Eh, Feynman put a lot of effort into caring about what other people thought for his whole life. As Murray Gell-Mann said in his obituary, “He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself.”
He’s talking about a chapter from Feynman’s autobiography where he explicitly practiced being an uncaring asshole and was surprised at the effectiveness.
Not sure if we talk about the same chapter, but I don’t think it’s fair to characterize this behavior as being an asshole. He realized that he cannot force himself to work on a big problem. Instead he needed to start small with some seemingly inconsequential problem. This later grew into a major discovery.
No I think we’re talking about separate chapters. Iirc (it’s been decades since I read it!) while dating after his first wife died someone advised him he was too “nice” and that women like alpha males who act like assholes. He decided to test that out both on his dates and professionally. He found it largely worked iirc—the dates were more successful, and people at work more responsive. But he didn’t like the kind of person it made him into so he stopped the test.
Still I suspect the experience must have ingrained in him an understanding of the effectiveness of not caring what other people think, even if you don’t have to be an asshole about it.
If he really didn't care what people thought, he wouldn't have told anecdotes and written books telling people how he didn't care what people thought about him. He wanted other people to think that he didn't care what other people thought.
In general, caring about what other people think is a good thing. The alternative is to be a sociopath.
