
Feynman on explanations - gwern
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/99c/transcript_richard_feynman_on_why_questions/#thingrow_t3_99c
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shaggyfrog
"But it's in 240p! Nobody likes watching 240p videos. So I transcribed it."

I've watched and shared this video several times. The video is just fine in
240p. You miss out on Feynman's delivery and style when it you just read it as
text.

I think it's from a BBC documentary; the other parts are on YouTube as well.
The discussion about how humans model or understand really big/really small
numbers is especially interesting.

~~~
burgerbrain
The resolution complain is particularly strange when you figure that if a
transcript is allegedly good enough, then surely you can just listen to the
video instead.

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ugh
On YouTube audio quality degrades with resolution. I avoid watching 240p
videos whenever I can first and foremost because of their horrible audio.

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burgerbrain
In this case I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. This isn't classical
music after all, it's a guy talking.

~~~
hammock
Yeah, AM radio is still used for even the largest talk shows, and it's far
from perfect quality (which is why AM is rarely used for music, but it's fine
for speech). Likewise landline phones especially long distance calling was
never all that great sound quality but it never stopped you from picking up
the phone when someone called.

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5teev
A professor told me once, "Physics is about _what_ happens. If you want to
know why, maybe try going to church."

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dirtyaura
If you haven't watched these "Fun to imagine" with Feynman videos from
YouTube, I really recommend them. You just can't capture his joy and passion
with a transcript.

"Fun to Imagine" playlist:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI&feature=BFa&#...</a>

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Jun8
Feynman, I guess because he interacted a lot with laymen (an lay-women) knew
that the knowledge frame of the audience is very important. If you think this
is obvious, wait till you try to explain internet addresses, cloud storage,
etc. to your mom (or grandma), or as in the well-known case
(<http://tomayko.com/writings/rest-to-my-wife>) the REST protocol to your
wife.

It's _very_ hard to estimate the level of explanation that will actually
convey information to the person asking teh question while at the same time
keeping them interested.

~~~
lloeki
It all gets summed up in the last sentence, which is really a _killer_ :

> But I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in
> terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't
> understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with

I've never heard that impedance mismatch being told in such clear, humble
words. Basically, he's saying "I know things in so much detail that I can't in
all honesty imagine wrongful analogies, let alone present them to you".

~~~
lurker17
He's not saying that he "knows things in so much detail that he can't imagine
wrongful analogies". He's saying that "magnetic force is _different_ from
anything you are familiar with", so you have to learn it as something new, not
by analogy.

Feynman does (explain a little bit of) Quantum Mechanics by analogy (photons
are spinning clocks), but goes on the say you have to learn a truly ne wmodel
to understand more deeply.

See also: Dijkstra's "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science:
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036...](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD1036.html)

> It is the most common way of trying to cope with novelty: by means of
> metaphors and analogies we try to link the new to the old, the novel to the
> familiar. Under sufficiently slow and gradual change, it works reasonably
> well; in the case of a sharp discontinuity, however, the method breaks down:
> though we may glorify it with the name "common sense", our past experience
> is no longer relevant, the analogies become too shallow, and the metaphors
> become more misleading than illuminating.

There are lots of gems in that essay, such as this:

> We can view the program as what turns the general-purpose computer into a
> special-purpose symbol manipulator, and does so without the need to change a
> single wire (This was an enormous improvement over machines with problem-
> dependent wiring panels.) I prefer to describe it the other way round: the
> program is an abstract symbol manipulator, which can be turned into a
> concrete one by supplying a computer to it. After all, it is no longer the
> purpose of programs to instruct our machines; these days, it is the purpose
> of machines to execute our programs.

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javajosh
Excellent. But there is another important situation to deal with, and that is
when the interrogator is asking dishonestly, usually to reenforce some
prejudice. Personally I have found the best way to deal with such discussions
is not to have them, for the simple reason that my contempt for willful
ignorance compounded by dishonesty ultimately outweighs my love and joy at
explanaition.

Practically speaking, the impact of walking away from such loaded discussions
is minimal, because in a healthy society generally these dishonest
interrogators' views and opinions simply don't matter (apart from the odd
grade-school curriculum debacle). They don't matter for two reasons: first,
normally the point of understanding (e.g. evolution, or even magnetism) is not
necessary to the persons practical day. Second, a healthy society tends to
disregard the views of the dishonest.

This is an argument from practicality. Know when to walk away from some
debates.

~~~
dhimes
I agree except for the relatively few people who are familiar with this type
of discourse. Those that are good at it can destroy the original framing
attempt and reframe it for their own purposes. Newt Gingrich is quite good at
this.

I simply don't have the verbal chops to compete. Newt studied rhetoric as I
recall.

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richardburton
Another amazing line: _"So I am not going to be able to give you an answer to
why magnets attract each other except to tell you that they do."_

~~~
grannyg00se
I love this about his style. If he couldn't explain something in a manner
simple enough for the audience to understand, he didn't explain it at all.
There is no simplified yet incorrect version offered.

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endlessvoid94
By far the best video of Feynman is "The Distinction of Past and Future",
which is one of his lectures in the cornell messenger series in 1964 (i
think).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kab9dkDZJY>

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jsilence
"Because some things are, and some things are not!" Louis CK does a hilarious
job describing how it is digging down the "why" hole:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2ZsoYWwJA>

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agumonkey
the whole video is hilarious, but for the hurried amongst us, the 'why hole'
bit is around 7:10

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4u2ZsoYWwJA#t=431s)

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richardburton
I love how he covers everything from:

 _"For example, Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why? Because she went out,
slipped on the ice, and broke her hip."_

to:

 _"You know you can't put your hand through the chair; that's taken for
granted."_

What an incredible mind.

~~~
modeless
Watch the rest of the "Fun to Imagine" videos, and you'll hear about why
trains don't need differential gears and how the mass of trees comes out of
the air instead of the ground.

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herTTTz
While that we are touching on Feynman, I thought this bit was interesting
(just 1:26 long)

Richard Feynman on Computer Science -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL4wg6ZAFIM&feature=related)

I believe he has a point, I don't know if term Computer Science is the best
choice of words.

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pica
I have an off topic question. I'm not a native English speaker, and I find the
way Feynman is pronouncing t, d, k, g, p and b consonants very interesting. He
uses hard attacks and hard stops. Does anybody know if there is a name for
that ? Maybe a regional thing or just his way to speak ?

~~~
IsaacSchlueter
It's regional. He grew up in Queens, New York City. His dialect is pretty
common.

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chetan51
Reading a transcript is just not the same as watching Feynman talk, which is
such a delight. 240p or not, I encourage everyone to watch the video.

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wizard_2
I should refer you to the Feynman Series (from the Segan Series creator)
[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92F9FC91BBE2210D&...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL92F9FC91BBE2210D&feature=plcp)

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losvedir
Yay, Feynman!

If this has whet your taste for his wonderful explanations, I highly encourage
you to take a look at his lecture series made available by Microsoft Research
on Project Tuva[1].

[1]<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html>

~~~
cas
Don't bother going to the Microsoft site, where you have to install
Silverlight to watch a video, just use Youtube to watch the 7 part series:

[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+character+of...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+character+of+physical+law)

I am actually half-way through watching them and as with all Feynman lectures
they are a real joy to watch.

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ilitirit
I think that people's tolerance for simple metaphors is related to their level
of curiosity. I'm pretty sure that many people would be satisfied with a
"rubber band" explanation even though it doesn't fit. The more curious person
though would probably, as Feynman said, want to know why rubber bands behave
in the way that they do, and then the metaphor would break down.

This to me tells me two things about Feynman:

1) He was a man of great integrity

2) He wanted people to be more curious about the world

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agumonkey
I dig his neverending questionnings and explicitness.

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mbq
Well said, except it is not true about the ice melting under pressure -- a
weight of a human is not enough (same holds for skating). The ice is slippery
because of its anomalous behavior on the boundary, which is still not fully
understood.

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pewfly
Yup, but I think in the 80's it was the standard explanation.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/science/21ice.htm>

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mattiask
This is why scientists don't get invited to cocktail parties

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endlessvoid94
Does anyone know where I can find the entire talk he gave?

~~~
cas
The comment on the youtube video links to the entire series on the BBC:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/feynman/>

Not sure if available to watch outside UK but they are the same as on Youtube,
just better quality.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Not this one, I meant the one from Bell Labs.

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lucianof
Can anybody explain me how to make an apple pie from scratch?

~~~
drcube
Well you start with all the matter and energy in the universe compressed to a
point...

