The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Richard P. Feynman
1 The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
I went to my father and I said, “Say, Pop, I noticed something: When I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, and when I’m pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon,” and I says, “why is that?” And he said, “That nobody knows,” he said. “The general principle is that things that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard.” And he says, “This tendency is called inertia but nobody knows why it’s true.” Now that’s a deep understanding–he doesn’t give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something, which I learnt very early.
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One of the things that my father taught me besides physics (LAUGHS), whether it’s correct or not, was a disrespect for respectable . . . for certain kinds of things.
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prize–I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it [my work]–those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me.
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6 The Value of Science
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy–and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.
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The first way in which science is of value is familiar to everyone. It is that scientific knowledge enables us to do all kinds of things and to make all kinds of things. Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad–but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value–even though the power may be negated by what one does.
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Another value of science is the fun called intellectual enjoyment which some people get from reading and learning and thinking about it, and which others get from working in it. This is a very real and important point and one which is not considered enough by those who tell us it is our social responsibility to reflect on the impact of science on society.
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I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. It is a little more indirect, but not much. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty–some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure–that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question–to doubt, that’s ail–not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society.
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7 Richard P. Feynman’s Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry
In brief, the hardware reliability is ensured by having four essentially independent identical computer systems. Where possible each sensor also has multiple copies, usually four, and each copy feeds all four of the computer lines. If the inputs from the sensors disagree, depending on circumstances, certain averages, or a majority selection is used as the effective input. The algorithm used by each of the four computers is exactly the same, so their inputs (since each sees all copies of the sensors) are the same. Therefore at each step the results in each computer should be identical. From time to time they are compared, but because they might operate at slightly different speeds a system of stopping and waiting at specified times is instituted before each comparison is made. If one of the computers disagrees, or is too late in having its answer ready, the three which do agree are assumed to be correct and the errant computer is taken completely out of the system.
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Finally, as an extra feature of safety, there is a fifth independent computer, whose memory is loaded with only the programs for ascent and descent, and which is capable of controlling the descent if there is a failure of more than two of the computers of the main line of four.
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there is an independent verification group, that takes an adversary attitude to the software development group, and tests and verifies the software as if it were a customer of a delivered product.
Notes:
Testers!
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10 Cargo Cult Science: Some Remarks on Science, Pseudoscience, and Learning How to Not Fool Yourself
So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
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It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
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Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
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I would like to add something that’s not essential to the scientist, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist.
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One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.
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11 It’s as Simple as One, Two, Three
11 IT’S AS SIMPLE AS ONE, TWO, THREE
Notes:
A fun, interesting read
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Running up and down stairs got pretty boring, so I started counting while I did things I had to do anyway. For instance, when I put out the laundry, I had to fill out a form saying how many shirts I had, how many pants, and so on. I found I could write down “3”in front of “pants”or “4”in front of “shirts,”but I couldn’t count my socks. There were too many of them: I’m already using my “counting machine”–36, 37,38–and here are all these socks in front of me–39, 40, 41 . . . . How do I count the socks? I found I could arrange them in geometrical patterns–like a square, for example: a pair of socks in this corner, a pair in that one; a pair over here, and a pair over there–eight socks. I continued this game of counting by patterns, and found I could count the lines in a newspaper article by grouping the lines into patterns of 3, 3, 3, and 1 to get 10; then 3 of those patterns, 3 of those patterns, 3 of those patterns, and 1 of those patterns made 100. I went right down the newspaper like that. After I had finished counting up to 60, I knew where I was in the patterns and could say, “I’m up to 60, and there are 113 lines.”I found that I could even read the articles while I counted to 60, and it didn’t affect the rate! In fact, I could do anything while counting to myself–except talk out loud, of course.
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One of the guys, a fella named John Tukey, said, “I don’t believe you can read, and I don’t see why you can’t talk. I’ll bet you I can talk while counting to myself, and I’ll bet you you can’t read.”So I gave a demonstration: They gave me a book and I read it for a while, counting to myself. When I reached 60 I said, “Now!”–48 seconds, my regular time. Then I told them what I had read. Tukey was amazed. After we checked him a few times to see what his regular time was, he started talking: “Mary had a little lamb; I can say anything I want to, it doesn’t make any difference; I don’t know what’s bothering you”–blah, blah, blah, and finally, “Okay!”He hit his time right on the nose! I couldn’t believe it! We talked about it awhile, and we discovered something. It turned out that Tukey was counting in a different way: He was visualizing a tape with numbers on it going by. He would say, “Mary had a little lamb,”and he would watch it! Well, now it was clear: He’s “looking”at his tape going by, so he can’t read, and I’m “talking”to myself when I’m counting, so I can’t speak!
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It’s natural to explain an idea in terms of what you already have in your head. Concepts are piled on top of each other: This idea is taught in terms of that idea, and that idea is taught in terms of another idea, which comes from counting, which can be so different for different people!
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12 Richard Feynman Builds a Universe
FEYNMAN: No, I don’t think that I was wrong exactly at the time I made the decision. I thought about it and I think correctly that it was very dangerous if the Nazis got it. There was, however, I think, an error in my thought in that after the Germans were defeated–that was much later, three or four years later–we were working very hard. I didn’t stop; I didn’t even consider that the motive for originally doing it was no longer there. And that’s one thing I did learn, that if you have some reason for doing something that’s very strong and you start working at it, you must look around every once in a while and find out if the original motives are still right. At the time I made the decision, I think that was right, but to continue without thinking about it may have been wrong. I don’t know what would have happened if I had thought about it. I may have decided to continue anyway, I don’t know. But the point of not thinking about it when the original conditions that made [me make] the original decision had changed, that’s a mistake.
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13 The Relation of Science and Religion
For the student, when he learns about science, there are two sources of difficulty in trying to weld science and religion together. The first source of difficulty is this–that it is imperative in science to doubt; it is absolutely necessary, for progress in science, to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature. To make progress in understanding, we must remain modest and allow that we do not know. Nothing is certain or proved beyond all doubt. You investigate for curiosity, because it is unknown, not because you know the answer. And as you develop more information in the sciences, it is not that you are finding out the truth, but that you are finding out that this or that is more or less likely.
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if we investigate further, we find that the statements of science are not of what is true and what is not true, but statements of what is known to different degrees of certainty: “It is very much more likely that so and so is true than that it is not true”; or “such and such is almost certain but there is still a little bit of doubt”; or–at the other extreme–“well, we really don’t know.”Every one of the concepts of science is on a scale graduated somewhere between, but at neither end of, absolute falsity or absolute truth. It is necessary, I believe, to accept this idea, not only for science, but also for other things; it is of great value to acknowledge ignorance. It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life, we don’t necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can–and that is what we should do.
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Attitude of Uncertainty I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind–this attitude of uncertainty–is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire. It becomes a habit of thought. Once acquired, one cannot retreat from it anymore.
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