Feynman’s Breakthrough: Disregard Others | Hacker News Reader

Feynman’s Breakthrough: Disregard Others

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64 pointsmetadat20 comments

Dangerous Idiot Strategy: Do X, which sounds cool. (Where X may be "Disregard Others")

Genius Strategy: Do X, which happens to sound cool, in carefully constrained contexts and timeframes*, where X is low-risk & likely high-reward.

*Genius may be required to correctly set constraints.

I think this is missing the point. The article isn't saying that Feynman always disregarded others. He'd hit a wall in his career, and the way to break out of it was to employ this psychological trick, consciously or not, to regain self confidence. And clearly it worked.

Disregard others is a high risk high reward move. And doing it too much would ruin your career.

Most of the time, listening to others can avoid your stumbling into dead ends, reinventing the wheel, or losing touch with important problems.

Of course, the biggest breakthroughs will often come from disregarding the existing paradigm, but the art is both believing in the current theory (so you can make progress within it) and disbelieving that it is the full story (so you can make the breakthroughs).

For a genius, yes. For most people it is important to get help and cooperate a lot. Also notable is that this reads differently after controversy surrounding James Watson

Feynman didn't oppose cooperation. The advice is to disregard naysayers who tell you your effort is going in a wrong direction or is doomed.

But yes, it works best if you are a genius who is likely to be right. But also, analysis paralysis hurts the non genius more, because the genius can make more progress, which is motivating, in the time that the non genius gives up and tries something different. For the non genius, though, discouragement is in the form "you can't do this", not "it's a bad idea in.l general".

This is a destructive way to go about life.

Imagine saying something like this to a kid or a young adult: you will make him think he is unworthy and that "it's not for him", thus destroying any potential he has because of your closemindedness.

Well, that’s assumptive. People will naturally work in whatever manner suits them best. Some kids study alone some kids study in groups.

Most comfortable is not the same as most effective. Study skills is something to learn too. Many a fiercely proud individual hurt themself by refusing to collaborate and then wasting time being stuck.

> Some kids study alone some kids study in groups.

Extremely simplified view.

Yeah, it's kind of funny reading this. Disregard others. By which we of course mean disregard Rosalind Franklin's foundational work on the structure of DNA.

Disregarding others generates controversy.

> [...] “Disregard!”

> “That’s what I’d forgotten!” he shouted (in the middle of the night). “You have to worry about your own work and ignore what everyone else is doing.”

Strongly agree that this is the best way to contribute original, ground-breaking ideas. Conversely, constantly doubting if you're on the right path even as you're continuing into the yet undecided is an easy way to be distracted and lose motivation.

I interpret this as "disregard what other people say when their words cause you to doubt or second-guess yourself for no good reason".

In other words: have confidence.

To me this runs counter to the Feynman quote “What we need is imagination, but imagination in a terrible strait-jacket”. I always took it to mean that if you don’t know what others have done you will be very limited by the bounds of your imagination.

Formalism is one way out of the straight jacket :)

The second way might be 'taste', but of course this is just a triviality (to get it right, simply know what is right!), but of course with experience you can get better at knowing what works -- and, passed the test of formalism, what is relevant at all, or better yet interesting.

The third way is of course some kind of consensus indeed.

In the end, pretty much every scientist (or philosopher, or artist!) hopes for an "eventual consensus" -- where eventually his creations will be appreciated or have some value (unless you're really just making it to yourself; that sounds more like a hobby though?).

Way too many of you idolize Feynman and it shows. Could he be a good role model? Sure!

However, I'd caution you against rosey-eyed or overgeneralized interpretations, and against adopting wholesome whatever works for someone else!

Yeah well Feynman supposedly publicly claimed the HBT result was wrong before later apologizing, and also is quoted as having claimed he learned that he doesn't have to feel responsible for the world. Sounds like he's not exactly the picture of an unconditional advice sage. The advice to disregard others needs to have conditions placed on it. When is ignorance ever a good idea? More important than that is to love yourself and live with confidence instead. That was probably the real issue at hand.

I always wondered where I stumbled across this story. This blog has plenty more details including the Caltech archive that I remember reading when I wrote this years back:

https://jondouglas.dev/disregard-others/

Comparison is the thief of joy.

One thing that can paralise you as a researcher is to be too concerned with what others are doing, that is for sure. Some journals even discourage or eliminate claims of priority (eg Phys Rev). The time you spend worrying about the work of others could be more productively spend expressing your ideas.

I think discovering philosophical skepticism is a natural progression to becoming an expert

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