
A Short Talk about Richard Feynman (2005) - danso
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/short-talk-about-richard-feynman/
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georgemcbay
Decent read but I vastly prefer W. Daniel Hillis' "Richard Feynman and The
Connection Machine" as it is actually more about Feynman (in his later years,
around the same time period as Wolfram's piece) rather than using him as a
jumping off point to remind everyone of how smart the guy writing the essay
is.

[http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-
machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/)

~~~
baddox
Did you read the article, or did you just say what you think people are
supposed to say about anything Wolfram writes?

~~~
georgemcbay
I actually read the article but wasn't too surprised when he continually
inserted what I would consider too much of himself into it.

It doesn't directly bother me that Wolfram is an egotist, I don't have to deal
with him on a personal level, so why should I care? But he fancies himself a
writer (among other things) and I do think his constant need to insert himself
and his past accomplishments continually (even when his subject is ostensibly
something else) detracts a great deal from his writing and thus it is fair
game to call him out for it.

~~~
eruditely
I don't think we read the same article, obviously you are forcing what you
have decided his identity is and are trying to fit it into the article. Just
like how people see giraffes in clouds when they are just clouds.

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thearn4
> _You know, I remember a time—it must have been the summer of 1985—when I 'd
> just discovered a thing called rule 30. That's probably my own all-time
> favorite scientific discovery. And that's what launched a lot of the whole
> new kind of science that I've spent 20 years building. [See A New Kind of
> Science, page 27.]_

Oh, Wolfram...

Some self-promotional aspects aside, this was a pretty interesting write-up
about the personal side of Feynman.

One quote of his from this article stands out: _" peace of mind is the most
important prerequisite for creative work."_ I'd be very interested to know
what he would have thought about the current state of academia and scientific
research.

~~~
Fede_V
There is a similar statement by Higgs (the guy who won the Nobel prize for
physics for the discovery of the boson named after him) about how the insane
pressure to constantly publish and produce papers comes at the expense of
being able to think really hard about difficult problems.

It's a difficult problem. Universities have limited funding, and want to
attract professors that get lots of grants to self finance their own research.
To get lots of grants, you need to publish lots of high impact papers. To
publish lots of papers quickly, you need a lot of PhD students to supervise,
and you need to work in a hot and rapidly moving field. This leads to
professors acting as glorified managers who spend all their time churning out
grants, and spend an incredibly tiny fraction of their time working on their
own science.

~~~
chii
the classic problem of "you get 'promoted' to your level of incompetence".

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sytelus
I just don't know if I'm feeling sad or amused after reading this. I've read 3
full books about just Feynman (one of them twice) and still today I keep
coming across new factoids and quotes about him every now and than I hadn't
known before. If aliens came down tomorrow and asked me to pick the finest
sample of humanity across space and time, I would pick Feynman. Without a
doubt.

And here is Wolfram, a burned out prodigy busy managing a commercial company
and doing classic Cargo Cult science part time with little respect from peers
and with a seminal work called New "Kind" Of Science. He should be thankful
that he actually met living and breathing Feynman and even had opportunity to
work with him (although Feynman never seem to have mentioned Wolfram
anywhere). Instead he goes on to put quotes likes these whose only purpose
seems to show how limited Feynman was and how Wolfram didn't had those
limitations:

 _What mattered to him was the process of finding it. And he was often quite
competitive about it._

Really Wolfram? Where is your Nobel prize? Oh, I know you are waiting for the
one on new "kind" of science.

 _Some scientists (myself probably included) are driven by the ambition to
build grand intellectual edifices. I think Feynman—at least in the years I
knew him—was much more driven by the pure pleasure of actually doing the
science._

No Mr. Wolfram. You are driven by egoistic desire to leave your name
everywhere and people worshiping you for your intellect on their knees.

 _And he was a great calculator. All around perhaps the best human calculator
there 's ever been._

Yeah, he calculated some of the greatest mysteries in known physics.

The ego of Wolfram dribbles all over:

 _And one day he calls me and says: "OK, Wolfram, I can't crack it. I think
you're onto something." Which was very encouraging._

 _And it was nice of him to write such nice things about me._

~~~
stiff
None of those quotes are derogatory toward Feynman, and I don't see how
Wolfram being pleased by Feynman liking his idea says anything about Wolframs
ego. In fact, this was very modest for Wolfram standards, and a much more
interesting and cultured homage to a friend, than the ones by Susskind or
Gell-Mann:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpjwotips7E](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpjwotips7E)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE)

I must say I in general don't understand the hate a lot of people have for
Wolfram, he clearly is a bit narcissistic, but what he writes and says is
always otherwise genuinely interesting, even if not as earth shattering as he
would like. Certainly his work is not cargo cult science, he did genuinely
advance the research in cellular automata, and he even did some lasting minor
contribution to physics in his early days:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram#Particle_physic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram#Particle_physics)

~~~
m0nastic
I don't know if the vehement dislike for Wolfram is all necessarily rooted in
the same underlying cause. I suspect different people have different reasons
for it.

I think there is a kind of idealized scientist that nerds want to look up to.
A great sense of humility, a clear sense of purpose, an unwavering commitment
to reason and rationality. Yet I can think of no famous scientist that
actually fits that mold.

Another poster brings up Kanye West, someone that people seethe over that he
isn't humble enough.

I read in the parent's comment a sense of great frustration, that somehow
Wolfram isn't being sufficiently reverent to someone who they clearly idolize.
I can almost see spittle forming at the corners of their mouth. It makes me a
little sad.

Wolfram certainly doesn't do himself any favors by reinforcing the narrative
that he has a big ego, and always working in a reference to his book (which I
think this essay is much more appropriate for then how he shoe-horns it into
his other writing).

But I get it. People don't like it when you toot your own horn. Although if I
spent ten years writing a giant science tome I'd probably want to bring it up
all the time as well. I suspect Wolfram is aware of this perception of him (I
think I've actually read him mention it before). I kind of hope he ignores it
though.

~~~
shadowfox
> A great sense of humility

> But I get it. People don't like it when you toot your own horn

You have a point. But often enough people do not like it (only) when _others_
toot their horn. They have no qualms about tooting their own horn (usually
under some notion of "promoting yourself").

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visakanv
This was the quote that really resonated with me:

"You know, it's funny. For all Feynman's independence, he was surprisingly
diligent. I remember once he was preparing some fairly minor conference talk.
He was quite concerned about it. I said, "You're a great speaker; what are you
worrying about?" He said, "Yes, everyone thinks I'm a great speaker. So that
means they expect more from me."

It reminds me of Daniel Chambliss' findings in "The Mundanity of Excellence":

"Swimmers like Lundquist, who train at competition-level intensity, therefore
have an advantage: arriving at a meet, they are already accustomed to doing
turns correctly, taking legal starts, doing a proper warmup, and being
aggressive from the outset of the competition. If each day of the season is
approached with a seriousness of purpose, then the big meet will not come as a
shock.

Feynman's diligence was not at all surprising. We cultivate this idea of
eccentric geniuses. But it's precisely the diligence- to little details, over
years and decades- that makes all the difference.

\- [http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-
excell...](http://www.visakanv.com/blog/2014/01/the-mundanity-of-excellence-
by-daniel-chambliss/)

------
danso
Kind of sad to see this, or at least what Wolfram perceived of the situation:

> _It did have some limits, though. I think he never really believed it
> applied to human affairs, for example. Like when we were both consulting for
> Thinking Machines in Boston, I would always be jumping up and down about how
> if the management of the company didn 't do this or that, they would fail.
> He would just say: "Why don't you let these people run their company; we
> can't figure out this kind of stuff." Sadly, the company did in the end
> fail. But that's another story._

I don't believe that tech/computers/science is the end all of improving human
existence. But sometimes, the systems we construct _are_ machines, in the
worst way. I wonder if what Feynman meant that they _could_ "figure it out",
but it was either beneath them, or, Feynman was wise/cynical enough to know
that that their kind of individual intellect had no real power in that realm
of political and collective human affairs.

In a way, it's nice that a genius is introspective enough to know that
intellect and cleverness, especially by individuals alone, can't be
efficiently applied to the business concerns that frustrated Wolfram. On the
other hand, many of us below Feynman's knack and energy for problem-solving
would say the same thing about the physics that he _did_ get around to working
out.

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GuiA
The bit about how Feynman organized his life is particularly interesting. He
was quite the character, and became extremely successful because he was able
to thrive in his academic environment. I wonder if a personality like Feynman
would flourish today?

~~~
Scienz
The part of "Surely You're Joking" where he cracks the safe at Los Alamos
makes me wonder more if he would have gone the way of Aaron Swartz, in today's
world.

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acidburnNSA
The Wikipedia journey I just took thanks to this was amazing: Rule 30 ->
cellular automata -> Conway's Game of Life -> Golly_(program). This lead to
the package manager and then an hour of fascinating entertainment going
through the samples. Wow.

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vonnik
can wolfram write anything that doesn't compliment wolfram?

