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Comment by mkolodny | Hacker News Reader

"You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods."

It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit.

He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of his career. That gave his former student some examples of worthwhile problems to start out with.

Personally, I think Feynman was very humble. Especially for a Nobel Prize winner.

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Feynman, like everyone, has his virtues and vices, but humility is definitely not among his strong points. The majority of the stories he tells about himself are anecdotes in which he is the smart person in the room making (maybe lighthearted and friendly) fun of others with a cheaply superficial pretence of humility.

I think it's likely they are two different types of humility in Feynman's case, whether it's external vs internal humility or problem solving vs social humility or what have you. It does seem to me that Feynman had a humility in how he approached problems that was bolstered by confidence, or perhaps lack of social humility.

The advice he gives in the letter is to be humble in how one approaches which problems to solve. I think it's good advice.

In most cases he probably was the smartest person in the room.

If he managed to stay lighthearted and friendly while making fun of others he’s doing a better job than me, because I’ve lost much of my patience for stupidity.

I don't know. I remember realizing when reading some of his stories, that they are fun to read but I would find that obnoxious/annoying in person.

He seemed to be remarkably charming - so I'm not sure how annoying such behaviour actually would have been.

During the encounter you’d perhaps laugh.

Afterwards you’d find yourself dazed and confused, wondering what happened and what steamrolled you in front of everyone.

> In most cases he probably was the smartest person in the room.

Excepting the times, of course, when John von Neumann was there.

In his stories he was. And while it was fun to believe him when I was reading them as a teen, now I'm inclined to take most of it with a huge grain of salt.

he doesn't really have any right to make fun of others, though. Smart people forget that they require a tremendous amount of resources and support to make best use of their intelligence. A director may be a brilliant movie maker, but he needs a whole film company to realize his visions.

A lot of smart people berate others for their stupidity while relying on them for production power and resources to realize their visions or to make money off of them. There needs to be a lot more humility in general about others, especially since in fields like game design, there are way too many smart or skilled people chasing too few supporters/fans, to the point of underpricing the efforts of their labor.

We smart people can always hire other serfs. ;)

No, sorry. I agree everybody deserves to be treated with respect, but in my experience many people who talk the talk you talk do not walk the walk at all: if they get a chance to crush somebody smarter or more able than themselves many have no limits whatsoever (except avoiding practical consequences to themselves)...

The thing with people like Feynman who are driven by curiosity is that they are not always “super nice”, but they get no joy out of ridiculing or humiliating other people, the way a lot of “small people” do, unfortunately. I’d much prefer being teased by Feynman than being verbally abused by some of the power and money hungry mediocre people I’ve come across.

Quite. Much of the cult status of Feynman was created by the man himself. He had several books written espousing his genius. As for his charm - salesmen are charming, psychopaths are charming. Charm is a 5 letter word for manipulative, as many of his colleagues wives discovered.

Your cynicism is off the charts.

Paying attention to people, listening to them carefully, answering questions and explaining things clearly, talking to them as equals instead of patronizing, etc. is not inherently “manipulative” or “psychopathic”.

The book 'Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman' by James Gleick is very balanced. Anyone that has read Surely You're Joking should also read Genius before they start their career.

Charming people are charming.

The word is just a shorthand for people who are able to express themselves in a way that puts other people at ease and engenders a positive emotional state.

It’s pretty much an unmitigated positive trait. Like any positive trait it can be paired with all sorts of other characteristics positive or negative.

But there’s really just nothing wrong with being charming, and no moral authority that derives from not being so.

Perhaps it's neither a positive nor a negative trait, but rather a power with which comes the responsibility to use it for positive purposes?

I just finished reading _Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!_ and I agree - the word that described most of his stories to me was "boastful". Most of his stories involve him being more clever than everyone else around him, rather pointedly.

However, whenever he talks about getting recruited or being tasked with something important, he always claimed to be astonished that anyone thought "little Feynman" worthy of such a high task. I take him at his word that this was his reaction.

I'm not sure what to make of this.

I'll add that though his bragging felt a little distasteful to me, I greatly enjoyed the tales and deeply appreciated his honesty and forthrightness about his life (including aspects I find less savory, like womanizing).

I'd absolutely recommend the book, but perhaps try _The Feynman Tapes_ on audiobook if possible because they're the recordings of his own speech that was written down and became the book.

>Most of his stories involve him being more clever than everyone else around him, rather pointedly.

Well, what would you have expected him to write? He was more clever than everyone around him in virtually every room he was in, for his whole life. Usain Bolt's biography would not have very many stories about the times he was outrun by people. Feynman had a healthy attitude about assigned-at-birth characteristics, he didn't deny them, but he didn't let them make him insufferable either.

That certainly wasn't the case in the Manhattan project.

Nonetheless, I see your point - most of the time, the alternative would have been to simply not tell the story, and I'm glad these stories were told.

I remember reading that people who are insecure about something, criticize or make fun others having that quality to feel better about themselves.

If this is true, then maybe Feynman really was insecure about his intelligence ("humble"), and his "boastful" stories were to make him feel better about himself and to cover up this insecurity.

(I am not a psychologist, so I can be completely wrong here.)

I think over the course of his life he became more confident as accolades and successes grew

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