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Comment by chadrs | Hacker News Reader

"the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

Let's be clear about this video; the "sham legacy" is the commercialization/exploitation of Feynman's legacy after he died. Feynman was not a charlatan. Collier doesn't claim he is. She talks about the very real contributions he made. Her criticism is largely about the way people scraped together any scrap of paper he had jotted down a note on and turned it into a thin book, "Feynman on XYZ topic".

But yes, he does catch criticism for his very real character flaws, his grandiosity, his philandering and inappropriate workplace behavior, and his physical abuse of his wife.

He was a complicated person. Much of the work discussing him is hagiography. This essay is even keeled but does not gloss over his flaws. Again, she discusses his very real contributions and legacy. It's a long essay; she makes time for the complexity of Feynman as a person.

If all you want to hear about Feynman is charming stories about Tuvan throat singing, you won't enjoy this essay. That's okay; it's not for everyone. There's an instinct to reject a critical work like this on it's face. I think that does a disservice, not only to Collier, but to us as students of history.

Collier is a working astrophysicist who spent months on this project. It is not a low effort hit piece. It's a critical but fair portrait from someone qualified to engage with the subject matter. I encourage everyone to withhold judgement until watching the entire essay. If you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't make a knee jerk dismissal.

It should be knee-jerk dismissed because the submission topic is the textbooks, not the man, and it's derailed discussion into a tangent about his personal shortcomings. Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.

Well said !

These sort of people are what is pejoratively called "attention whores" with nothing worthwhile to contribute on the topic under discussion. Hence they always come up with provocative phrases/statements simply to make themselves feel relevant.

Downvote and Flag these sorts of comments into oblivion; don't engage with them.

This is offensive and uncalled for. If the admins see your comment, they will tell you that comments like this get you banned. I don't agree with ThrowawayR2 but they were respectful; I doubt they appreciate their views being lumped in with your insulting, inappropriate comment. You've done a disservice to both of us.

[flagged]

You just think my perspective is invalid and so you read manipulative or deceptive intent into my actions.

> The focus should be solely on the Science and nothing else.

You don't get to decide how the discussion goes. You don't get to decide that the focus should be narrow and restricted to the topics you're comfortable with.

The person who is actually attempting to steer the conversation is you. I'm just here to share my thoughts. You don't like that? You don't see the relevance in discussing Feynman in a thread about Feynman? Noted.

[flagged]

> Not exactly in the spirit of intellectual curiosity HN tries to foster.

I could not disagree more. If you don't see how a comprehensive, warts and all look at the man's life and legacy doesn't add context and foster curiosity, I'm not even sure what to tell you.

It didn't derail the conversation, it expanded it. There's still plenty of discussion about the lectures. This isn't even particularly close to the top of the thread.

What's opposed to curious discussion is knee jerk reactions and middlebrow dismissals.

Ad hominem is indeed the hallmark of a small mind.

Some people are (understandably) upset at the title of the video. I will summarize some of the main interesting beats in the video for those who don't want to watch this 3 hour masterpiece.

(1) The stories in "Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman" portray Feynman in a mean-spirited, sometimes sexist light. (2) These books were not actually written by Mr. Feynman. They were actually written by Ralph Laden. (3) Upon further reflection, almost all the stories are either made up or greatly exaggarated. Presumably, Feynman spent a lot of time telling and retelling these stories (4) Also, Ralph Laden is Bob Laden's son. Supposedly, Bob Laden is also a famous physicist. But Ralph never really mentions him

Let me begin by saying that I am a friend of Ralph Leighton, whom I have known for 27 years. I am also a friend of Feynman's children, and several of Feynman's friends and colleagues. Now I will tell you this: Collier is a liar. The books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think" were made the same way that The Feynman Lectures on Physics was made: Feynman was recorded, and the recordings were transcribed and (lightly) edited for readability. It is true for ALL of Feynman's books (also Stephen Hawking's many books, and those of some other authors) that he did not put pen to paper himself, but what is written came from him, and are not the inventions of Ralph Leighton, nor does Leighton claim authorship to them. It is another lie of Collier that the stories in Feynman's autobiographical books are "either made up or greatly exaggerated," for which Collier provides no evidence whatsoever, and for which there are witnesses who claim the contrary - this is something Collier just "made up", because, apparently her goal in making several pejorative videos about Feynman is to defame him, for her own personal reasons. Yes it is true that Ralph Leighton is Robert Leighton's son, and Robert Leighton, who is one of Feynman's coauthors in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, was a great physicist, best known for establishing the field of microwave astronomy. But why would Ralph mention his father in Feynman's autobiographical books, when Robert Leighton is not a character in any of the stories Feynman tells in those books? What kind of criticism is that to make of Ralph? This is another example of how Collier is merely trying to smear the names of Feynman and the people associated with him. Note that Collier also says in her videos that The Feynman Lectures on Physics (the subject of this discussion) is "not worth reading," which puts her at odds with almost everyone who reads it - it is, in fact, one of the most (if not THE most) popular physics books ever written, and many great physicists sing its praises. Once again, this is Collier just dissing Feynman and his works. Collier is a Feynman-hating liar who fully deserves to be ignored.

I apologize for not being respond to the entirety your comment.

I assure you that Angela does not say that the Feynman Lectures are "not worth reading" in that video.

So true.

How this guy captures the imagination of the English speaking world is astonishing.

Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger

They mop the floor with Feynman but no one remembers them. Landau, meanwhile had the most comprehensive set of physics book, Sommerfeld the most accessible deep set of physics books.

Meanwhile "the Feynman Lectures" burry important details that will derail a train as soon as you leave the safe space of first order approximations.

Feynman's lectures are akin to the "everything is a mass on a spring" meme. Actually, nothing is, and the nobilities are everything. To his credit, though, Feynman never intended his lectures to be more than an intro survey class

I think Feynman's popularity lie with his deep understanding of phenomena and ability to explain them to others - "If you can't explain it to a six-year old, you don't understand it yourself"

> Sommerfeld Landau Schwinger

I am the OP who posted this with an idea of eliciting other notable works on Physics and comparing them to Feynman Lectures. I do not want this to be derailed into talking about the man.

While i know of Landau & Lifshitz, i have not read Arnold Sommerfeld's nor Julian Schwinger's works.

I sincerely suggest that you post a top-level comment in this thread with your takes on Feynman vs. Other authors works that you mention. This would be of great help to everybody interested in Physics and Science.

That was rather more interesting than I thought it would be.

The guy invented the path integral in his PhD thesis. He invented Feynman diagrams and figured out how to do finite calculations in quantum electrodynamics. Unless you're a perfect human being, please, cut him just a tiny bit of slack.

path integrals existed since the 19th century

Cite an example please.

I understand not watching a 3 hour video before leaving a comment, but this is a disrespectful reaction to a very well thought out video by a professional physicist giving a nuanced opinion about Feynman's legacy. She acknowledges many times in the video that Feynman was a great physicist who deserved his Nobel prize. The central topic of the video is dissecting his public image and the many books published under his name that he did not in fact write, including Surely You're Joking and indeed the Feynman Lectures, as well as criticizing misogynistic behaviors celebrated in those books that has left a negative impact on the culture of physics.

(And also, "cutting him a tiny bit of slack" is pretty lax language considering the behavior being criticized includes beating his wife.)

misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go.

From the about the authors in the OP's link "Feynman was a remarkably effective educator. Of all his numerous awards, he was especially proud of the Oersted Medal for Teaching, which he won in 1972.". He probably didn't do a lot of the stuff he popularised, but that was what he did, it is a skill taking abstract stuff and making it coherent. I know when I did physics (in the 90's) many swore by his books, particularly for quantum, it was a bit of a secret we'd have these incomprehensible books on quantum, and someone would say - have you seen "The Feynman lectures", they are good, I wish we had the videos available at the time.

> misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture. The same is said of Hitchcock, (as an example) and his behaviour was unacceptable by todays standards. We've come some way from that but still a way to go.

The video actually addresses this very point in the first few minutes:

> the second component of the Feynman lifestyle that the Feynman bro has to follow, you know as told in this book, is that women are inherently inferior to you and if you want to be the smartest big boy physicist in the room you need to make sure they know that I think people are sometimes shocked to hear this like that that exists in this book especially because as I said if you were a precocious teenager interested in physics people shoved this book at you they just put it into your hands like oh you want to be a physicist here's the coolest physicist ever

> I feel like it's at this point in the video when like Mr. Cultural Relativism is going to show up in the comments and be like how dare you judge people from the past on their actions that's not fair things were different back then women liked when men lied to them and pretended to be an undergrad so that-- it was fine back then it was fine and I just, no, actually this book was published 40 years ago which is just not that long ago Richard Feynman should have known that women were people 40 years ago like absolutely not it's not "how things were back then" what's wrong with you people, no, it's inappropriate then it's inappropriate now

Later the actual author, Ralph Leighton, of "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is mentioned so perhaps the responsibility for what was included is his more than Feynman's. I think the criticism stands that the degree of sexism effectively celebrated by inclusion was certainly less culturally accepted in 1985 when the book was published than when the events occurred, and that's the point of raising the issue of why was it judged as good and proper to include this marginalizing anecdotes when his actual contributions to physics and teaching were worthy of celebration.

I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book. From memory, he learnt the behaviour from other bar flies at the bars he hung out. And he expressed his surprise at how some women reacted. This was far from his upbringing and his experience with his fiancee.

The behaviour is hardly laudable, but "celebrated" it is not.

> I do not think Feynman was celebrating his activity in the book.

The argument presented in the video about this is that these are the stories Feynman edited and reworked over time, and shared with his friend Ralph Leighton, who then recorded them in the "Surely You're Joking" book.

The video also describes a change in his behavior later in life. In 1974, responding to a letter asking to reprint "What is Science?"[1] from 1966, he comments that "some of the remarks about the female mind might not be taken in the light spirit they were meant"[2]. This is cited in the video as Feynman becoming more progressive between 1966 and 1974. The "Surely" book is published in 1985, and yet still includes the misogynistic stories. The video's complaint is that there should be some contextualization about views changing, like was given in Feynman's reply in 1974, but there being none it comes across as an implicit endorsement. I don't recall from the video if Feynman reviewed or edited the "Surely" book, which leaves it as Ralph Leighton's perspective more than Feynman's.

It seems a legitimate criticism that this book held up as an example of a good role model in physics doesn't try to avoid perpetuating bad stereotypes. It's probably egregious to say the mere inclusion of the stories celebrates their actions. But it's equally egregious to fail to even try to address the bad behavior, especially when it's held out as a positive example.

[1] https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/

[2] https://archive.org/details/perfectly-reasonable-deviations-...

And…who hasn’t done offensive things, before learning that what they’re doing is bad? It’s a matter of developing self control and awareness.

Certainly. But you're missing the point. Feynman chose to tell the stories to Ralph Leighton who then recorded them in the "Surely" book which was published in 1985, well after Feynman's own perspective seems to have changed about the more offensive things he'd said.

By many other accounts he was a kind, caring, thoughtful person, but some of the selected stories in "Surely" paint a significantly different picture. To me it's unclear, not having studied the life of Richard Feynman, what parts are exaggerated. But it does seem clear that these stories were refined and selected for inclusion, and were therefore considered endearing or representative for the intention of the book. And in the time and culture in which it was published that seems like a bit of a miss at the very least.

> misogynistic behaviors were cultural at the time, I agree they're abhorrent but people are embedded in their culture.

Moral relativism is a thing, but I think a more useful way to think of it rather than just saying "misogyny was a thing back then, should we care he was a misogynist then?" is to ask "if he were to have lived and worked in the 2000s, would he associate with Epstein?" And to be honest… Feynman does strike me as the kind of person to have the intellect to attract Epstein's attention and also the, for lack of a better term, party attitude to go to a couple of Epstein's parties that would result in him having awkward press releases trying to explain that he just had no possible idea that Epstein was doing anything sexual with children and conveniently forgetting all the times he was on the private island for some party or another...

That's the real strong vibe I get from Surely You're Joking. He's the kind of person who wants to be seen as someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating the stories that led to Surely You're Joking) when misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.

(And one of the things that really worries me about Surely You're Joking is that it's often recommended as a sort of "look at the wacky hijinks you can get up to as a physicist," so recommending the book is a valorization of his wacky hijinks and... well, that's ultimately what Angela's video is about, that's a thing we need to stop doing.)

> That's the real strong vibe I get from Surely You're Joking. He's the kind of person who wants to be seen as someone who gets up to wacky hijinks, to be seen as "cool," and he specifically interprets "cool" in a way that's misogynistic even at a time (when he was dictating the stories that led to Surely You're Joking) when misogyny was starting to become a professional hindrance.

In my experience, everyone who says this is talking about exactly one chapter in Surely You're Joking, but they don't appear to actually have paid close attention to the story. It's a story that Feynman recounts about trying to pick up girls when he was younger. He was advised by an older, "cooler" man to be mean. Feynman tries it and it works, but he feels bad about it and says that he never did it again. People calling Feynman a misogynist for this story seem to have just skipped the end of the chapter.

It's been decades since I read Surely You're Joking, and I've completely forgotten about that chapter. It plays no part in my conscious recollection of the book.

The episode that really stuck in my mind was the episode about his competition with the abacus-user, who was better at math, which essentially ends with him giving up trying to explain how he could mental math a cube root faster, because the abacus-user was just someone who couldn't understand a math explanation.

I remembered enjoying the book, so having not read it in a long time, I tried sharing Surely You're Joking with my kids at bedtime.

That chapter wasn’t the only thing I ended up skipping or heavily editing.

* Picking a room at Los Alamos with a window facing the women’s housing, but being disappointed that a tree or something blocked his view. (Wasn’t he also married at this point?)

* Starting a new Uni faculty position and hanging out at student dances, dismayed that girls would stop chatting & dancing with him when they learned he was a prof and not a fellow student.

* Hanging out at strip clubs to practice his drawing skills.

* Considering a textbook sales rep’s offer to help him find “trouble” in Vegas.

So maybe that one chapter turns around some at the end, but it’s not the only cringe-worthy moment in the book, and I can see why some people may have an overall negative opinion.

If I were going to do this with my kids now that they are teens, I wouldn’t filter as much and use the more questionable events as points of discussion.

> would he associate with Epstein?

This is from Lawrence Krauss[0]'s email to Epstein[1]:

> ps. I have decided that Feynman would have done what I did... and I am therefore content.. no matter what... :)

> On Apr 6, 2011, at 3:56 PM, Jeffrey Epstein wrote:

> what evidence? no real sex.. where is she getting her so called facts

Krauss's letter is obviously horrible in its implications. What's interesting to me is his interpretation of what Feynman would have done. Is it his delusional justification of what he'd done with Epstein, or is it based on a certain reputation of Feynman in the science community?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Krauss [1] https://www.epstein.media/files/house_oversight_030915/

If you listen to the taped Feynman lectures, yes Feynman did write them. The published versions were edited from transcripts.

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html

Be forewarned. There's a new YouTube channel with an AI Feynman delivering slop.

I saw this and what makes this particularly pernicious that you assume it was a fan applying ai voice to his authentic words, but you don't know.

There is also an ai slop channel featuring Leonard Susskind.

This was really frustrating me. YT started recommending this channel and I could recognize the voice as an AI impersonation but had no way to know if it was at least reading something really written by Feynman. Eventually I concluded it wasn't, but there wasn't clear criteria under which I could report the channel. I'm not sure it's even against YT's TOS.

He was accused, in divorce papers. And it wasn't beating, FWIW.

His wife accused him of choking her when she interrupted his science. She also accused him of playing the bongos too loud.

This was during divorce testimony. She got the house and he got the bongos.

> She got the house and he got the bongos.

Both were likely happy with that outcome

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46975068

I've watched large sections of this video before, because it gets posted often. It's a 2-year-old video.

Based on that viewing, I think the author has a chip on her shoulder about Feynman, and is dismissive about his teaching and books, and is set on convicting him of being a very naughty boy.

One of the things that stand out from the video: The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong. He wrote and delivered the lectures. If you go to Caltech's Feynman lectures website, they even have audio of him delivering the lectures [0] and photographs of the chalk board [1]. How could someone make a 3-hour-long video about Feynman and not even know this?

Feynman was an immensely gifted physicist and one of the most (maybe the most) engaging and innovative physics teachers of the last century. You can criticize him for embellishing stories about himself, but those stories are incredibly entertaining and quirky, which is why so many people like them. He was a big personality, and it comes out in his stories. He wasn't a perfect person, but no one is, and there has been a movement in the last few years to try to demonize him (mostly unsuccessfully, given Feynman's continued popularity).

Finally, if one makes a video with a title like, "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman," one can't complain about getting pushback.

0. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/recordings.html

1. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html

> The speaker says that Feynman didn't write the Feynman lectures. Wrong.

No, she's right, just talking about a different thing.

"The Feynman Lectures on Physics" is a physics textbook. [0] He did prepare his own lecture material, but he did not write the book.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feynman_Lectures_on_Physic...

No, she's absolutely wrong about this. The book is based very closely on Feynman's lectures. He wrote the material and gave the lectures. Other people edited that material into book form, but Feynman did the lion's share of the work.

Saying that Feynman didn't write the book is just dishonest, unless you immediately clarify afterwards that Feynman did indeed write almost all of the material in the book, in something very close to its final form.

Seems she isn't interested in dragging a bit of fame and recognition her way.

It's a low effort way to do that when the other party cannot defend himself.

You should watch the whole video. From memory, the video author claims that the books are not based directly on the recordings nor on material that Feynman wrote himself, but rather on lecture notes written by another professor who had to cover for Feynman (who is also listed as one of the authors in the book). She also mentions how those lecture notes from this other professor correct some small mistakes Feynman made in some calculations and diagrams from the lecture. Her claim is that Feynman was not the person who actually wrote the text of the book.

You can literally listen to audio recordings of Feynman delivering the lectures. The book follows those lectures closely.

All lectures that professors deliver have mistakes in them. He produced a massive lecture series covering huge areas of physics over hundreds of hours of class time. There are bound to be typos and small math mistakes.

The complaint that Feynman had an editor makes me think the person who created this YouTube video has no idea how publishing works, not to mention academic publishing.

To me, claiming Feynman didn't write the lecture book is a stretch since they are fundamentally based on his lectures. But I think you are misconstruing some of her arguments and claims. I suggest you watch the whole video, because imo it does a good job at analyzing Feynman's figure.

I mean, for the most part the book is an edited transcription of what he said at the lectures (or, in some cases, what a guest lecturer said). But the lectures weren't scripted, and we know this because his lecture notes are preserved[0] and they do not contain anything like he full text of even a single lecture. They're just lecture notes, not a script. And of course, the book also contain a lot of example problems and graphics - those are mostly the work of Bob Leighton, I believe. There's a reason the book has had so many errata corrected over the years: it was never written and edited in the way a book manuscript would've been written and edited.

[0]: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/Notes.html

Now your complaint is that Feynman didn't literally write down every single word he was going to say? He prepared more than 600 pages of notes and then delivered hundreds of hours of lectures. They were transcribed and published as a book, with normal editing. Feynman is the primary author of that book, for good reason.

Brave to link to that here.

It just wears thin after a while. Nobody studies Feynman to learn social skills or sexual ethics. If they did, these types of complaints would certainly be relevant... but they don't, and they aren't.

People also don’t think he’s one of the greatest physicists ever.

As he said, he was just an ordinary person who worked very hard.

Everyone thinks they are ordinary. If you have 160 IQ that just feels ordinary. You can only really measure ordinary in terms of achievement.

The 100 IQ person that works that hard doesn't invent that much physics. They might get rich, change the world etc.

Well, the Nobel committee certainly seemed to disagree with you.

I guess you didn’t watch the video so you don’t understand the point I’m trying to address.

At any rate, this garbage doesn’t belong on HN.

Can you elaborate on that point? I didn't downvote you, but I'm also not going to watch a 3-hour #metoo video about a guy from my grandfather's era in order to understand what you mean.

What's next... is she going to tell me that Newton was a real asshole? Noooooo, say it isn't so.

It’s discussed in the first few minutes. That’s basically all I watched. One of the first points she tries to make is that people claim that Feynman is one of the top physicists of all time, comparable to Einstein and Newton. She tries to set us straight.

Anyway, I’m a big Feynman fan. My Discord handle is feynman1918.

His wife allegedly secretly reported him to the FBI as a potential spy, communist, security risk, fraud. It was an anonymous letter.

Given how different this wife's (second wife) description of Feynman compared to others is, that there are no record of complaints from first wife, the way her younger sister describes him, it could well be an earlier repeat of the now familiar Johnny Depp story, where it's not initially clear who the abusive person here is.

The marriage was certainly not a happy one and some people turn vindictive, turn to smearing characters. Especially if the person has narcissistic tendencies.

[Who Smeared Feynman] https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-f...

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