6 ms·

Richard Feynman’s Caltech Graduation Address on Integrity

136 points by swany4 14y ago

tokenadult 14y ago
The .PDF of the June 1974 original Caltech publication of the address, http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf besides confirming the text, includes photographs of Feynman delivering the address in academic gown. As always, the famous line from the address is "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool." This is something for every thinker to think about every day in daily life, for a lifetime.
cheatercheater 14y ago
This speech is very good because it illustrates well the points I was missing when explaining to many people why their bogus wasn't science. Great tool to now have at my disposal.
irahul 14y ago
What's remarkable is Feynman went to great lengths in investigating the crackpot theories, instead of outright rejecting them. I won't even bother trying doing anything he mentions in the article, except for the esalen jaccuzi thing(wink wink). And I am pretty sure I will end up as Feynman did. Geeks and there "Well, actually" http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html I think the point he is trying to make to audience is he is willing to accept ideas which invalidate what he knows. His believes are verifiable, and though he is willing to give yours a chance, he won't just "let it be" unless it's verifiable. I read another of his stories in which he took the class to the gym where he had a bowling ball attached to a string hanging down the ceiling in the center of the room. He went to the opposite end with the ball, had his back by the wall, brought the ball to his nose and let it go. The ball swung to the other side, swung back, and came dangerously close to his face(well, at the same spot where he let it go - simple pendulums. duh). He told the students "I want you to know I know and believe what I am going to teach. There are no manifestations or biases - only truth"(paraphrased)
- ymusti 14y ago
  There's another Feynman bowling ball story. He was watching a younger physics prof make the same demonstration in a Caltech lecture hall. Instead of cleanly releasing the ball, she inadvertently gave it a slight shove. Fortunately for her, Feynman saw the mistake and pushed her out of the way of the returning ball which left a mark in the wall where her head had been.
  - gjm11 14y ago
    The kinetic energy in the ball's motion when it returned to her face should have been no greater than that imparted by the "slight shove". Can't have been so very slight. (Or else leaving a mark in the wall was easier than it sounds.) I just tried thwacking my nose with about as much force as I could reasonably describe as a "slight shove" in that situation. It wasn't terribly pleasant, but it wasn't very painful and did no damage. I cordially doubt that the younger prof was in danger of anything very bad. Assuming that the rest of the story is true, I suspect that Feynman was either being (commendably) over-cautious or showing off. Perhaps both. (There's a more unpleasant failure mode for this demonstration: If you move your head forward after releasing the ball, then it'll hit your nose earlier, when it's lower down, which if the ball is very heavy can mean quite a considerable amount of extra energy.)
    - cma 14y ago
      A bowling ball is inelastic; whatever you thwacked your nose with (your hand?) definitely isn't. Drop an egg 1 foot onto a carpet, then try onto concrete.
      - gjm11 14y ago
        Yes, fair comment. I don't think that makes more than a factor of 2 difference, though. When the impact happens, in one case the squashing is half in my nose and half in my hand, versus all in my nose if it's a bowling ball. (The egg example makes things look worse than they are. If an egg squashes at all, it breaks. My nose can squash quite a bit before that happens.)
jpwagner 14y ago
his point about not selling to laypeople is important in at least two ways. it's a shame that many scientists game the grant system making their research sound more sexy than it is, seems to undermine the point of publicly funded research (as feynman points out). and i know i drive myself crazy every morning reading most of the articles here: https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc
Jun8 14y ago
As always, many of Feynman's points are spot on. Yet, why do I get a sense of unease after reading this piece? I think his description of the scientific process is right, but its a bit too simplistic (of course, he was giving a address, not a lecture, but still). Specifically, 1. Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both. 2. He seems to say: "This is the way to proceed scientifically, you can't do it another way", where the methods he alludes to are the methods of experimental physics. (simply put) In physics you do your experiment, carefully controlling factors and you get your result. Unfortunately, this method is either hard to apply (e.g. in the rat experiment, there are so many variables to control, some unknown, because it's a complex organism, now think of experiments on humans) or downright impossible (e.g. the educational problem he mentions, which is a good example of a Wicked Problem, we're still discussing solutions). 3. Expanding on the education system point: Feynman says: " A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one." But therein lies the big problem: nobody can agree on how to measure how good a system, observe the huge teachers's ratings debates taking place in the US. What Feynman misses, I think, is that these are socio-scientific problems, if scientific problems have O(n^2) complexity these have O(2^n). You definitely need the scientific method but that's not going to be enough in attacking these problems. 4. Feynman also directs his assault solely on the "experts" and charlatans who create and perpetuate these stupid pesudoscientific theories, e.g. "ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience." What would be a better way to eradicate such tendencies would be to study why human beings are so susceptible to ideas like religion, UFOs, superstition, etc., i.e. target the consumers rather than dealers. Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp of complex physical concepts he may be the best in history. And from what I've ready about him he seemed to have a weak spot (like Newton's alchemy, Einsteins's reluctance to accept QM, etc.) for showmanship, by which I mean: when he got the momentum going with a good example/though/principle that has applications outside physics he was a bit too quick to overgeneralize.
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
rd108 14y ago
Did not realize Feynman used meditation, isolation tanks, etc.! "First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was."
- paulovsk 14y ago
  To be more precise, he used isolation tanks and not meditation (as far as I can tell, after reading his autobiography "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", highly recommended). He played around with lockpicking too. Outstanding dude.
Nevaeh 14y ago
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that." Upon reading this paragraph, I was reminded of his book "What do you care what other people think", which was a homage to Arlene, partly because Feynman made the fatal mistake of trusting the doctor's judgement to disregard the blatantly obvious diagnosis. He wrote about his experience in much more detail here: Part 1: http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png Part 2: http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png --------------------------------------------------------- //Comments below are irrelevant to the thread, I just felt like sharing. Feynman was depressed for a while but eventually his love for physics helped him recover. Hans Bethe once said, "Feynman depressed is just a little more cheerful then any other person when he is exuberant." Feynman is arguably the most logical and happiest human being that has ever existed. Feynman's magnificent exuberance and puzzle solving enthusiasm remained up until his last days, where his coworker Christopher Sykes remarked "Look at this man. He faces the abyss. He doesn't know whether he is going to live through this week. But he was consumed by it, and he worked on it all day long...." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s A few days before his second operation, Feynman sang a bongos song about orange juice, an amusing take of Linus Pauling's advice to possibly cure his cancer. Just look at his smile at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8 I would also like to add that on Feynman's last days at the hospital, his last words to his artist friend Jirayr was "Don't worry about anything, go out and have a good time!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s Maximus would be proud. "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."
nice1 14y ago
This should be compulsory reading for people involved in so called "climate change research" ...

136 points by swany4 14y ago

The .PDF of the June 1974 original Caltech publication of the address, http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf besides confirming the text, includes photographs of Feynman delivering the address in academic gown. As always, the famous line from the address is "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool." This is something for every thinker to think about every day in daily life, for a lifetime.

cheatercheater 14y ago

This speech is very good because it illustrates well the points I was missing when explaining to many people why their bogus wasn't science. Great tool to now have at my disposal.

irahul 14y ago

What's remarkable is Feynman went to great lengths in investigating the crackpot theories, instead of outright rejecting them. I won't even bother trying doing anything he mentions in the article, except for the esalen jaccuzi thing(wink wink). And I am pretty sure I will end up as Feynman did. Geeks and there "Well, actually" http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html I think the point he is trying to make to audience is he is willing to accept ideas which invalidate what he knows. His believes are verifiable, and though he is willing to give yours a chance, he won't just "let it be" unless it's verifiable. I read another of his stories in which he took the class to the gym where he had a bowling ball attached to a string hanging down the ceiling in the center of the room. He went to the opposite end with the ball, had his back by the wall, brought the ball to his nose and let it go. The ball swung to the other side, swung back, and came dangerously close to his face(well, at the same spot where he let it go - simple pendulums. duh). He told the students "I want you to know I know and believe what I am going to teach. There are no manifestations or biases - only truth"(paraphrased)

ymusti 14y ago
There's another Feynman bowling ball story. He was watching a younger physics prof make the same demonstration in a Caltech lecture hall. Instead of cleanly releasing the ball, she inadvertently gave it a slight shove. Fortunately for her, Feynman saw the mistake and pushed her out of the way of the returning ball which left a mark in the wall where her head had been.
- gjm11 14y ago
  The kinetic energy in the ball's motion when it returned to her face should have been no greater than that imparted by the "slight shove". Can't have been so very slight. (Or else leaving a mark in the wall was easier than it sounds.) I just tried thwacking my nose with about as much force as I could reasonably describe as a "slight shove" in that situation. It wasn't terribly pleasant, but it wasn't very painful and did no damage. I cordially doubt that the younger prof was in danger of anything very bad. Assuming that the rest of the story is true, I suspect that Feynman was either being (commendably) over-cautious or showing off. Perhaps both. (There's a more unpleasant failure mode for this demonstration: If you move your head forward after releasing the ball, then it'll hit your nose earlier, when it's lower down, which if the ball is very heavy can mean quite a considerable amount of extra energy.)
  - cma 14y ago
    A bowling ball is inelastic; whatever you thwacked your nose with (your hand?) definitely isn't. Drop an egg 1 foot onto a carpet, then try onto concrete.
    - gjm11 14y ago
      Yes, fair comment. I don't think that makes more than a factor of 2 difference, though. When the impact happens, in one case the squashing is half in my nose and half in my hand, versus all in my nose if it's a bowling ball. (The egg example makes things look worse than they are. If an egg squashes at all, it breaks. My nose can squash quite a bit before that happens.)

jpwagner 14y ago

his point about not selling to laypeople is important in at least two ways. it's a shame that many scientists game the grant system making their research sound more sexy than it is, seems to undermine the point of publicly funded research (as feynman points out). and i know i drive myself crazy every morning reading most of the articles here: https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc

Jun8 14y ago

As always, many of Feynman's points are spot on. Yet, why do I get a sense of unease after reading this piece? I think his description of the scientific process is right, but its a bit too simplistic (of course, he was giving a address, not a lecture, but still). Specifically, 1. Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both. 2. He seems to say: "This is the way to proceed scientifically, you can't do it another way", where the methods he alludes to are the methods of experimental physics. (simply put) In physics you do your experiment, carefully controlling factors and you get your result. Unfortunately, this method is either hard to apply (e.g. in the rat experiment, there are so many variables to control, some unknown, because it's a complex organism, now think of experiments on humans) or downright impossible (e.g. the educational problem he mentions, which is a good example of a Wicked Problem, we're still discussing solutions). 3. Expanding on the education system point: Feynman says: " A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one." But therein lies the big problem: nobody can agree on how to measure how good a system, observe the huge teachers's ratings debates taking place in the US. What Feynman misses, I think, is that these are socio-scientific problems, if scientific problems have O(n^2) complexity these have O(2^n). You definitely need the scientific method but that's not going to be enough in attacking these problems. 4. Feynman also directs his assault solely on the "experts" and charlatans who create and perpetuate these stupid pesudoscientific theories, e.g. "ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience." What would be a better way to eradicate such tendencies would be to study why human beings are so susceptible to ideas like religion, UFOs, superstition, etc., i.e. target the consumers rather than dealers. Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp of complex physical concepts he may be the best in history. And from what I've ready about him he seemed to have a weak spot (like Newton's alchemy, Einsteins's reluctance to accept QM, etc.) for showmanship, by which I mean: when he got the momentum going with a good example/though/principle that has applications outside physics he was a bit too quick to overgeneralize.

evincarofautumn 14y ago

rd108 14y ago

Did not realize Feynman used meditation, isolation tanks, etc.! "First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was."

paulovsk 14y ago
To be more precise, he used isolation tanks and not meditation (as far as I can tell, after reading his autobiography "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", highly recommended). He played around with lockpicking too. Outstanding dude.

Nevaeh 14y ago

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that." Upon reading this paragraph, I was reminded of his book "What do you care what other people think", which was a homage to Arlene, partly because Feynman made the fatal mistake of trusting the doctor's judgement to disregard the blatantly obvious diagnosis. He wrote about his experience in much more detail here: Part 1: http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png Part 2: http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png --------------------------------------------------------- //Comments below are irrelevant to the thread, I just felt like sharing. Feynman was depressed for a while but eventually his love for physics helped him recover. Hans Bethe once said, "Feynman depressed is just a little more cheerful then any other person when he is exuberant." Feynman is arguably the most logical and happiest human being that has ever existed. Feynman's magnificent exuberance and puzzle solving enthusiasm remained up until his last days, where his coworker Christopher Sykes remarked "Look at this man. He faces the abyss. He doesn't know whether he is going to live through this week. But he was consumed by it, and he worked on it all day long...." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s A few days before his second operation, Feynman sang a bongos song about orange juice, an amusing take of Linus Pauling's advice to possibly cure his cancer. Just look at his smile at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8 I would also like to add that on Feynman's last days at the hospital, his last words to his artist friend Jirayr was "Don't worry about anything, go out and have a good time!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s Maximus would be proud. "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."

nice1 14y ago

This should be compulsory reading for people involved in so called "climate change research" ...