4 ms·

> You know, I remember a time—it must have been the summer of 1985—when I'd just discovered a thing called rule 30. That's probably my own all-time favorite sci

by thearn4 13y ago

> You know, I remember a time—it must have been the summer of 1985—when I'd just discovered a thing called rule 30. That's probably my own all-time favorite scientific discovery. And that's what launched a lot of the whole new kind of science that I've spent 20 years building. [See A New Kind of Science, page 27.] Oh, Wolfram... Some self-promotional aspects aside, this was a pretty interesting write-up about the personal side of Feynman. One quote of his from this article stands out: "peace of mind is the most important prerequisite for creative work." I'd be very interested to know what he would have thought about the current state of academia and scientific research.

tlow 13y ago
Feynman's views during his time on academia are well known and popularly published in his books. See Cargo Cult Science [1] and his work on a science textbook advisory committee [2] which gave a blank book a 7/10. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science [2] http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
asveikau 13y ago
A few months ago I read the compilation of Feynman's letters that was published in 2005 that this is referring to (title: Perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track). I believe I even read it after someone mentioned it on HN. If you are interested in that personal side it's pretty interesting. A little raw at times but the content speaks for itself.
Fede_V 13y ago
There is a similar statement by Higgs (the guy who won the Nobel prize for physics for the discovery of the boson named after him) about how the insane pressure to constantly publish and produce papers comes at the expense of being able to think really hard about difficult problems. It's a difficult problem. Universities have limited funding, and want to attract professors that get lots of grants to self finance their own research. To get lots of grants, you need to publish lots of high impact papers. To publish lots of papers quickly, you need a lot of PhD students to supervise, and you need to work in a hot and rapidly moving field. This leads to professors acting as glorified managers who spend all their time churning out grants, and spend an incredibly tiny fraction of their time working on their own science.
- chii 13y ago
  the classic problem of "you get 'promoted' to your level of incompetence".

by thearn4 13y ago

tlow 13y ago

Feynman's views during his time on academia are well known and popularly published in his books. See Cargo Cult Science [1] and his work on a science textbook advisory committee [2] which gave a blank book a 7/10. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science [2] http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

asveikau 13y ago

A few months ago I read the compilation of Feynman's letters that was published in 2005 that this is referring to (title: Perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track). I believe I even read it after someone mentioned it on HN. If you are interested in that personal side it's pretty interesting. A little raw at times but the content speaks for itself.

Fede_V 13y ago

There is a similar statement by Higgs (the guy who won the Nobel prize for physics for the discovery of the boson named after him) about how the insane pressure to constantly publish and produce papers comes at the expense of being able to think really hard about difficult problems. It's a difficult problem. Universities have limited funding, and want to attract professors that get lots of grants to self finance their own research. To get lots of grants, you need to publish lots of high impact papers. To publish lots of papers quickly, you need a lot of PhD students to supervise, and you need to work in a hot and rapidly moving field. This leads to professors acting as glorified managers who spend all their time churning out grants, and spend an incredibly tiny fraction of their time working on their own science.

chii 13y ago
the classic problem of "you get 'promoted' to your level of incompetence".