"it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos."
I find it hard to imagine a world where the eccentric behaviors and personal lives of practicing scientists would receive newspaper coverage.
I find it hard to imagine a world where the eccentric behaviors and personal lives of practicing scientists would receive newspaper coverage.
Really? Such tactics are all over the media nowadays. Read Manufacturing Consent then look for all of the tactics in the western "propaganda model" of operation updated for 2020. The news has never been subtle about this sort of manipulation since at least the 80's. By comparison, what I see nowadays, it seems like journalists think everyone's a mental toddler.
Look for emotional language in articles. Then count up the hard facts. There's an inverse relationship. It's not supposed to be like this!
The most significant separator for me is that, from my understanding, Feynman was an actual practicing scientist. I am struggling to think of anyone in an analogous position today who has received this kind of attention.
Nowadays, we focus primarily on wealthy (loosely) Internet-related businessmen. Do you think anyone really cares about Travis Kalanick's antics or what Elon Musk names his kids?
How about Neil Ferguson? He is/was the head of the Imperial College infectious disease modelling team and part of the UK government scientific advisory team.
He had to resign from the latter post after getting caught in a breach of lockdown rules by the media.
Oh yes, and in which country. Tone, coverage, country, related situation in that country/media-outlet...oh man that would make press a bit more transparent.
> Look for emotional language in articles. Then count up the hard facts. There's an inverse relationship. It's not supposed to be like this!
Seems like it would be great to train a model on the historical corpus of news articles to visualize this trend and inform readers of this kind of deliberate manipulation. It might also be interesting to have a browser plugin that could use the model to "rewrite" articles to remove the manipulation as well.
Yes, absolutely! The Swiss-Media (once a highly trusted News-source NZZ etc) became a shadow of it's own, its nowadays so easy to spot their 'propaganda' of what they thinks its right. Medias should inform NOT do some 'opinion formation'
This was during the early Cold War, not long after the American Castle Bravo and Soviet RDS-37 tests. Feynman was, I believe, known as one of the more important figures in the Manhattan Project and theoretical physicists in general were vital to national security. Given the background, eccentric behavior and ugly personal events were probably pretty newsworthy.
To play devils advocate here, this was at a time before to no-fault divorce. For a woman to divorce her husband she was forced to show just cause, such as abandonment, insanity, adultery or cruelty. Cruelty is the easiest to claim. he obviously was not insane, he had not abandoned her for a extended period or to the best of my knowledge been in a affair to she would have to claim cruelty true or not to leave.
I suspect form the viewpoint of the F.B.I. that it's not only someone's allegiance that is important, but how verifiable that allegiance is.
Given that the most clever and intelligent among us could be better prepared for subterfuge, it perhaps makes the question of "Is Feynman trustworthy?" rather difficult.
Wouldn't surprise me if Feynman was at least sympathetic to communism, at least to anarchism for sure, on some of the lectures when he talks about his father teaching him about equality and the disdain for prizes and titles.
>I don't think of the problem as between socialism and capitalism but rather between suppression of ideas and free ideas. If it is that free ideas and socialism are better than communism, it will work its way through. And it will be better for everybody. And if capitalism is better than socialism, it will work its way through.
In the rest of the chapter he's pretty critical of Russia in particular, because of the soviet suppression of good science in favor of party-endorsed "facts," but that's more anti-autocratic than anti-communist.
I'm not sure if he was not so much sympathetic to communism as skeptical of capitalism. At least that's the impression I got from reading his books. He's not a guy who was too concerned with money and didn't appear to have a high regard for people who do. He was much more interested in having experiences. The top-down government model of communism wouldn't be a fit for him either, he was much too free wheeling for that. Anarchism would be a bit closer but almost certainly too radical for someone not that concerned with politics. Libertarianism might have been the best fit, but only the on-paper kind, not the real life kind.
The distinctions between 'socialist', 'anarchist', 'communist', 'libertarian', and then 'objectivist' (Randian) and probably others are too blurry when considering it across time and geography; rather than most often as names of politically parties, basically "brands".
I think libertarianism had been defined in opposition to non-democratic regimes; then after the fall of feudalism it continued to be used by socialism/anarchism/communism.
I think the US Libertarian Party's name serves (or served) mostly as a rebranding of anarchism, but I am not sure about the origins of that party, anybody more knowledgeable please join in. An interesting note about them is that both Ayn Rand and Frank Zappa dismissed them as closet anarchists.
I am also interested in when did the influx of the right wing into "anarchism" or "libertarianism" happen? Maybe it has something to do with Lenin&co.'s and later Stalin's suppression of anarchism, and even later the Cold war propaganda?
Also, who invented the weird term 'anarcho-capitalist'?
> who invented the weird term 'anarcho-capitalist'?
The economist Murray Rothbard used it first in the mid-20th century, according to the Wikipedia page on anarcho-capitalism. He felt free to use the term as it borrowed some ideas from anarchism, but many would say he excluded crucial parts.
Most anarchists are very unwilling to be associated with anarcho-capitalism, and resent the prefix. They are probably even less thrilled about being associated with the libertarian party.
US Libertarians: limit the size and scope of government
Anarcho-capitalism: no centralised state, society self-regulates via free markets.
Anarchism: no heirarchical power structures, thus no private capital at all.
> US Libertarians: limit the size and scope of government
What I was aiming at with GP post was that as far as I understand, at least in the early days of the Libertarian Party, a significant number of them were actually completely against the existence of a government. (Wikipedia mentions something about an "anarchist-minarchist debate" or something like that.)
But political reality of course leads to compromise. It is simply untenable in the US, and most of the Earth to be taken seriously by a large majority of voters while espousing getting rid of the government.
Yeah and he's not exactly silent about his desire or attempts to womanize. IDK why it's so hard to like a dude, respect his work and love his writing yet simultaneously understand he's a bit of a dirt bag.
But also, he was actually supportive/accepting to female scientists when that was not a norm - up to supporting female scientist when under sexist attack.
He possibly was a narcissist simply looking for narcissistic supply. Or let's say high on this particular trait. These people are very successful and are attracted to the limelight and a lot of the times are inspiring as well because in their need to gratify themselves and their values they actually do achieve a great deal of things. However, the close ones may be neglected though, as they no longer posses narcissistic supply and their own needs interfere with the narcissist's pursuit, which pursuit is very selfish in nature. A lot of unsuspecting people are more or less on this spectrum but the fame aspect of them makes them more of assholes to the close friends and family.
Passionate people who get some limelight may steer on this path. Passionate and humble people don't get their dopamine from other's or they do but to a much lesser extent. They don't crave it as much as the former.
All things said, I don't think Feynman should be judged on his moral values, he never claimed he was a priest or a monk, he loved life and gratification. He was inspiring to others and that is what matters.
I found Richard Feynman very inspiring and I still do.
Some of his own writings stray deeply into redpill territory when talking about women. Distasteful today, but hardly out of line for the era. Had he lived he would have been the subject of many #metoo anecdotes, at least if his autobiographies are accurate.
Yes, that seems spot on but we need context to understand him better and we need to understand why this is done in the first place. Looking up long dead peoole for faults is not my hobby and think that one will find faults of different nature all around us.
As I mentioned in another comment, I suspect Feynman had some narcissistic traits, but that does not make me less inspired by his lectures and I don’t see the point of pointing these out in relation to his work directly. The output of his work had a positive influence and that should be held into account.
Another example. I love some of Arthur Clarke’s works and ideas. He was also a pedo guy and he lived and done his dirty deeds in Sri Lanka. Disgusting? yeah, absolutely. Should that make me like his works and ideas less? That is bound to confuse my brains:) so I conveniently compartimentalize his work from other things. And I agree that this personal fact could be mentioned along with his name but his work is a separate thing though
'In 1998, a British newspaper reported that he paid Sri Lankan boys for sex, leading to the cancellation of plans for Prince Charles to knight him on a visit to the country.[46][47] The accusation was subsequently found to be baseless by the Sri Lankan police and was retracted by the newspaper'
It's Peter Troyer's story, the first one. It does not mention Arthur Clarke's name, but:
> I grew up in Sri Lanka.
> Our parents mostly let us do what we wanted, but we were told to stay away—never go near—a large property that bordered my house. When we asked why the reasons were always vague.
> There were some rumors that someone very famous or maybe powerful lived there. We all got the sense that he was ...a danger in some way.
> My grandfather was star struck by the man. Grandpa could barely speak. The two began chatting. The man flattered my grandfather's painting. He said he also liked to paint but only people. The man looked towards me and said let's paint the boy.
> I was placed on a stool in front of the two men. I was eleven years old. Very quickly the neighbour said the clothes were spoiling the beauty of me. He asked me to remove my clothes. I looked at my grandpa and did as I was told. Soon after I was on the stool, naked, and crying. I don't know how long this went on but at some point my father arrived home. He quickly reviewed the scene, saw the man from the property, and...went ..nuts. He just lost it on them: raising his voice. Getting in people's faces. I honestly thought he might kill them both.
> Within a couple of hours my grandfather was gone and they never - ever - spoke again. Although in some circles it was common knowledge, the man from the property was a famous British science fiction novelist. Apparently he had been banished to (then) Ceylon from postwar Britain rather than face prison for being a pederast. I think about that day sometimes. My father didn't have a temper and rarely ever even raised his voice but the man he became in that moment while essentially unrecognizable. While we've had our ups and downs from that moment forward I never questioned his love for me again. Ever. I knew he'd kill for me. I learned how important it is to protect your family and those more vulnerable than you.
My intention was to relate just the relevant parts, but I think I ended up copying more than half of the story.
I don't like that the story does not mention Clarke, considering that Clarke (or rather his public image/legacy) is under attack from it. Dunno if there are legal implications with naming, though.
I read his autobiography and interpreted it not as a desire to womenize but rather the (perhaps misguided) attempt to apply the scientific method to picking up women.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200604154641/http://blog.nucle...