Feynman's Idiot Etc

Four Types of Idiot and the Idiot Proper, by Richard Feynman

He is in Poland, staying at the Grand Hotel in Warsaw, at a meeting he doesn't like, because it's in a field that's not yet experimental (it's theoretical), and so it doesn't have the best minds, and he goes on to describe everyone's "work", and they fall into these categories:

1. completely un-understandable
2. vague and indefinite
3. something correct that is obvious and self-evident, but worked out by a long and difficult analysis, and presented as an important discovery
4. a claim based on the stupidity of the author that some obvious and correct fact, accepted and checked for years is in fact false (these are the worst: no argument will convince the idiot)
5. an attempt to do something probably impossible, but certainly of no utility, which , it is finally revealed at the end, fails, or
6. just plain wrong.

And he goes on: There is a great deal of "activity in the field" these days, but this "activity" is mainly in showing that the previous "activity" of somebody else resulted in an error or in nothing useful or in something promising. It is like a lot of worms trying to get out of a bottle by crawling all over each other. It is not that the subject is hard; it is that all the good [scientists] are occupied elsewhere. Remind me not to come to any more gravity conferences! (p100-101)

On Ancestor Worship of the Greeks

He goes to Greece, and is intrigued by the Antikythera machine housed in a museum there. But he also talks about Greek ancestor worship at the expense of today:

It appears the Greeks take their past very seriously. They study ancient Greek archaeology in their elementary schools for 6 years, having to take 10 hours of that subject every week. It is a kind of ancestor worship, for they emphasize always how wonderful the ancient Greeks were -- and wonderful indeed they were. When you encourage them by saying, "Yes, and look how modern man has advanced beyond the ancient Greeks" -- thinking of experimental science, the development of mathematics, he are of the Renaissance, the great depth and understanding of the relative shallowness of Greek philosophy, etc., etc." -- they reply, "What do you mean? What was wrong with the ancient Greeks?" They continually put their age down and the old age up, until to point out the wonders of the present seems to them to be an unjustified lack of appreciation for the past. ... (p104)

On Bullets, Yes Bullets

He's complaining about the way NASA does things. He's now on the committee to investigate the Challenger disaster (circa 1986). They use a lot of acronyms. But also "bullets" - little black circles in front of phrases that were supposed to summarize things. There was one after another of these goddam bullets in our briefing books and on the slides. (p142)

What Do You Care What Other People Think: Further Adventures of a Curious Character, Richard P Feynman, Norton 1988

Image credit: AI Art - A Young Man Frustrated with His Phone - 2022