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.
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.
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.
> 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.