4 ms·

Does anyone here, like me, really appreciate Feynman's just the fact's style of writing? Most people describe it as eerily cold, but I love it. Articles like t

Does anyone here, like me, really appreciate Feynman's just the fact's style of writing? Most people describe it as eerily cold, but I love it. Articles like the this one on the other hand, while excellent, bury their valuable information under a lot of fluff. And most people like that kind of writing, but I just find it annoying. Good article, I just wish it was more direct.

electromagnetic 17y ago
Took a lot of self-control just to read through the damn thing!
- zvikara 17y ago
  On the other hand, I could use some more self-control to do actual work instead of reading through HN.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  I kept skipping ahead to get to the marshmallows.
silentbicycle 17y ago
Consider the source, though. People who place a high priority on dense, "just the facts" writing are probably going to read the research directly. This is intended to introduce the research to an audience that would find it interesting, but are unlikely to already comb through academic journals of psychological research. I find Oliver Sacks, Douglas Hofstadter, Stephen Pinker, etc. fascinating, but when I want the direct data (rather than commentary), I still go to primary sources. That's what they're for.
ilitirit 17y ago
One of favourite pieces by Feynman is a critique of fields like psychology. http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
- antiform 17y ago
  I really dislike it when people (especially people of a technical mindset like math/physics/CS majors) summarize the above article in the way, and use it to justify their dislike of the social sciences. It's not about the problems of methods in psychology in general, but about blindly applying methods (of any field) without understanding the motivation, underlying assumptions, or unintended consequences behind them. Most modern psychological research is surprisingly rigorous and depend on sophisticated statistical methods. The results may not be as strong or conclusive as those of, say, chemistry, but for a discipline that has to study something as mercurial as human behavior, it is certainly a useful and worthwhile.
  - Herring 17y ago
    Do you have a vivid example? I think it would make your point much more memorable.
    - antiform 17y ago
      First of all, I am no expert in psychology, and most of my exposure to it was through readings in AI courses. For a good example of a milestone in modern psychology, consider the Rescorla-Wagner Model--an attempt to model classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in a quantitative manner--which essentially implies that organisms only learn from unexpected events. It not only predicts the degree to which an organism would react to stimuli, but also compensates for something called the "blocking effect," which occurs when something stimulates more than one association and one of those associations overpowers a weaker association, prevent conditioning of the weak association. It is similar to the Widrow-Hoff Least Mean Squares (LMS) learning algorithm that you might learn in a neural networks class. This model is something that has been tweaked and tested under many different conditions and experiments, and the results have been distilled through thorough statistical analysis. The R-W Model is one part of a dramatic change in our understanding of learning that has occurred in the last couple decades. For a summary of some of these results, Rescorla has an article published about 20 years ago called "Pavlovian Conditioning: It's Not What You Think It Is," [http://jsackur.free.fr/classiques/Rescorla1988.pdf http://jsackur.free.fr/classiques/Rescorla1988.pdf] which should be pretty accessible.
tc 17y ago
I find that I compensate by varying my reading speed. You have to slow down to read Feynman, but you can often take the New Yorker at a few thousand words a minute.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  a few thousand words a minute Reading, or skimming?
  - tc 17y ago
    A combination, of course. Let's say, "skimming with awareness of what I'm leaving on the page." If you've never seriously tried it, you might be amazed just how far you can push your reading speed on low-density material while still retaining 90-95% of what you care about. The two key techniques for doing this effectively are to 1) eliminate subvocalization while reading, and 2) expand your field of vision so that you are reading sentences and paragraphs instead of words. Of course, if you're reading contracts you're going to sign, you probably want to spend more time on each word.
    - Radix 17y ago
      Oh yes, of course... but how does one eliminate subvocalization. I find I can't take in information unless I vocalize it. Because of this I can't read sentences.
      - silentbicycle 17y ago
        There's a discussion about that here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387997 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387997
  - ericb 17y ago
    I read by quickly identifying paragraphs to skip in an article like this. Walter Mischel is a slight, elegant man... SKIP Mischel was born in Vienna... SKIP The family settled... SKIP
sachmanb 17y ago
The author of this article writes more for us, people who want just the substance, on his blog: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ He still wraps the information, but not to the extent he does for other publications and he frequently separates the substance into its own paragraphs. It's a great blog and I recommend it. Two other cognitive biology blogs that I recommend are http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/ http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/ and http://merzenich.positscience.com/ http://merzenich.positscience.com/
jroes 17y ago
Agreed. tl;dr for me. I'm not looking for or expecting a biography given the title.
enneff 17y ago
"Does anyone here, like me, really appreciate Feynman's just the fact's style of writing?" Of course! The problem with this approach is that professional writers are paid by the word, and it's easier to write fluff than come up with more ideas. This is symptomatic of the greater issue: mainstream culture's preference for quantity over quality.
jamesbritt 17y ago
"And most people like that kind of writing, but I just find it annoying." Why do you say that? Might it be that people have gotten accustomed to that style, and while they would prefer something more direct, have come to accept it as just being how magazine articles are? Or have people adapted their reading style to skim past the "color" fluff and pull out the essential details? Do people take the time and trouble to complain to editors about these things? Are people more inclined to write to praise than to criticize?

electromagnetic 17y ago

Took a lot of self-control just to read through the damn thing!

zvikara 17y ago
On the other hand, I could use some more self-control to do actual work instead of reading through HN.
jamesbritt 17y ago
I kept skipping ahead to get to the marshmallows.

silentbicycle 17y ago

Consider the source, though. People who place a high priority on dense, "just the facts" writing are probably going to read the research directly. This is intended to introduce the research to an audience that would find it interesting, but are unlikely to already comb through academic journals of psychological research. I find Oliver Sacks, Douglas Hofstadter, Stephen Pinker, etc. fascinating, but when I want the direct data (rather than commentary), I still go to primary sources. That's what they're for.

ilitirit 17y ago

One of favourite pieces by Feynman is a critique of fields like psychology. http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html http://www.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html

antiform 17y ago
I really dislike it when people (especially people of a technical mindset like math/physics/CS majors) summarize the above article in the way, and use it to justify their dislike of the social sciences. It's not about the problems of methods in psychology in general, but about blindly applying methods (of any field) without understanding the motivation, underlying assumptions, or unintended consequences behind them. Most modern psychological research is surprisingly rigorous and depend on sophisticated statistical methods. The results may not be as strong or conclusive as those of, say, chemistry, but for a discipline that has to study something as mercurial as human behavior, it is certainly a useful and worthwhile.
- Herring 17y ago
  Do you have a vivid example? I think it would make your point much more memorable.
  - antiform 17y ago
    First of all, I am no expert in psychology, and most of my exposure to it was through readings in AI courses. For a good example of a milestone in modern psychology, consider the Rescorla-Wagner Model--an attempt to model classical (Pavlovian) conditioning in a quantitative manner--which essentially implies that organisms only learn from unexpected events. It not only predicts the degree to which an organism would react to stimuli, but also compensates for something called the "blocking effect," which occurs when something stimulates more than one association and one of those associations overpowers a weaker association, prevent conditioning of the weak association. It is similar to the Widrow-Hoff Least Mean Squares (LMS) learning algorithm that you might learn in a neural networks class. This model is something that has been tweaked and tested under many different conditions and experiments, and the results have been distilled through thorough statistical analysis. The R-W Model is one part of a dramatic change in our understanding of learning that has occurred in the last couple decades. For a summary of some of these results, Rescorla has an article published about 20 years ago called "Pavlovian Conditioning: It's Not What You Think It Is," [http://jsackur.free.fr/classiques/Rescorla1988.pdf http://jsackur.free.fr/classiques/Rescorla1988.pdf] which should be pretty accessible.

tc 17y ago

I find that I compensate by varying my reading speed. You have to slow down to read Feynman, but you can often take the New Yorker at a few thousand words a minute.

byrneseyeview 17y ago
a few thousand words a minute Reading, or skimming?
- tc 17y ago
  A combination, of course. Let's say, "skimming with awareness of what I'm leaving on the page." If you've never seriously tried it, you might be amazed just how far you can push your reading speed on low-density material while still retaining 90-95% of what you care about. The two key techniques for doing this effectively are to 1) eliminate subvocalization while reading, and 2) expand your field of vision so that you are reading sentences and paragraphs instead of words. Of course, if you're reading contracts you're going to sign, you probably want to spend more time on each word.
  - Radix 17y ago
    Oh yes, of course... but how does one eliminate subvocalization. I find I can't take in information unless I vocalize it. Because of this I can't read sentences.
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      There's a discussion about that here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387997 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387997
- ericb 17y ago
  I read by quickly identifying paragraphs to skip in an article like this. Walter Mischel is a slight, elegant man... SKIP Mischel was born in Vienna... SKIP The family settled... SKIP

sachmanb 17y ago

The author of this article writes more for us, people who want just the substance, on his blog: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/ He still wraps the information, but not to the extent he does for other publications and he frequently separates the substance into its own paragraphs. It's a great blog and I recommend it. Two other cognitive biology blogs that I recommend are http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/ http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/ and http://merzenich.positscience.com/ http://merzenich.positscience.com/

jroes 17y ago

Agreed. tl;dr for me. I'm not looking for or expecting a biography given the title.

enneff 17y ago

"Does anyone here, like me, really appreciate Feynman's just the fact's style of writing?" Of course! The problem with this approach is that professional writers are paid by the word, and it's easier to write fluff than come up with more ideas. This is symptomatic of the greater issue: mainstream culture's preference for quantity over quality.

jamesbritt 17y ago

"And most people like that kind of writing, but I just find it annoying." Why do you say that? Might it be that people have gotten accustomed to that style, and while they would prefer something more direct, have come to accept it as just being how magazine articles are? Or have people adapted their reading style to skim past the "color" fluff and pull out the essential details? Do people take the time and trouble to complain to editors about these things? Are people more inclined to write to praise than to criticize?