feynman in which the interviewer asks him to explain what's going on when you try to push two magnets together head-to-head. Feynman basically says that he could tell you a story like "there are rubber bands pulling the magnets together," but it would be a lie and that if you really want an explanation you have to learn the physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
- peteradio 3y agoSpare me your petty questions! They spring from a brain too meager to comprehend my reality. Now taste my power!
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoThat's a nice clip. I think his description of the nature of explanations is relevant here though. Most phenomena, that one might like explained, or wish to understand, aren't as irreducible (at least in terms of things familiar to the questioner) as the fundamental forces! In terms of education, explaining things at one level of reduction, even if there is more that could be said, meaningfully increases the knowledge of the student (and allows them to ask the next question, should they be interested). This really isn't the same as an analogical "explanation" that in fact explains nothing.
- pas 3y agothe important thing is to give people a model, not just tell them a fancy story (that they can repeat later without it helping them) of course, it's easy to say that and hard to come up with good but simple models on the spot, but people don't gain knowledge by learning opaque phrases (that's how we got the whole "quantum woo" epidemic a decade or two ago)