Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwanem | Hacker News Reader

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Feynman was a fascinating person, and remains well able to reward further interest - his autobiographical works being a fine place to start.

Generally I'd also try to recommend a work by someone with a less favorable but still well founded perspective, for comparison. But I have yet to encounter anyone who takes such a view of Feynman. Perhaps the closest is the article [1] on his time at Thinking Machines, whence comes this matchless quote:

> Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it."

[1] http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...

I found him to be somewhat full of himself from the autobiographical works alone.

Then again, I probably would be too, if I was Richard Feynman.

I think at least one of his "autobiographies" is actually a bunch of his stories recollected by a third party, which doesn't help with that impression.

I somewhat did as well, but I imagine when you're as bright as him it's just something that's going to happen.

I don't think that is at all true. Some of the most intelligent people I've met were incredibly humble. Some were, ah, not.

You can be brilliant and also a bit of a jackass, clearly.

Murray Gell-Mann has some not so positive views about Feynman https://youtu.be/rnMsgxIIQEE

Was Feynman sexist? A quick googling finds nothing.

>Was Feynman sexist?

In the same way, and probably much less, that any male was in a totally different era of the 60s and 70s...

I know plenty of men who lived through that era (and one man who was born 4 years after Feynman) who are not in the slightest bit sexist. Or are at least far too polite to show it.

Feynman was clearly a bit of a prick. It also appears that he behaved rudely toward women [0]. In my opinion, the fact that there were some (significant) negative aspects of his personality doesn't take anything away from what he accomplished, or from the (significant) positive aspects of his personality.

[0] http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine...

The above described behaviour was at the very least extremely bad manners .. even in the 60s/70s.

Why is asking people for something is bad manners? Especially as you put it "extremely bad manners"?

I suggest that you try asking random women in the office to bring you soup and see how that goes.

Heh, for an even better reaction he should try asking random men in the office to bring him soup.

Depending on his workplace, things could become physical :D

It actually turns up a lot of article about Feynman and sexism. E.g. this one:

http://mathematigal.com/home/2014/7/14/feynman-is-not-my-her...

Is there anything in that article about Feynman except an unsubstantiated claim made during divorce proceedings?

Apparently not.

Also, I seem to remember reading that similar claims were routinely made at the time in order for the divorce to be approved by the court. I.e. nobody was trying to make claims of abuse, they were simply trying to ensure the divorce was approved, and both parties agreed to make whatever exaggerated or false claims that could be seen as reasonable grounds for divorce.

Anyway, that’s what I remember. I could of course be wrong about this particular case.

What's your standard for "substantiated"? We're only going to have reports of what people said about him.

That's rather unfortunate. If I may propose an alternative treatment of Feynman though: simply forget that he was sexist and instead claim he was very progressive and helped female colleaguea all the time. People already want to be like Feynman, so if we simply turn Feynman's historical image into what we want people to be like we would accomplish more than by telling people that their heroes are evil.

>we would accomplish more than by telling people that their heroes are evil.

Not to mention that being sexist is not evil, just bad manners (or that there's no such thing as "evil", it's a theological concept).

Discriminating against someone because of their gender is wrong, not just bad manners. "It's not wrong because nothing is truly wrong" is surely an excuse of last resort. I don't see anyone on here bringing that point up when people are complaining about NSA surveillance or some other hacker cause célèbre.

>Discriminating against someone because of their gender is wrong, not just bad manners.

Depends on the discrimination. Costing them a job opportunity is wrong. Telling them "hey, make me some tea" is bad manners -- same as if you asked a lower ranking male employee whose job is not it, that.

>"It's not wrong because nothing is truly wrong" is surely an excuse of last resort.

It's also an excuse nobody made. Wrong != evil. People are not cartoonish figures who are either holy or evil.

>I don't see anyone on here bringing that point up when people are complaining about NSA surveillance or some other hacker cause célèbre.

I'm not sure of the relevance. NSA surveillance is totalitarian. Asking female colleagues to "make you coffee" is impolite.

>Telling them "hey, make me some tea" is bad manners -- same as if you asked a lower ranking male employee whose job is not it, that.

No, treating your women colleagues as if they are inferior merely because they are women is wrong. It is not merely bad manners, any more than racism or xenophobia are merely bad manners.

>It's also an excuse nobody made.

Are you just referring to the fact that I used the word 'wrong' instead of the word 'evil'? If so, just substitute 'evil' for 'wrong' in my previous comment.

>No, treating your women colleagues as if they are inferior merely because they are women is wrong.

Here's the thing: asking them to make him a coffee doesn't mean he thinks they are inferior. At worst, it assumes that this is something that they'll gladly do -- which is more about the era, than about himself. Many others would do the same without anybody thinking twice about it, we just magnify this anecdote from the 50s and 60s because he's famous. Heck, in the same time they had different seats and toilets for blacks and whites and people were OK with that, it was the law even...

>It is not merely bad manners, any more than racism or xenophobia are merely bad manners

Racism alone is not even bad manners -- it's just BS thinking (finding differences in races). Lots of old white elders for example can be racist but otherwise good people (and kind even to people with different skins they're thinking in racist ways about). It will have to translate in some actual harm to become actually (instead of merely potentially) bad.

In other words: people can think whatever they like, as long as they are not putting it in action that hurts others. The same thing, that is, that one might grant to artists with violent tendencies and visions that put that in their art. Some prudes might complaint, but as long as they don't actively hurt real people, what's the problem?

Yes, asking someone to make you coffee is in fact treating them as "inferior". Firstly, in the sense of superior versus inferior: master versus servant. Secondly in the sense that your own work is too important to be interrupted with the preparation of coffee, whereas theirs isn't, or not to the extent that yours is.

Evil is also a well studied concept in philosophy, e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/ (Without claiming any relation to the discussion)

Haha, uh, that would be… one bizarre way to go about things.

Nah, I'd rather have the truth, yet work to nonetheless have people be good. Many heroes are flawed; let's emulate their positive qualities, and avoid their negative ones, without failing to acknowledge them or outright covering them up.

> he was very progressive and helped female colleaguea all the time.

If there were only some sort of diagram to describe this many worlds idea

Wouldn't it be better to explain them nobody is perfect?

That's a pretty evil suggestion, but it may just work.

Of course it would. Think of say Abraham "I would never tell a lie" Lincoln. Who chased after a woman in the freezing snow to give her back her 20p. Our heroes always been moulded into idealised versions of themselves, a sort of mythological figures. You probably think it's evil because it seems like historic revisionism, i.e. what Stalin, Kim, etc. have done. I think it's justified to tell small white lies like this, like "Feynman respected women", if it helps people be better towards each other.

Did you ever read that chapter of Surely You're Joking where Feynman hanged himself from a tree for seven days to learn the secrets of subatomic physics? That's where Feynman diagrams came from.~

Having read his book the answer is yes, but not exceedingly so for a man of his time. His chapters on wooing dancing girls is not for someone with especially delicate sensibilities. But remember this is during the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Sexism was the norm, in fact it was considered good for society in upper class circles.

It's unfair to be hard on a man for simply living in a different age.

>>It's unfair to be hard on a man for simply living in a different age.

Unfortunately this how most current day news, trends and discussions are shaping out to be. Pretty much a lot of things considered bad now, were once perfectly acceptable.

Another annoying things these days are people who pick up some kind of negative thing about a famous personality and use that to discredit their whole life's work. Like talking something negative about Gandhi, and then use that ruse to make it look like his whole life was a waste.

I think that in cases like that you are the one being reductionist, not the other way around. Bringing up the flaws of people like Ghandi, MLK, Feynman, Hawking etc is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, even a responsible thing to do. Great men are still imperfect and their problems do not discredit them.

In a way its dangerous to not bring up their flaws; say MLK jr. defended the rights of people of color but was against gay rights. It is wrong to idolize him utterly, because then his views can legitimize views we think are wrong now.

I don't think any reasonable person tries to tear down great men and women by bringing up their flaws. I think they are just trying to recognize the real person, rather than the ideal. Their life does not reduce to one mistake just because we talk about it happening.

All you say is true in general. But Gandhi, while apotheosized in the West, is not so universally admired in India. Many people celebrated his assassination. A great many Indians, at the time and now, think that he set back Indian independence significantly, and that, to the extent that his economic ideas were adopted, they retarded the development of the nation.

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