Watch: Richard Feynman on why he can't tell you how magnets work

The trouble is that the interviewer asked an unwittingly complex question. The tricky thing about gravity or magnetism or light or what have you is that our daily experiences with them seem so simple, and yet underneath they're deeply complicated and unintuitive.

The result is that physicists try to explain things with metaphors that don't actually work, in the hopes of making the unintuitive intuitive. The result is a kind of pseudoscience that causes lay people to come to poor conclusions.

For example, to explain global climate change you might use a metaphor of a greenhouse. Except that tricks people into thinking that the globe just warms uniformly. Then any cold winter is used as evidence to disprove the theory when all they're doing is disproving a bad metaphor.

So here Dr. Feynman uses this simple question to illustrate how complex some things can actually be.

While also coming across as a bit pompous, unfortunately.

As an aside this video is part of an amazing series. They're all worth a watch, IMO.

Asking the right questions is an important concept in science, and I also often have difficulties with people who find it rude when a question itself is analyzed, sometimes turned back, before actually being answered. People who always want simple answers to seemingly simple questions IMO tend to have a fundamantal misunderstanding of reality as we know it from a scientific viewpoint.

That seems to me like a pretty vacuous answer. An "ultimate why" is almost never possible, saying that he couldn't answer the question would have been inaccurate, and just saying that he could only answer the question in a way that the audience couldn't understand would have been a hell of a lot more patronizing.

I think you may have missed Feynman's point about "why" questions. He wasn't merely pointing out that you can keep on asking "why", and he wasn't saying that there was something wrong with asking "why". He was pointing out that where you let it stop depends on the context. In the context of everyday non-physicist understanding, you really can't correctly answer "why do magnets repel?" with anything much deeper than "they just do", but if you're willing to bring in significantly more advanced concepts you can go several layers deeper and explain the math behind interaction of magnetic fields and how ferromagnetism arises and so on. But there's a pretty big gap between the layman explanation and the next most detailed explanation that isn't highly misleading.

Feynman was deliberate in his means of communication. Was it necessary? That's a tough one to answer.

As crazy as it sounds, causing your listener to be frustrated can be a very effective rhetorical device. Feynman's goal was to get the asker to think carefully about the question he had asked. Consider that, in a way, he was relaying his own sense of frustration to the asker.

Sometimes, in order to have someone truly understand you, it is necessary for them to shift their emotional state to one more similar to yours. The beauty of Feynman's explanation is that he hits the listener hard, then walks them back to a place of understanding. I thought it was a brilliant bit of teaching.

Was it necessary? I think that a short period of discomfort is a small exchange for a deeper understanding of not just how the physics of magnets work, but an understanding of how to properly ask questions, and just how deep the physics rabbit hole goes.

It just goes to show, even if one makes some really cool stuff, someone on the internet will find offense in it.

But beyond the semantic argument he is making, I think the even greater issue is the lack of humility he is showing. In the writeup on the site they explain, "Feynman admits that it's actually an excellent question, but one he simply cannot answer in terms that a layperson can understand." But of course, that isn't true. The truth is that he doesn't have an answer, but he's choosing not to admit it.

In the end he says, "I really can't do a good job... any job... of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else that you're more familiar with because I don't understand it in terms of anything else that you're more familiar with." That's the closest he comes to actually making a humble statement, yet it's phrased in such a way that it seems like he's blaming the interviewer for not being capable of understanding.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_Trilemma

I think you didn't understand the subject. It's not that Feynman thinks he doesn't know "the ultimate why" but only that there isn't a simple analogy he can use to answer the question: sometimes to answer something correctly you have to provide enough details, and that's what he claims he can't do to the "uninitiated" listener as long as his goal is to do that "correctly." He does this intentionally, not because he's a poor teacher, but to present that fact that for some level of understanding it's necessary to invest much more time.

I see however that people are certainly more satisfied with a bad answer than somebody telling them "it's to hard for you to understand it." The bad answers even to that question are available a dime a dozen.

In my experience, this directness and terseness is a pedagogical style that's prevalent amongst technical folks -engineers, programmers, scientists- from all over. When you're explaining something complex it is important to be precise. When everyone involved in the conversation has some degree of mutual respect for each other, one can safely dispense with much of the genuflection often demanded by others.

Perhaps my experience is atypical.

Is only due to the fact that Feynman actually tries hard. And if he's frustrated, or impatient, it's because he is challenged to understand who he is talking to and that makes it hard for him to understand how long it may take to get there --and he really wants them to get there.

Doing anything else sucks, because it doesn't mean anything and Feynman wants it to mean something. Getting at the basic meaning of things is what he lived for.

People tend to take this all sorts of ways. I find watching and reading about Feynman so notable, because all the bravado and aggression is just fun down deep. He's playful and in the play comes really great insights.

He related some of this in one of his stories about the Manhattan Project. He was young, and not yet of superior standing among his physics peers. A famous and very highly regarded physicist engaged Feynman on something one day, and Feynman told him he thought the whole thing nuts! No fear, just raw sharing of mind to mind.

That guy would come back and request more dialog time with Feynman because Feynman didn't fear him and just shared his thoughts and feelings about whatever it was unabashedly.

That is what people are seeing in the interview, and it's rare. Very, very rare.

The interviewer should be quite pleased to see Feynman sharing as he would with any peer and not coddling, or glossing over things for what Feynman would consider shallow and unproductive reasons.

Strange as it may appear now, Feynman was showing respect and giving the interview an honest go, not making a show for people who would watch such things as happy curios. Instead, it's a record for those who want to know something about Feynman.

And say what you want, Feynman tried hard to demonstrate good intent in his life. Remember that on passages like this.

And the good intent here is to spark the interest of the person asking why. Rather than punt, or cheat, he's going to say why, "why?" is tough and that he can't satisfy out of respect for a fellow person he would not want to lead astray. This does require going somewhat astray, but the person will be left with some greater understanding as a consequence, and that is as good as it gets, without actually taking the time to really answer why, which is entirely too much time and outside the scope of the interview mutually agreed upon in advance.

That look in the chair, when he sits back and grins a little? It's a challenge. He's opened up a door, and he's inviting anyone watching to go right on in. Think about it some more. Thinking is good, and down that rabbit hole is where the really good stuff is. :) People can get a notch smarter just watching Feynman, and that's as he intended.

He's just precise and he cares about that. Nothing nefarious or mean in any of it.

As a side note, I believe he was teased by other physicists (notable ones) for his New York accent.

c.f. also Gordon Bell's entry in the Jargon File.