5 ms·

The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unl

The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unless you're a perfect human being, please, cut him just a tiny bit of slack.

xqcgrek2 8mo ago
path integrals existed since the 19th century
- srean 8mo ago
  Cite an example please.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
traes 8mo ago
I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his name that he did not in fact write, including Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those books that has left a negative impact on the culture of physics. (And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax language considering the behavior being criticized includes beating his wife.)
- chadcmulligan 8mo ago
  misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching, which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books, particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.
  - opello 8mo ago
    > misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. The video actually addresses this very point in the first few minutes: > the second component of the Feynman lifestyle that the Feynman bro has to follow, you know as told in this book, is that women are inherently inferior to you and if you want to be the smartest big boy physicist in the room you need to make sure they know that I think people are sometimes shocked to hear this like that that exists in this book especially because as I said if you were a precocious teenager interested in physics people shoved this book at you they just put it into your hands like oh you want to be a physicist here's the coolest physicist ever > I feel like it's at this point in the video when like Mr. Cultural Relativism is going to show up in the comments and be like how dare you judge people from the past on their actions that's not fair things were different back then women liked when men lied to them and pretended to be an undergrad so that-- it was fine back then it was fine and I just, no, actually this book was published 40 years ago which is just not that long ago Richard Feynman should have known that women were people 40 years ago like absolutely not it's not "how things were back then" what's wrong with you people, no, it's inappropriate then it's inappropriate now Later the actual author, Ralph Leighton, of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is mentioned so perhaps the responsibility for what was included is his more than Feynman's. I think the criticism stands that the degree of sexism effectively celebrated by inclusion was certainly less culturally accepted in 1985 when the book was published than when the events occurred, and that's the point of raising the issue of why was it judged as good and proper to include this marginalizing anecdotes when his actual contributions to physics and teaching were worthy of celebration.
    - emmelaich 8mo ago
      I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book. From memory, he learnt the behaviour from other bar flies at the bars he hung out. And he expressed his surprise at how some women reacted. This was far from his upbringing and his experience with his fiancee. The behaviour is hardly laudable, but "celebrated" it is not.
- CalChris 8mo ago
  If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman did write them. The published versions were edited from transcripts. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
  - kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago
    Be forewarned. There's a new YouTube channel with an AI Feynman delivering slop.
    - alsaaro 8mo ago
      I saw this and what makes this particularly pernicious that you assume it was a fan applying ai voice to his authentic words, but you don't know. There is also an ai slop channel featuring Leonard Susskind.
    - ahefner 8mo ago
      This was really frustrating me. YT started recommending this channel and I could recognize the voice as an AI impersonation but had no way to know if it was at least reading something really written by Feynman. Eventually I concluded it wasn't, but there wasn't clear criteria under which I could report the channel. I'm not sure it's even against YT's TOS.
- emmelaich 8mo ago
  He was accused, in divorce papers. And it wasn't beating, FWIW.
- h33t-l4x0r 8mo ago
  His wife accused him of choking her when she interrupted his science. She also accused him of playing the bongos too loud. This was during divorce testimony. She got the house and he got the bongos.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - srean 8mo ago
    > She got the house and he got the bongos. Both were likely happy with that outcome https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068
- DiogenesKynikos 8mo ago
  I've watched large sections of this video before, because it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video. Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a very naughty boy. One of the things that stand out from the video: The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this? Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's continued popularity). Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about getting pushback. 0. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html 1. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html
  - renhanxue 8mo ago
    > The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. No, she's right, just talking about a different thing. "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is a physics textbook. [0] He did prepare his own lecture material, but he did not write the book. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physic...
    - DiogenesKynikos 8mo ago
      No, she's absolutely wrong about this. The book is based very closely on Feynman's lectures. He wrote the material and gave the lectures. Other people edited that material into book form, but Feynman did the lion's share of the work. Saying that Feynman didn't write the book is just dishonest, unless you immediately clarify afterwards that Feynman did indeed write almost all of the material in the book, in something very close to its final form.

xqcgrek2 8mo ago

path integrals existed since the 19th century

srean 8mo ago
Cite an example please.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

traes 8mo ago

I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his name that he did not in fact write, including Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those books that has left a negative impact on the culture of physics. (And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax language considering the behavior being criticized includes beating his wife.)

chadcmulligan 8mo ago
misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching, which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books, particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.
- opello 8mo ago
  > misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go. The video actually addresses this very point in the first few minutes: > the second component of the Feynman lifestyle that the Feynman bro has to follow, you know as told in this book, is that women are inherently inferior to you and if you want to be the smartest big boy physicist in the room you need to make sure they know that I think people are sometimes shocked to hear this like that that exists in this book especially because as I said if you were a precocious teenager interested in physics people shoved this book at you they just put it into your hands like oh you want to be a physicist here's the coolest physicist ever > I feel like it's at this point in the video when like Mr. Cultural Relativism is going to show up in the comments and be like how dare you judge people from the past on their actions that's not fair things were different back then women liked when men lied to them and pretended to be an undergrad so that-- it was fine back then it was fine and I just, no, actually this book was published 40 years ago which is just not that long ago Richard Feynman should have known that women were people 40 years ago like absolutely not it's not "how things were back then" what's wrong with you people, no, it's inappropriate then it's inappropriate now Later the actual author, Ralph Leighton, of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is mentioned so perhaps the responsibility for what was included is his more than Feynman's. I think the criticism stands that the degree of sexism effectively celebrated by inclusion was certainly less culturally accepted in 1985 when the book was published than when the events occurred, and that's the point of raising the issue of why was it judged as good and proper to include this marginalizing anecdotes when his actual contributions to physics and teaching were worthy of celebration.
  - emmelaich 8mo ago
    I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book. From memory, he learnt the behaviour from other bar flies at the bars he hung out. And he expressed his surprise at how some women reacted. This was far from his upbringing and his experience with his fiancee. The behaviour is hardly laudable, but "celebrated" it is not.
CalChris 8mo ago
If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman did write them. The published versions were edited from transcripts. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html
- kevin_thibedeau 8mo ago
  Be forewarned. There's a new YouTube channel with an AI Feynman delivering slop.
  - alsaaro 8mo ago
    I saw this and what makes this particularly pernicious that you assume it was a fan applying ai voice to his authentic words, but you don't know. There is also an ai slop channel featuring Leonard Susskind.
  - ahefner 8mo ago
    This was really frustrating me. YT started recommending this channel and I could recognize the voice as an AI impersonation but had no way to know if it was at least reading something really written by Feynman. Eventually I concluded it wasn't, but there wasn't clear criteria under which I could report the channel. I'm not sure it's even against YT's TOS.
emmelaich 8mo ago
He was accused, in divorce papers. And it wasn't beating, FWIW.
h33t-l4x0r 8mo ago
His wife accused him of choking her when she interrupted his science. She also accused him of playing the bongos too loud. This was during divorce testimony. She got the house and he got the bongos.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- srean 8mo ago
  > She got the house and he got the bongos. Both were likely happy with that outcome https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068
DiogenesKynikos 8mo ago
I've watched large sections of this video before, because it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video. Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a very naughty boy. One of the things that stand out from the video: The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this? Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's continued popularity). Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about getting pushback. 0. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html 1. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html
- renhanxue 8mo ago
  > The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. No, she's right, just talking about a different thing. "The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is a physics textbook. [0] He did prepare his own lecture material, but he did not write the book. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physic...
  - DiogenesKynikos 8mo ago
    No, she's absolutely wrong about this. The book is based very closely on Feynman's lectures. He wrote the material and gave the lectures. Other people edited that material into book form, but Feynman did the lion's share of the work. Saying that Feynman didn't write the book is just dishonest, unless you immediately clarify afterwards that Feynman did indeed write almost all of the material in the book, in something very close to its final form.