
Richard Feynman’s Caltech Graduation Address on Integrity  - swany4
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
======
irahul
What's remarkable is Feynman went to great lengths in investigating the
crackpot theories, instead of outright rejecting them. I won't even bother
trying doing anything he mentions in the article, except for the esalen
jaccuzi thing(wink wink). And I am pretty sure I will end up as Feynman did.
Geeks and there "Well, actually"
<http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html>

I think the point he is trying to make to audience is he is willing to accept
ideas which invalidate what he knows. His believes are verifiable, and though
he is willing to give yours a chance, he won't just "let it be" unless it's
verifiable.

I read another of his stories in which he took the class to the gym where he
had a bowling ball attached to a string hanging down the ceiling in the center
of the room. He went to the opposite end with the ball, had his back by the
wall, brought the ball to his nose and let it go. The ball swung to the other
side, swung back, and came dangerously close to his face(well, at the same
spot where he let it go - simple pendulums. duh). He told the students "I want
you to know I know and believe what I am going to teach. There are no
manifestations or biases - only truth"(paraphrased)

~~~
ymusti
There's another Feynman bowling ball story. He was watching a younger physics
prof make the same demonstration in a Caltech lecture hall. Instead of cleanly
releasing the ball, she inadvertently gave it a slight shove. Fortunately for
her, Feynman saw the mistake and pushed her out of the way of the returning
ball which left a mark in the wall where her head had been.

~~~
gjm11
The kinetic energy in the ball's motion when it returned to her face should
have been no greater than that imparted by the "slight shove". Can't have been
so very slight. (Or else leaving a mark in the wall was easier than it
sounds.)

I just tried thwacking my nose with about as much force as I could reasonably
describe as a "slight shove" in that situation. It wasn't terribly pleasant,
but it wasn't very painful and did no damage.

I cordially doubt that the younger prof was in danger of anything very bad.
Assuming that the rest of the story is true, I suspect that Feynman was either
being (commendably) over-cautious or showing off. Perhaps both.

(There's a more unpleasant failure mode for this demonstration: If you move
your head forward after releasing the ball, then it'll hit your nose earlier,
when it's lower down, which if the ball is very heavy can mean quite a
considerable amount of extra energy.)

~~~
cma
A bowling ball is inelastic; whatever you thwacked your nose with (your hand?)
definitely isn't. Drop an egg 1 foot onto a carpet, then try onto concrete.

~~~
gjm11
Yes, fair comment. I don't think that makes more than a factor of 2
difference, though. When the impact happens, in one case the squashing is half
in my nose and half in my hand, versus all in my nose if it's a bowling ball.

(The egg example makes things look worse than they are. If an egg squashes at
all, it breaks. My nose can squash quite a bit before that happens.)

------
tokenadult
The .PDF of the June 1974 original Caltech publication of the address,

<http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf>

besides confirming the text, includes photographs of Feynman delivering the
address in academic gown. As always, the famous line from the address is "The
first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest
person to fool." This is something for every thinker to think about every day
in daily life, for a lifetime.

------
Nevaeh
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the
easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that."

Upon reading this paragraph, I was reminded of his book "What do you care what
other people think", which was a homage to Arlene, partly because Feynman made
the fatal mistake of trusting the doctor's judgement to disregard the
blatantly obvious diagnosis. He wrote about his experience in much more detail
here:

Part 1: <http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png>

Part 2: <http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png>

\--------------------------------------------------------- //Comments below
are irrelevant to the thread, I just felt like sharing.

Feynman was depressed for a while but eventually his love for physics helped
him recover. Hans Bethe once said, "Feynman depressed is just a little more
cheerful then any other person when he is exuberant." Feynman is arguably the
most logical and happiest human being that has ever existed.

Feynman's magnificent exuberance and puzzle solving enthusiasm remained up
until his last days, where his coworker Christopher Sykes remarked "Look at
this man. He faces the abyss. He doesn't know whether he is going to live
through this week. But he was consumed by it, and he worked on it all day
long...." <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s>

A few days before his second operation, Feynman sang a bongos song about
orange juice, an amusing take of Linus Pauling's advice to possibly cure his
cancer. Just look at his smile at the end of this video:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8>

I would also like to add that on Feynman's last days at the hospital, his last
words to his artist friend Jirayr was "Don't worry about anything, go out and
have a good time!" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s>
Maximus would be proud. "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile
back."

------
jpwagner
his point about not selling to laypeople is important in at least two ways.

it's a shame that many scientists game the grant system making their research
sound more sexy than it is, seems to undermine the point of publicly funded
research (as feynman points out).

and i know i drive myself crazy every morning reading most of the articles
here: <https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc>

------
rd108
Did not realize Feynman used meditation, isolation tanks, etc.!

"First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic
experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations,
so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of
this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then
I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was."

~~~
paulovsk
To be more precise, he used isolation tanks and not meditation (as far as I
can tell, after reading his autobiography "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman",
highly recommended).

He played around with lockpicking too. Outstanding dude.

------
Jun8
As always, many of Feynman's points are spot on. Yet, why do I get a sense of
unease after reading this piece? I think his description of the scientific
process is right, but its a bit too simplistic (of course, he was giving a
address, not a lecture, but still). Specifically,

1\. Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri
Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology
student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are
trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both.

2\. He seems to say: " _This_ is the way to proceed scientifically, you can't
do it another way", where the methods he alludes to are the methods of
experimental physics. (simply put) In physics you do your experiment,
carefully controlling factors and you get your result. Unfortunately, this
method is either hard to apply (e.g. in the rat experiment, there are so many
variables to control, some unknown, because it's a complex organism, now think
of experiments on humans) or downright impossible (e.g. the educational
problem he mentions, which is a good example of a Wicked Problem, we're still
discussing solutions).

3\. Expanding on the education system point: Feynman says: " 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." But therein lies the
big problem: _nobody_ can agree on how to measure how good a system, observe
the huge teachers's ratings debates taking place in the US. What Feynman
misses, I think, is that these are socio-scientific problems, if scientific
problems have O(n^2) complexity these have O(2^n). You definitely need the
scientific method but that's not going to be enough in attacking these
problems.

4\. Feynman also directs his assault solely on the "experts" and charlatans
who create and perpetuate these stupid pesudoscientific theories, e.g.
"ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this
pseudoscience." What would be a better way to eradicate such tendencies would
be to study why human beings are so susceptible to ideas like religion, UFOs,
superstition, etc., i.e. target the consumers rather than dealers.

Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp of complex
physical concepts he may be the best in history. And from what I've ready
about him he seemed to have a weak spot (like Newton's alchemy, Einsteins's
reluctance to accept QM, etc.) for showmanship, by which I mean: when he got
the momentum going with a good example/though/principle that has applications
outside physics he was a bit too quick to overgeneralize.

~~~
crusso
I think your criticisms miss the mark by a long shot.

1\. Mixes in? Is your charge that he tried to commit the fallacy of
equivocation in some way? I'm not following how discussing the obvious abuse
of integrity that Geller demonstrated and then the less-obvious abuse of
integrity the psychology student demonstrated detracts from his point that
integrity is really important to the usefulness of the Scientific method.

2\. Seems to say? To me, he "seems to say" that a lack of integrity in the
whole process is a commonly occurring characteristic of Cargo Cults. He seems
to say that a lack of integrity diminishes the utility of the Scientific
method.

3\. You entirely missed the point of Feynman's education comment and the
context of the part you quoted. Basically, he said that what we're doing to
fix problems in education isn't working and we continue to rely on the same
people and methods to fix them. The funny thing is that here we are almost 40
years after Feynman gave that address and we've never added the integrity that
he spoke about to the process of improving education in America. As with the
Cargo Cults, it's not surprising that results haven't improved.

4\. This item/suggestion makes no sense. Feynman isn't proposing a holistic
plan to fix the problem. The speech we're discussing was a commencement
address to upcoming graduates from an institute that trains Scientists. Why
wouldn't it be entirely appropriate to urge new Scientists to consider the
importance of integrity to the Scientific method?

> Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp [...]

I don't think you made one semi-solid point in your critique of this address
by Feynman; but you're going to double-down and start to generalize about how
Feynman was too quick to overgeneralize? Are you trying to be ironic?

~~~
Jun8
1\. There's a _huge_ difference between the Geller and the psychology student,
the former does lack the integrity but you can't talk of "abuse of integrity"
for the student, because (i) she was doing things in the prescribed way
(unless, of course, you're ready to say almost all psychology departments (and
most other humanities, too) are guilty of the same sin, and (ii) even if she
did want to do a better experiment, in general it's not obvious how to do it
in most cases in such disciplines. The point about putting the rat maze in
sand is far-fetched (how many of us took such precautions in our PhD
experiments). My point is that there's absolutely no comparison between Geller
and his ilk and the student. Feynman is beating up on psychology here, I
think, because it's not as rigorous as physics.

3\. I think you missed _my_ point here, based on your mentions of "same
people" , "integrity", etc. Many, many approaches have been used to solve the
education problem in the US in the past 40 years, some quite innovative, and
not by the same people either. People from outside the field, like Feynman or
more recently Bill Gates, think that the problem is just a case of idiots
doing the same old thing, once you bring about the better methods, "integrity"
(in this case perhaps may refer to teacher's ratings) and money, the problem
may be solved relatively easily. As we have seen, that is not the case,
because although the above sentiments contain most of the truth, there are
other factors affecting the problem, too. The point is, unless you can attack
_all_ the factors at once, you won't be able to solve such deep sociological
problems, which is why these require scientific++ approaches.

As for your tone, why not try to be a little more humble, rather than "makes
no sense", "semi-solid" etc., why not "I didn't understand", even if the
argument does suck.

~~~
crusso
1\. I don't understand. Are you saying that Feynman needed to NOT point out a
flaw in the psychologist's method because she was doing things in a prescribed
way or because doing things with "Scientific integrity" wouldn't have been
easy?

> Feynman is beating up on psychology here, I think, because it's not as
> rigorous as physics.

I don't think the text of the address supports that conclusion. Even he were
doing that, it doesn't mean that his argument was unsound. I don't understand
the motivation for your ad hominem here, but I note the invalidity of your
argument.

3\. I don't understand. Does the fact that we have plenty of examples of 180
degree turnarounds in academic performance in the worst school districts in
the country not indicate that there are solutions that empirically show a
better way to run an education system not put a lie to your claim that this is
not a problem that we can apply success-based Scientific-like methods to? I
would most humbly suggest that you view the documentary entitled "Waiting for
Superman" which documents successful education initiatives in some of the
worst school districts in the country that are resisted by teachers' unions
and the politicians whom they fund for obvious money and power reasons.
Feynman, 40 years ago, had remarkable understanding of the problem that we're
still dealing with today.

> As for your tone, why not try to be a little more humble,

I don't understand. Am I supposed to feign ignorance when I thoroughly
understand the arguments you attempted to make and spotted why they are
invalid? Would dissembling make me humble? I think they would make my rebuttal
less clear and needlessly disingenuous... but we can try it your way for this
post.

------
cheatercheater
This speech is very good because it illustrates well the points I was missing
when explaining to many people why their bogus wasn't science. Great tool to
now have at my disposal.

