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Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

Ask yourself why you considered him a hero. You don't know this person. He's a person, just like you. I went through a similar process a couple years ago.

Relevant quote regarding Feynman:

…in many ways Richard was a sexist. 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." That was the essence of Richard's charm.

It's complex. You can respect their achievements while separating the other half. And until you really know someone, it's not good to lump the two halves together in your mind.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752395.

I think it is even more complex than that. Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects.

Hopefully over time we all learn to temper the bad while growing the good.

Some do a better job than others, but also we can never know the totality, bad or good, of any person.

In my opinion that’s important to bear in mind when people disappoint us, or we disappoint ourselves.

> Even people without famous achievements have good and bad aspects.

Exactly! Is there a single person who doesn't have good and bad aspects? Nope. The balance isn't the same between everyone, sure, but 'no one is perfect'.

But the point isn’t the individual. The questions we need to ask are - why did people feel empowered to do what they did? Why wasn’t there anything in place to hold these people accountable for their actions? And what are the larger patterns and their consequences (e.g. widespread sexism and sexual harassment pushes women out of the workforce/positions of power)

Usually the answers are the same. People feel empowered most often by the prevailing attitude of their societies. If we want to see less of something then we (all) need to speak up against it. Can we raise our hands when someone asks us if we ever went against prevailing culture and stood up for someone (or ourselves), even at a grave cost?

Also some are psychologically disturbed due to various reasons and those people need therapy and mere reactionary punishment will not improve matters in the long run (for society).

Seems like the same question as that religious one about what would keep a person honest in lieu the wrath of a higher power/promise of eternal life/whatever external motivator.

Wow, I wasn't aware. I did some searching and his own writing is even more damning (the chapter "You Just Ask Them?" in "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!")

> Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.

Further excerpts and discussion here: https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...

The fact that he said "during the next day" makes it sound like the rest of the story might change the situation. Can someone who has read the book please weigh in?

The context of the story is that he keeps buying drinks for women who flirt with him at nightclubs (e.g. one or another traveling singer) who then near the end of the night make some excuse why they can’t spend more time with him and leave.

He notices one of the women who made some excuse about a party that night has been talking with the MC frequently, and surmises correctly that they are married – turns out the woman wasn’t actually looking for romance and was just leading Feynman on to get free drinks out of him. The permanent singer at the club had been introducing women to him after first telling the women he was a big spender.

Feynman befriends the couple (singer and MC), and they talk about how plenty of rich men at the bar keep spending money on the girls there without getting anywhere romantically. The MC tries to teach Feynman about the social roles people take on at a bar. The key lesson is that a man who buys a woman a drink up front is unlikely to end up getting the one night stand he wants, but if he refuses to buy her anything, his chances will be better. Feynman tried it out by getting a girl to pay him back for a sandwich, and a few hours later she came by at the end of the night and invited him to her room, so the lesson apparently worked.

The “bitches” part is some kind of temporary psychological reprogramming he’s doing on himself for a day or two so that he can bring himself to objectify people against his usual inclination, so that he can try the experiment. It’s clear in context that he doesn’t think all women are “bitches”.

Feynman tried it one more time some while later on someone who wasn’t a traveling singer, flirting a bit with a girl but then asking if she would sleep with him before he would buy her a drink. She agreed.

His conclusion at the end is: “So it worked even with an ordinary girl! But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.”

Note: I’m not making any value judgments here, just recounting the story.

The summary is unnecessary, the entire story is in that post and includes stuff like:

I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!”

It's probably better if people just read it.

Again, he spent one day amping himself up so that he could spend one evening play-acting as a misogynist jackass, including throwing this single (offensive but also somewhat jokey sounding) line at a woman after she suggested that he buy her a sandwich so they could eat together at her place, but then took the sandwiches he bought and was about to leave without him. She can’t have been that offended by the line, considering she came back a few hours later and invited him to her room.

The point of the story is that misogynist jackasses can be successful at finding one-night stands a bar but he didn’t enjoy it, so he only ever tried it twice.

Maybe you think that is damning evidence of some inherently irredeemable character flaw, but let he/she who hasn’t ever once spent an evening being an asshole (intentionally for an amateur sociology experiment or otherwise) cast the first stone.

Feynman initially assumed that if a man bought drinks for a woman, she owed him sex. After these experiences, he assumed that if a man “disrespected” a woman by not buying her anything, she provided him with sex because she was stupid or masochistic.

Sadly, in both these cases, he never considered the possibility that a woman’s sexual consent and worth should not be monetized in the first place.

(a) Feynman never claims anyone owed him sex. All he said was that the men buying women drinks out of an unrealistic hope of getting a one-night stand out the other end were fools.

(b) Feynman never said that not buying her something was “disrespectful” (though the MC did say that the man should (1) be disrespectful and also (2) not buy a woman anything up front). The “disrespectful” part was insulting someone or directly propositioning a stranger for sex in return for a drink.

You are reading a whole lot more into the story about Feynman’s “assumptions” and “considerations” than is supportable by the text. Overall I would say your comment is considerably more condescending and offensive than the story.

If you want to give Feynman crap about his other treatment of women throughout his life, so be it, but this story is pretty thin evidence for whatever case you’re trying to make.

That comment is from the post, which again, I'd suggest people read instead of a paraphrase.

This is the advice offered to him:

“Therefore,” he continued, “under no circumstances be a gentleman! You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first rule is, don’t buy a girl anything –– not even a package of cigarettes — until you’ve asked her if she’ll sleep with you, and you’re convinced that she will, and that she’s not lying.”

This is his conclusion to that advice:

The master was right. So the lesson was terrific!

You can take from it whatever you want.

The master of ceremonies was right, as in: acting disagreeable, pushy, socially superior, insulting, etc., and then directly propositioning someone for sex before paying for anything was effective in practice (at least twice) at getting women at a bar to agree to a one-night stand.

Edit: I read “the post”. Either the author has poor reading comprehension and largely failed to understand the content of the story (maybe Feynman can be blamed for not having written it in a clearer way), or she is being disingenuous.

I think the right phrase here might have passed out of our vocabulary during a long recent period of extreme permissiveness. It's ungentlemanlike to speak of such things.

Feyman was the original PUA.

It sounds like whoever told him the buying drinks doesn't work theory was the original PUA, and then he tried it thought there was something to it but didn't care to continue?

Feynman is a redpiller

Many, likely most, people of prior generations held views that would shock today's worshippers of the Blank Slate Religion.

I remember when The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists came out and was a fairly big deal, as far as those things go. All I could think was, didn't Feynman write about this 20 years ago?

He was a product of his time. That section (unsurprisingly) is preceded by him acting gentlemanly, as he always had, and failing to attract anyone. Gender roles work both ways, and that was apparently how society there and then in that social context expected men to act.

His time was a product of people, like him, the ones that lived at that time. The causality is reversed.

Surely you understand that the both statements are true and that culture and people are an iterative process where both affect each other?

> He was a product of his time.

This is never an excuse because millions of other men were products of the same time and didn't behave like this, FFHS.

He was not really gentlemanly before, he was slimy. He attempted to play innuendo and manipulation game, but he was bad at it. He was not nice guy as in "polite helpful man nice to people around indiscriminately". He was a guy that buys drinks to random women he just met hoping they will have sex with him afterwards. The actual 1950 gentlemen was supposed to buy stuff to show how good potential provider he is, then girl supposedly falls in love, then they marry and he provides while she cares about house, children and him. There was no such intention in these interactions.

Then he moved on to directly state his intentions, which actually worked, because those women were actually open to having one night stands. But that move was not possible for him unless he convinced himself that women in question is worth less then nothing.

But, if his nice guy play would work and they would really fall in love with his nice guysness and then had sex with him, they would be really hugely disappointed next morning cause he was in it for sex only. So I guess it is very good thing all players except him were experienced enough to recognize the situation and seen through his nice guy act.

I'd argue that is still the case. As long as people working at bars don't earn a fair wage and as long as tipping culture remains a thing, I won't trust anyone's kindness over there as genuine, and more as a tool to get more tip money.

Might be a good time to link something wonderful about him (other than his physics; posted this previously on HN but it gained no traction)...

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/17/richard-feynman-arl...

He creates many many good movies. Yes, his bad behavior doesn't nullify his achievements. Many famous/talented people are jerks in history, and 99% won't survive under today's moral microscope. The achievements wouldn't cover what they did personally to other people, however, the reverse is also true.

At the same time, we cannot excuse his behavior just because he does stuff we like.

If Richard's behavior is disappointing, Einstein takes the cake. The guy was p00n hound, lousy husband and a shitty father.

But the man did revolutionize our understanding of physics.

So take the good with the bad.

Source?

Many exist, but I’d recommend his recent biography by Walter Isaacson.

I think it's important to separate different types of harassment. Yes, Feynman was probably sexist and viewed women in terms of stereotypical gender roles, but so did probably 70% plus of people in the 60s.

I specifically contrast that with the many recent reports of deliberate abuses of power or outright assault. There was still a knowledge, even back in the not too distant past, that those things were wrong, as evidenced by the fact that so many men tried to keep their behavior hidden.

Yes! Why do we keeping on calling assault "misconduct" or "inappropriate behavior"?

I think there is a difference between "grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes" and "looking around for the nearest 'girl' and asking if she would fetch it to him".

Of course, but they're talking about the risks/results of holding the entirety of a person up as hero when you may not know everything about them. Then they used an example they felt was relevant to them and possibly relevant to many HN readers. There was no suggestion that the actions were as bad.

I mean even after you think you know somebody it’s useful to recognize they have good parts and bad, separately. Lasseter can still be a hero for his work as a director (writer? Creator? Honestly not sure about his title.) without looking up to his social behavior at all.

It would be weird in any case to assume that, erm, career people are just as heroic in other spheres of their life.

I absolutely think that way, that we can and should separate the person from the achievements (case in point: I love Roman Polanski's films). Nevertheless, it's a natural reaction to be sad when a person you hold in high esteem is revealed to have negative aspects in other areas.

> You can respect their achievements while separating the other half

Agree to disagree. If people would tell them to go to hell from the beginning, their achievements would go to someone else and we would all be better for it.

> their achievements would go to someone else

It doesn't work like that unfortunately.

This would require a very strong assumption that geniuses are a commodity. That all it takes is to be in the right place and be given the right opportunity and anyone could have done what he did.

It's probably true. Given enough time and people, someone's going to do it. You just gotta look at ancient civs and how they often would independently come up with really complex stuff. Given the spread of knowledge since that time, some discoveries might be easier.

Billions of people over hundreds of years produces lots of opportunities.

This was not OP's argument. The argument is that we could have replaced Feynman with whoever was second-best-yet-not-a-chauvinist-pig, and we would get exactly the same outcome, sans sexism.

That's one way of reading it, sure.

The iPhone wasn't invented by Apple, they just had a great combination of timing on manufacturing processes, great marketing and a decent UI to start with.

There is no doubt in my mind that we would've made the same progress with any other company, albeit perhaps cosmetic differences.

I think this is translatable to most other advancements. It's nearly always iterational, and either someone's first, different people discover something independently or it's a mashup of separate discoveries.

History makes geniuses, smart people exist everywhere.

With all due respect, I think scientific breakthroughs aren't really comparable to innovations in consumer goods

You can tell people that their behavior in one area is wrong without failing to respect their achievements in another area, so your statement (as well as manifestly being false; disrespecting Feynman doesn't magically create another equally-talented physicist) is a non-sequitur.

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