Richard Feynman cut straight to the heart of complex ideas

eliotpeper.com

26 points·eliotpeper··9 comments

Feynman explains fire. I’m a big fan and believe his crude straight to the point style, coupled with an incredible ability to storytell is what made him special. I think it’s pure, genuine, curiosity and the intellectual capacity to understand the complexities.

What a gift. I love how he just squirms with enthusiasm.

We have a couple large fields by our home that alternate yearly between soybeans and corn. The amount of biomass that accumulated in a corn field between mid June and mid July is remarkable. Knowing that nearly all of that mass is from the atmosphere and not the ground is quite a prospective shifter.

This is extremely good.

There's a good example (heh) of feynman explaining an idea here, and it's great reading too:

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

I have a similar policy that all complex ideas in my field should be thoroughly explained on a small test model. It makes learning a lot easier.

Yep. Feynman technique.

My understanding is Feynman was a great explainer partially because he despised jargon and specialized terminology in general.

Wow, that article was really short. I was hoping there would be an actual example of Feynman doing this...

there is plenty out there. google "feynman technique"

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