Feynman meets some feminists | Hacker News Reader

Feynman meets some feminists

pechorin2.wordpress.com

19 pointsunlogic10 comments

Feynman story is neat, but it's being used by a rabidly sexist man[1] in an attempt to prove a false point using anecdotal evidence.

[1] http://pechorin2.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/women-shouldnt-hav...

I'm sorry to provide Feynman's story in this kind of wrapper. I've just read this in Feynman's book and this link was the first in Google where I found it. Please consider the identity of the blog author irrelevant to the story.

Since you have access to the original - I thought in the original story, the woman says "sir" to the officer. Could you verify that that is not the case, and let me know the publication date of the version you have?

I don't have the "Feynman Lectures on Physics" where the driver and police officer situation originally took place. The book "What Do You Care What Other People Think" I own (audio version, read from 1989 edition) contains the story "Feynman Sexist Pig!" that is reprinted in the blogpost (and it seems to me, completely unaltered) has no clues or hints on the police officer gender in the initial story.

The story is cute, but the blog post itself -- could you guess from the title? -- is an unadorned swipe at strawman "feminists" which really doesn't deserve the attention.

This is a neat story, and Feynman is of course a genius and raconteur of the first order. But it sounds too good to be really true, and Feynman admits at the end that the transcript that his narrative does not match the transcript; in other words, that it's partly fiction.

Regarding men and feminism, this quote is probably very apt:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."

How do you know that the narrative isn't the one from the transcript?

Cool story. Now I will laugh at the OP, with your permission.

> It shows how from the first feminism was driven by ignorant indignation rather than reason

Way to editorialize, dude. It fucking shows nothing. At most, it shows the existance of a loony subset within any given set of people. Shocking indeed.

So, what's up next? Will Rob Pike's story, previously seen in HN, prove that the open source movement consists mostly of lunatic men that lack social skills and hygiene habits, who also behave in an incredibly moronic and unprofessional way? Because if your sample population were RMS, Ulrich Drepper and Eric Raymond, you'd get just that. And you'd piss many people off, of course.

Every time I discover a new feynman anecdote, I wish there were more.

"It shows how from the first feminism was driven by ignorant indignation rather than reason..."

And that's where I stopped reading this vapid linkbait. Flagged.

Generalizing about "feminism" from this "meeting" is nothing more than ignorant indignation rather than reason.

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