6 ms·
(2014) Relevant because since then it's become quite trendy to throw mud at men like him.
by mellosouls 9mo ago
(2014) Relevant because since then it's become quite trendy to throw mud at men like him.
- chrismatic 9mo agoNot entirely without reason though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc
- ecshafer 9mo agoThat video is such an extremely weak argument. Sure Feynman probably has more fame than he is merited. But he is still one of the most influential physicists. He just also happened to be entertaining and wrote some books. Personality and self-marketing makes a difference, welcome to society.
- niggernagger 9mo ago[flagged]
- chrismatic 9mo agoI'd recommend that you watch the entire video, because the point is that he did not even write any of those books.
- srean 9mo agoI would say read up a little so that you are in a position to make up your own mind. Also compare the video recordings and published book to figure out whose material it was. It's easy to throw muck at someone who is not around to defend. And you seem to be saying that it is a reasonable thing to do in this particular case.
- ecshafer 9mo agoSo someone took recordings of his stories and compiled them into a text....? What does that matter I have seen that entire video in the past, its unsubstantiated garbage that fails mild skepticism. Every point can be explained away trivially. They have an axe to grind against Fenyman / Men generally, and since this goes against the established narrative its therefore heralded as being correct and people blindly follow it.
- chrismatic 9mo agoI think you can come to a balanced view here where you acknowledge that Feynman was overhyped posthumously while maintaining that he was an exceptional physicist with some personal flaws. That's precisely the point of the video. It's less axe grinding and more counter-acting an inaccurate narrative.
- mlyle 9mo agoHe was a top 10 20th century physicist-- and the 20th century was full of rock stars-- and a Nobel Laureate. He also did more interesting work outside his core domain than you'd expect; the cooperation with Thinking Machines, the Rogers Commission, early use of computers as an instrument, institutional/advisory roles, etc. I think anyone who has read his narratives realizes the dude had some personal flaws.
- mlyle 9mo agoYah. He didn't write the Feynman Lectures on Physics. He just came up with the unique arguments in them and gave the lectures at Caltech; it fell to Leighton and Sands to do most of the work of knitting it into a cohesive, coherent book. And his other books-- they're just his stories, trying to capture the characteristic style in which he talked, while editing it to be a cohesive written work. This criticism is maybe valid for QED-- I am not sure what fraction of that he was really involved in-- but not the rest of his body of work. Is this supposed to be bad?
- rimunroe 9mo agoDo you mean he didn’t write the lectures he gave to students? I know the books weren’t put together by him and were substantially edited, but I thought the original lectures as delivered by him were either all or largely his work. I once worked through part of the first volume of his lectures in the published book while listening to the recordings of him partly out of curiosity to see how much the original lectures as he gave them matched the ones which were compiled and published in written form (which I already knew was something not done by him). I came away feeling impressed one could either stick so closely to some lecture notes when lecturing and/or put together a written work which so closely matched a spoken one without coming across as being a transcript. It’s quite the accomplishment and one which I felt was a credit to everyone involved.
- mlyle 9mo agoYah, I was saying the volumes. > put together a written work which so closely matched a spoken one without coming across as being a transcript. Leighton deserves the credit for this. Feynman did share his notes, but Feynman's notes are.. an adventure.. to work through.
- rimunroe 9mo ago> Leighton deserves the credit for this. Feynman did share his notes, but Feynman's notes are.. an adventure.. to work through. It's pretty clear he also used the recordings of the lectures themselves. Otherwise there'd be a much bigger difference between the lectures as presented in the books and the audio recordings[1] of him actually giving the lectures. Leighton deserves a lot of credit, but the lectures Feynman gave were substantially similar enough that it's absurd not to act as though he didn't co-author them. > Feynman did share his notes, but Feynman's notes are.. an adventure.. to work through. I don't doubt his notes would be, however they also used the audio recordings of and took notes during the lectures themselves for the books. I'm not sure how much they relied on Feynman's notes themselves though. It's been about 15 years since I last read and listened to them together, but I recall the experience of the combined activity being that the book was surprisingly close to being a transcript of what he said (including references to figures which the books reproduced). This is why I thought it was impressive that the book didn't read like a transcript on its own. I rarely encountered professors who gave such well-structured lectures, but it seems like something Feynman could not only give prepared lectures in this way, but could do this off the cuff as well. [1] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flptapes.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flptapes.html
- jalapenoi 9mo ago[flagged]
- ecshafer 9mo agoI don't think we are hurting for prominent Jewish Physicists that there needed to be a conspiracy to promote him. Feynman, Einstein, Von Neuman, Niels Bohr, etc. Plus there is the whole [Martians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)) group.
- srean 9mo agoJust ignore the trolls.
- poulpy123 9mo agoI cannot take seriously someone pretending that Feynman was a sham
- chrismatic 9mo agoThe video points out that the legacy not the man is a sham.
- ecshafer 9mo agoThere is just a big market for "X great person of the past was actually awful" and "what you learned in school is actually a conspiracy". That these things get spread like wildfire whenever they are brought up, because some people thinks it make them seem smarter I assume. They also drop all introspection or skepticism about it. I would put "Feynman is actually awful" in the same bucket as the "Mercator project is a racist conspiracy" (No one owns a globe apparently) or the multitude of "actually x woman is responsible for scientific advancement, not the man" stories that get spread around. They all fail at any real analysis.
- cduzz 9mo agoFeynman did physics and told stories. He was very serious about his physics and wrote that stuff down. Someone else wrote down his stories. His stories were probably often not entirely accurate, and whomever wrote down his stories also probably had an agenda. So books "by feynman" should be treated with some caution since they're written not by feynman. His physics and science are obviously not "a sham". It is in fact possible for someone to be great and awful at the same time.
- glenstein 9mo agoI haven't seen many people going around saying Ed Witten is a security risk due to communist loyalties.
- Analemma_ 9mo agoFeynman really deserves it though: [0]. I admit to being part of the problem here, because in the 2000s and 2010s, I was in the Feynman cult with everyone else, but once you dig a little deeper under the quirky anecdotes (many of which are probably fictional), it’s clear he was kind of a scumbag and a lot of his reputation is whitewashing by what we’d now call fanboys. If his wife did write that memo, I’d say she had pretty good justification. [0]: https://www.tumblr.com/centrally-unplanned/768510655072518144/she-does-a-great-job-looking-at-the-actual-man https://www.tumblr.com/centrally-unplanned/76851065507251814...
- woodruffw 9mo agoThat link demonstrates that he deserved a domestic abuse charge, not that he was a communist. I think the latter is still a smear, insofar as the (speculated) author is seeking justice through any avenue afforded. (I should note that I have never particularly liked or cared about Feynman or any of the 20th century cult-of-personality physicists.)
- srean 9mo agoThe stuff that the material in Feynman's book is not his is just made up nonsense. They follow his course lectures very very closely. The minutiae of writing may not be his, but the material certainly was his. Regarding domestic abuse charges, this was before we had no fault divorce. It was common at that time to make up charges of abuse, often in concert with the lawyers of both parties just to ensure that divorce is granted. So it is not a clear open and shut case at all.
- jackling 9mo agoI don't think people really make up domestic abuse charges with this much detail. His wife explains in the post specifically what causes him to get so angry that he hurts her. I don't see her having much incentive to lie and make up these statements, and see no evidence that she did lie. Some women lie about domestic abuse, most don't.
- srean 9mo ago
- jalapenoi 9mo ago[flagged]
- rimunroe 9mo agoI know what you mean but this framing is dismissive. I think the larger change is that it's become a bit more acceptable in the society as a whole to acknowledge that many men we've held up on pedestals were actually flawed, or at the very least to give more credence and attention to stories told by contemporaries. In the case of Feynman, I think the way he writes about his relationship with women gives clear examples of misogyny. From an article[1] on this subject: > Among his many accomplishments, he contributed to several key conceptual breakthroughs in quantum physics, and his role in developing the field of quantum electrodynamics led to a Nobel Prize in 1965, which he shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga. [...] He came off as a fun, likeable guy who just liked to do math, play pranks, and bang on the bongos. > These things are true. But it’s also true that throughout his career, Feynman reveled in blatant misogyny and sexism. In “Surely You’re Joking”, Feynman details how he adopted the mindset of a pick-up artist (an outlook he also claims to have eventually abandoned) by treating women as if they were worthless and cruelly lashing out at them when they rejected his advances. He worked and held meetings in strip clubs, and while a professor at Cal Tech, he drew naked portraits of his female students. Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him. Mythologizing or overly condemning figures is bad. I think it's one of the worst things we can do. It's both a disservice to everyone who knew them because it can minimize his impact on them and a disservice to the person themselves by inaccurately remembering them and is bad for society because it impedes our ability to learn. Personally I would be quite surprised if a guy at that time wasn't fairly sexist just given how often even as a kid I saw obvious sexism from people who were even a generation younger than him. I read the Feynman Lectures (which are freely available[2]!) as an undergrad and later interned on a couple collider experiments at RHIC and CEBAF where I encountered a lot more of his impact on quantum electro and chromodynamics. He was undeniably massively impactful and a brilliant communicator. I'd recommend everyone studying physics read his lectures and watch some interviews[3] with him. He was also human and would have had common flaws like anyone else. His books strongly indicate this. I don't think this means he was the devil, but it should be something we think about. I think you can reasonably debate whether or not people in historical contexts should be judged "good" or "bad" based on ethical standards which are more commonly accepted now than they were then, but I can't imagine a good reason to ignore the existence of those flaws or to say they don't matter. People treat Feynman as a role model, but I hope most people can agree that trying to sleep with undergrads when you're a professor is bad and should not be emulated. [1] https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-feynman-mcneill https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey... [2] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ [3] I particularly like this one, though I feel a bit bad for the interviewer (also his ice melting explanation is probably wrong, but he does couch it with "so they say") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q