

Richard Feynman explains confusion - a good definition of "hacker"? - andreyf
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3164300309410618119#1m22s

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yan
This may be just me, but I think we should stop attributing all favorable
qualities of a person to the label 'hacker'. Being a hacker's good and all,
but prepending 'hacker' to everything that's interesting isn't exactly
accurate.

~~~
Radix
I agree and argue that it is against the guidelines due to 'hacker' being
gratuitous. Either the submissions stands on its own merit or it falls.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=728020>

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tarkin2
Something else struck me when watching that video.

I'm often struck how my intelligence diminishes when I'm frustrated, anxious
or angry. I've read research that seems to confirm such--such feelings
interfere with short-term memory.

But Feyman exhibited such sheer joy and, if he carried that on when he
meditated on a problem, that may well have helped him.

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agnokapathetic
Well you just broke even on the crackpot index:
<http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html> (#8)

~~~
Leon
To be fair, shouldn't it be ok to mention their names if showing a video of
them giving a talk?

Also the index is about potential contributions to physics, which this post is
not about.

~~~
agnokapathetic
Its not about mentioning them, its the blatant misspelling of their names
"Einstien", "Hawkins" or "Feynmann"
(<http://www.google.com/search?q=Einstien,+Hawkins+or+Feynmann>)

EDIT: Feynman is spelled Feinman in Russian texts which andreyf maybe familiar
with :)

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Maro
The name's Feynman.

~~~
slackenerny
Not in Russian textbooks; andreyf may have been a little tired and ‘Confused’
or sth.

~~~
CamperBob
Well, he wasn't Russian, was he? In New Joisey they spell it with a 'y'.

~~~
cema
Oy! But his dad was sort of Russian (of Belorussian Jewish ancestry and
growing up in a country with Russian the official language). The native
spelling was not in Latin characters so there was a bit of freedom of how to
transliterate the name: Фейнман.

Had he moved to the USA in the middle of the century, the standard of the
transliteration then was to convert the "й" character to "j" so he could have
been Fejnman.

It is also possible that the original name was indeed Feinman in Yiddish with
"ei" read as in German (the long i), which would explain how it became Фейнман
in the first place (transliteration from German Yiddish by a simple
substitution based on the spelling while distorting the phonetics). Some
Russian Jewish names appear to have gone through a similar process. This is
speculation, however; I have not done any research on the origin of the
Feynman's family name.

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teeja
Good article <http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0504.html>

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omouse
You know that John Nash used the word "hack" and "hacker" too, right?

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andreyf
Is it a good definition of a "hacker" as someone who doesn't avoid the
Confusion Feinman is talking about, but rather embraces it?

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gourneau
I have a machine with the hostname set as 'banana' to remind me video.

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CGamesPlay
<obligatory comment on "Feinman" spelling>

