
The Best Teacher I Never Had - frostmatthew
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/The-Best-Teacher-I-Never-Had
======
fernly
All the lectures as transcripts, not videos:
[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/)

Playlist of Feynman lectures on video at Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLzGzdSNup63lMYeOpU9H...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLzGzdSNup63lMYeOpU9Hax6MBsTjdDas)

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zodiac
I think the messenger lectures are different from the Feynman lectures on
physics

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kkylin
The Messenger lectures are the basis for Feynman's book the Character of
Physical Law, which I would highly recommend.

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hkmurakami
>Years later I bought the rights to those lectures and worked with Microsoft
to get them posted online for free.

This just floored me. I hope that some day I will acquire the generosity and
perspective to use a small part of my assets for something like this.

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sanoli
Not to take anything away from what Gates did (and I admire his post-Microsoft
goals), it's probably mush easier to do this with your assets when they are as
large as his.

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hkmurakami
Absolutely. But imo most of us (including myself) find it difficult to spend a
token amount of our earning or net worth for a public good.

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gohrt
It wasn't a public good, it was a Microsoft marketing campaign to push people
onto the Silverlight platform.

MS never made the Feynman Lectures free for all to read.

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adventured
It was a public good and it required silverlight.

Try going to a public library and checking out books without a library card
(which almost always cost money). Therefore under your premise public
libraries are not for the common good because they have numerous use
stipulations that go with them and they inherently restrict usage via fees.

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NhanH
At the time of Feynman's death, there were two quotes on his blackboard (along
with a to-learn list, and several formulas). The first one is "What I cannot
create, I do not understand", followed by "Know how to solve every problem
that has been solved". Since the years I've known those quotes, I have those
as my personal motto for software development.

Also give me a cute excuse to boo-boo Java-land and framework heavy ecosystem
;)

~~~
voltagex_
Thanks for those. Here's a fantastic elaboration: [https://www.quora.com/What-
did-Richard-Feynman-mean-when-he-...](https://www.quora.com/What-did-Richard-
Feynman-mean-when-he-said-What-I-cannot-create-I-do-not-understand)

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pjmorris
In 1984, I misread the syllabus for my Physics class, and, as a consequence,
bought 'The Feynman Lectures in Physics'. It turned out to be a brilliant
mistake, as Feynman was much wiser and funnier than the required textbook. One
of the best intellectual moments of my early college life was to read his
perspective [0] on how physics fit in with the other sciences, echoed nicely
later by Randall Munroe [1].

[0]
[http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_03.html](http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_03.html)
[1] [https://xkcd.com/435/](https://xkcd.com/435/)

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jonsen
[1] Stephen Wolfram is missing. But I guess he is too far out.

~~~
pjmorris
I guess he'd need A New Kind of Comic.

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alanmoraes
You can find the Messenger Lectures with subtitles here
[http://www.cornell.edu/video/playlist/richard-feynman-
messen...](http://www.cornell.edu/video/playlist/richard-feynman-messenger-
lectures)

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mathgenius
Thanks! I just can't get over how much like a Brooklyn gangster he sounds. I
think I much prefer reading his lectures, where I can mentally substitute a
proper cambridge accent. The knowledge seems to be absorbed better that way.
Also, he walks around too much: this tends to dissipate the focus. But, I do
like the antics with his hands/body and facial expressions!

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cushychicken
The grandfather of my best friend from high school had the privilege of having
Feynman as one of his seminar instructors whilst at Cornell. In fact, he
remembered the famous lecture described in "Surely You're Joking" where
Feynman showed up to teach after getting a black eye in a bar fight the
preceding weekend.

According to his account, Feynman walked into the lecture hall, turned to face
the crowd (at which point, his black eye was noticeable), and asked "So... any
questions?"

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tajen
In the very first chemistry class of a very reputated college in France, where
every student discovered the new, extremely fast pace of the teaching, with an
authoritarian teacher, on a lesson I already knew from high school, I, alone
in the lecture, raised my hand to answer a question. And just made a very
appropriate, contextual pun on paar with the answer. Teacher smiled. Asked
someone else. That gave me quite a reputation for the next 5 years. The guy
who makes a pun to a stern teacher.

I love lecture hall situations, where you mix respect, intrigue, the stress of
succeeding, and you get to meet the real humans.

~~~
cushychicken
I miss lectures as well. A great lecture is my favorite way to learn - it's
way more informative than a great textbook. I had a great teacher for my first
circuits class in college. I wish I'd made the time to take some of his upper
level classes in advanced analog design; he was able to make the material
really engaging in the first class since microwave design was his specialty.

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harry8
If you don't have silverlight, another place that may or may not work for you
but has the Messenger lectures in a different format is:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF96D8FFDDE4B9087](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF96D8FFDDE4B9087)

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such_a_casual
Richard Feynman has by far the best explanations I have ever seen from anyone
in my life. His explanations are fascinating and deceptively simple. His
explanation of electricity in this video has fundamentally changed the way
that I see the world:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS25vitrZ6g&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS25vitrZ6g&feature=youtu.be&t=8m17s)

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brianstorms
Pretty sure "the friend" was Ann Winblad, who he was seeing at the time, and
that this was a trip they took to the Outer Banks of NC.

It's all been written about in more detail in past books and magazine
articles.

For more see this ancient WIRED piece:
[http://www.wired.com/1996/09/winblad/](http://www.wired.com/1996/09/winblad/)

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kabisote
Ask HN: If you were building an online school, how do you find great teachers
and how do you convince them to create and offer their lessons online?

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tamebadger
In short, implement a free market system! Elaboration, let the students choose
teachers, and based on the data you get from that, pay the teachers, and have
this data out in the open, so teachers can see what influences their
remuneration.

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scottishfiction
Would this not reward teachers who give the students the best experience,
rather than the best education. I think it would be naive to expect students
to be rational actors* in this market.

[http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rational-choice-
theory.a...](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rational-choice-theory.asp)

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fierycatnet
A lot of well deserved praise for Feynman but this video stuck with me for
some reason and I always pictured the guy as a bit arrogant and snobbish.

youtube.com/watch?v=3D2RaDVkylY

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code0
I just watched the same video and it was one of the most insightful things
that I have seen recently. Feynman is simply acknowledging that there are a
few things in physics which are very difficult reduce to layman concepts. The
other bit, about "why questions", is also quite interesting. I have come to
believe that a lot of questions which sound very interesting, like "why do I
exist?", don't really have good answers, and probably will never have. e.g. if
it did turn out that we are living in a matrix, the question will simply
reduce to "why does the matrix exist?" and soon. Thats what Feynman is trying
to point out that "Why something happens?" is not a complete question unless
we agree to some understanding beforehand. Otherwise you just go deep into the
rabbit hole.

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thewarrior
Who is the Feynman of programming / CS education ?

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didsomeonesay
Well, there's "Feynman lectures on Computation"...

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Dowwie
Unreal. Watching him speak about computers, while wearing his logo'd t-shirt,
makes me imagine him giving this talk at a recent meetup.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA)

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sidcool
Richard Feynman is my all time favorite person.

