
Feynman Algorithm - alphanumeric0
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FeynmanAlgorithm
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batou
Step zero of the Feynman algorithm is always missed:

0\. Spent years dismantling every idea or concept and understanding it
intimately.

This is almost always done out of sight to maintain the illusion. When people
don't see the hard work, they assume you're a genius, not just working hard. I
don't think there are any geniuses as such; just people with drive and enough
experience and possibly good brain plasticity :)

I can get a stupid high result on an IQ test. That doesn't mean I'm a genius,
just that I read up on how they work.

~~~
reikonomusha
Side note: Critically, IQ test results assume they've _not_ been studied. A
psychologist will usually ask the examinee beforehand whether he or she has
"studied" or "read up on" the test.

~~~
batou
Definitely. Strategic cheating also gets mistaken for genius which is sort of
my point.

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im3w1l
This reminds me of some martial arts philosophy I heard. It was basically that
there were three stages to mastery. In the first stage you fight intuitively
but know no techniques. In the second stage you practice techniques, and use
your conscious mind to choose which of them to use, and how to execute it. It
feels forced, and in this stage it is harder to use novel solutions, because
you focus on your list of techniques. In the third stage you have internalized
all the techniques and can once again work intuitively.

~~~
js2
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence)

~~~
glomph
That isn't really the same thing.

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bunderbunder
At first glance the Feynman Algorithm is funny, but it also encodes a lot of
wisdom about how to go about problem solving.

For example, I've noticed that oftentimes when people get stuck solving a
problem it's because they tried to move to step 2 or 3 without first
completing step 1.

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dkarapetyan
That page is full of nice quotes. At the end of the day Gell-Mann did not
really capture Feynman's spirit and genius because Feynman himself tells all
sorts of stories where he uses physical intuition and playful thinking to
figure stuff out. Those strategies can be adapted by anyone, not just
geniuses.

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jleyank
Read Gleick, who (I think) covers Feynman's approach and other's reaction to
it well.

He didn't read the literature as he liked to be surprised. His sister told a
story where she made him do so in one instance; preferred to figure things out
himself. Was it inefficient? Certainly, but it added to his legend, satisfied
his curiousity and often yielded a more-general solution.

Perhaps it was clarity of thought coupled with his (partially?) hidden self-
training and toolkit. Perhaps it was a less-mechanical approach to physics,
more intuition than perspiration? To me, Einstein falls into this category as
well - the ability to ask pertinent questions and not worry about the answer
and the number of apple carts being upset.

Certainly there was an ability to focus that was not common.

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QuantumRoar
There's definitely some truth in the Feynman algorithm. If I had to explain
how I did some of my research, I'd probably say it similar to that.

While sometimes the manual work to actually show that it works is quite small,
other times it may take a month or even longer just to write down the
derivation properly.

Ideas that come up after step 2, i.e. "think really hard", are ultimately just
that: ideas. You need to ensure that you're not fooling yourself or that you
have a case of confirmation bias (skipping steps in a proof because you think
it's obvious while it actually isn't). Thus, I'd say step 3, "write down the
solution", is at least as important as step 2.

