Feynman explains degenerate matter [video]

Feynman wasn't a product of MIT or Princeton. Feynman learned at MIT and Princeton, but Feynman also learned in the laboratory he setup as a child. He learned when he would go and volunteer at labs during the summer. Or, would go to the library and ask for maps of cats. Feynman became Feynman by sitting in a corner and doing hard problems in class. By learning and doing and becoming better every day.

It is antiquated to assume that science can only be done in academia or Big Name Institution. In the middle of the 20th century, the two became intertwined, but today, I think that academia is more of a hinderance than an aid to the process of doing science.

Every single scientist I know tells me that they regret becoming a scientist — not because the love of the subject has faded, but because they spend more of their time writing grants and jostling to become a PI than doing science. And the universities take a cut and push them to get more grants, while offering nothing in return.

There is no contradiction here.

It was different in Feynman's day. It is different now. We live in the age of the internet and cheap compute. We can all learn, grow and do science.

Hmm, you left out his work for the Manhattan Project. I get the impression he learned a lot there from the other people he worked with.

More recently, I've been running into an awful lot of people who want to get rid of statistics even as a general concept, I suppose in favor of LLMs powered by "universal data". My jaw's getting a little cramped from biting my tongue to keep from asking, "Why do you think statistics was invented?". One of these bumpkins is going to get someone killed replacing a safety system with a rando public model that's been trained mostly on swearing and antisemitism.