

How Richard Feynman Thought  - cwan
http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman-thought/

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espeed
"It's not quite true that Feynman could not accept an idea until he had torn
it apart. Rather, the idea could not yet be part of his way of thinking and
looking at the world. Before an idea could contribute to that worldview,
Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle
that he could find...In other words, he wanted to connect a new idea to what
he already understood and thereby extend his understanding."

Perspective is the key to genius. Feynman wanted to understand problem from
all angles and understand why something was true, not just that it merely was
true. Your perspective is your answer to "Why?" (see
<http://jamesthornton.com/blog/how-to-get-to-genius>). His approach resulted
in a tight mental framework that enabled him to connect new ideas and build
upon insights from the outside in -- breadth before depth.

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aik
I'm glad this article exists.

How can a person honestly argue that another person should have spent their
time elsewhere or researched in a different manner? Feynman wrote a lot about
how he was forced into researching in certain methods and researching certain
things, and he realized he hated it and was ineffective as a result. It wasn't
until he allowed his playful, curious, and lighthearted self to come out that
he really started enjoying his work and getting somewhere. Supposedly his
breakthroughs in QED all began from a simple curiosity into the wobbling
nature of a plate that a student one day threw into the air.

People are stimulated in different ways.

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jschau
Reading new things about an old topic of interest is so refreshing --- until
the moment where you come across one fact which you know --- and which author
got wrong. Feynman was from Far Rockaway in Queens, not Long Island, as
implied by Lawrence Krauss in the first page of his book.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman>

