

Feynman’s science lesson for entrepreneurs: Challenge authority. - zader
http://www.radicalsocialentreps.org/2012/05/physicist-richard-feynmans-science-lesson-for-entrepreneurs-challenge-authority/

======
feral
I'm not sure if Feynman would endorse the scientific framing that is being
applied, in that article, to the haphazard process by which society evolves.

Science experiments should try and be, at least to some extent, repeatable.

When the article starts talking about 'social experiments', e.g.: "He’s
referring to laws of nature of course, but let’s take a step back and imagine
that society is a scientific enterprise. Discovering good legal rules, good
regulations, or good constitutions is hard — they are not ‘given’ to us. They
evolved. They appeared through different experiments in different places at
different times, by different people. They will continue to change."

I think that's stretching it, and going towards the dangerous territory of
framing social debate as if it were a science, and as if the 'disruptive
innovation by entrepreneurs' was scientific experiment.

I think Feynman was exacting about what could be considered an experiment.
From his commencement address, on 'cargo cult science', which covers this
general area: "I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her
laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to
see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed.
Then she would know the the real difference was the thing she thought she had
under control."

He also points out that it can be bad to use the language of science, if you
aren't really doing science: "Another example is how to treat criminals. We
obviously have made no progress--lots of theory, but no progress--in
decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.
Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think
ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience.
A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is
forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the
school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or
a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels
guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do "the right thing,"
according to the experts."
<http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.php>

I'm not saying the article is making the mistake of cargo cult science; but
just that it seems to be skirting a little close to that territory, by
applying the language of science to situations in which people are not trying
for rigorous experiments, and where isolating variables is particularly hard.

I don't think that disruptive innovation by entrepreneurs would meet Feynman's
definition of science. I like the framing of a startup as a company set up to
test a hypothesis about a business model, but I think there's a distance
between entrepreneurship and science.

~~~
ollerac
If an experiment works, who cares how rigorous it was?

For the example of a society I think a good metric would be: "How many people
enjoy living in this particular society and don't want to move away?" We
wouldn't need to make any big changes right away because we could start
experimenting with what we have already: cities and towns.

How about this: "Cities and towns can create some of their own laws (but only
certain types of laws that have been pre-approved by the state and federal
courts). These laws will supersede state and federal laws."

I think this would give countries the opportunity to experiment with the
effects of theoretically harmless legislation (e.g. cannabis legalization,
polyamorous marriages, the invention of new types of corporations) that might
make people uncomfortable if they were instantly implemented on a larger
scale.

There would probably be a long period of adjustment as cities and states got
used to their new relationship, but I think in the end it could bring smaller
communities a lot closer together and make places in general a lot more
interesting and unique.

~~~
improvisations
Ollerac is definitely onto what I was arguing in this article. Allowing people
to 'opt-in' and vote with their feet in a system with greater policy
experimentation through decentralized, competing jurisdictions is perhaps the
closest we can get to scientific rigor (holding culture relatively constant,
for example).

There is a section on "Exit and Voice" which discusses this on
www.radicalsocialentreps.org/theory as well as a practical entrepreneurial
proposal called "Free Cities" here:
<http://www.radicalsocialentreps.org/theory/free-cities/>

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

~~~
hammock
_Ollerac is definitely onto what I was arguing in this article. Allowing
people to 'opt-in' and vote with their feet in a system with greater policy
experimentation through decentralized, competing jurisdictions is perhaps the
closest we can get to scientific rigor (holding culture relatively constant,
for example)._

Sounds like Bayesian vs. A/B testing. e.g.
[http://blog.custora.com/2012/05/a-bayesian-approach-to-ab-
te...](http://blog.custora.com/2012/05/a-bayesian-approach-to-ab-testing/) or
<http://www.mynaweb.com/blog/2011/09/13/myna-vs-ab.html> Something that's not
repeatable but works in an open system full of people, not experimental
objects

------
Jun8
Eugenics in this context is a bad example, because in this case controlled
breeding definitely gets results, i.e. the theory (sort of) agrees with the
theory, at least in the case of animals. You should thank such manipulative
practices when you are enjoying a seedless banana.

Of course, the practice is abhorrent! But, and I think this is important, the
ethical part has nothing to do with the science part. Consider the piece from
NYT that reported Robert Spitzer's apology
([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-
spitzer...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-
noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html)) for defining
homosexuality as a "disease" and trying to cure it. When he published his
study one commentary:

"...cited the Nuremberg Code of ethics to denounce the study as not only
flawed but morally wrong. “We fear the repercussions of this study, including
an increase in suffering, prejudice, and discrimination,” concluded a group of
15 researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where Dr. Spitzer
was affiliated."

I think that a scientific theory can we wrong or right (or currently
undecided) but it cannot be morally wrong. The way you perform the experiments
to test it may be morally wrong, though. There were significant faults with
Spitzer's research, these should be pointed out rather than its moral
wrongness.

Similarly eugenics should be attacked for its unintended consequences (e.g.
extinction of Cavendish bananas
<http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp>) and its nineteenth-century
simplistic approach to the human genetic-psychological relationship which, as
we now, is vastly complex.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Of course, the practice is abhorrent!_

While I agree that eugenics has been used (often poorly) to justify many
horrible policies in the past, I don't think it's abhorrent in general. Today
eugenics is used very successfully to prevent horrible genetic diseases.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim>

Most of the horrible policies we associate with eugenics are actually a result
of a belief in eugenics AND malthusianism. If you reject malthusianism and
replace it with, e.g., comparative advantage, you lose the scary policy
prescriptions.

[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/05/eugenics_malthu....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/05/eugenics_malthu.html)

~~~
drcube
The problem with eugenics is that it necessitates a central authority over the
human genome. No unified standard will fit all people, and human rights and
reproductive freedom must be pushed aside in order to accomplish such a goal.
This is ignoring the racism, social Darwinism and genocide most people
associate with eugenics.

However, the distributed method, where individuals choose to have children
with people whose hereditary lines they believe should continue into the
future, has been going on successfully for millions of years.

The best I could support would be more information and control. Educate people
about genes, inform them which genes they possess, and watch them use that
information to their benefit. Sort of like people with Huntington's disease
often voluntarily refuse to reproduce, due to the likelihood of their children
having it too.

------
dstorrs
1) The article writer completely missed Feynman's point. Feynman is talking
about the nature of reality, not about society and its actions. If I say
"bricks are nutritious" and the government forces everyone to eat nothing but
powdered bricks, that doesn't change the fact that bricks are not nutritious.

2) There is a slight caveat to Feynman's point -- if a theory disagrees with
experiment, it's possible that the theory is correct but the experiment / data
interpretation / etc was flawed.

~~~
nknight
I think that tries to draw too bright a line between theory and experiment.

If you view a theory as human understanding of reality, the only reason an
experiment would be fundamentally flawed (as opposed to forgetting to carry
the 2) is if the understanding, and thus theory, is wrong or at least
incomplete.

------
zxcvvcxz
Would the analogous lesson for entrepreneurs be that if the market doesn't
want it, it's wrong? I'd think there's some cases where products are ahead of
their time, i.e. they're right at the wrong time.

~~~
fallous
I'm reminded of the Heinlein quote "Engineering is the art of the practical
and depends more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual
engineer. When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before."

The same is true of markets.

------
drcube
Democracy itself is supposed to be a method of experimenting with governance.
Try making a law; if it doesn't work, repeal it and try another, or else tweak
it until it is right. The federal system is the same way; try one set of laws
in California, another in Texas, and see which set works out better.

I do think we could go further along these lines. Wiki and Github style "let
the people edit the laws before voting on them" may not be the right answer,
but our current system is definitely not ideal. Finding a way to tighten the
feedback loop will be tough, especially when a constitutional set of ground
rules seems necessary.

Other commenters are right though, no matter how we frame it, society is not
science. It's just that we feel benefits could be had by applying something
like the scientific method to the laws which govern us.

------
endlessvoid94
This is not a new video, it's part of his Messenger series lectures from 1964:
<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/>

~~~
nknight
It'd be remarkably impressive if it was a new video, considering Feynman's
been dead 24 years.

~~~
endlessvoid94
:%s/new/recently\ discovered/g

------
adviceonly
I agree with the OP about special interests misleading people into thinking
that a claim is valid because there are studies backing it up.

However, I think the OP is wrong about Feynman. Feynman was not one to blindly
believe in other people's studies. In fact, as he learned from his dad as a
youth who used to make wrong interpretations of birds, etc., people are
fallible, and so are their assumptions. What he was saying is that you can't
argue with validly collected data and valid mathmatical proof. You can
obviously argue with their interpretation.

