Reddit reviews Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
We found 15 Reddit comments about Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Although not by him, Genius by Gleick was one of the things that inspired me to enter physics. I should like to check out his lectures online, but I'm on linux at the moment.
Thanks. I'm about 75% of the way through the article and I have faaaaaar too many tabs open so I'm commenting now. I bookmarked Peter Kropotkin's Wikipedia page to read later.
I disagree with some of the axioms of the author but I'm certain I'll be thinking about the text. I read a biography of Richard Feynman once: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.
He often went back to first principles. He'd do things that no average genius would - like review freshman physics. I don't know if that helped keep him a wizard amongst geniuses but I think he did it for a kind of "play".
My takeaway of that section was that reviewing what you know might help you to more intuitively grok things you aren't familiar with. Right now I find it hard to accept that insects or lobster can play. But if I consider a random creature like a bird - I think it's clear that ravens and crows play. They are very intelligent.
Maybe humble birds like sparrows do too. We just haven't been clever enough to notice.
This is a great biography of the man if anyone wants a good summer read.
http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp/0679747044
Lots of great recommendations in this thread; I've added a few to my reading list. Here are my suggestions (copied from a previous thread):
And, the following two are a look into the lives of two great men that lived in the 20th century; both offer many points worth emulating.
Okay your first two links are to blogs that only publish work by Austrian economists. Hardly objective analyses. Even if SO did drop the cost of gas, that says nothing of who bore the brunt of the cost. It says nothing of the enivronmental costs of their business practices. It says nothing of how they treated their workers. And still sidesteps the point of how the monopoly was formed by business practices that are anti-competitive and would completely overcome any advantages of a strictly free-market system. As I mentioned before, costs aren't the only metric we should use in judging a civilization.
> This is how high profits counter-intuitively accelerate the trend towards lower price and higher quality (witness computer and cellphone progression).
It isn't the fact that profits were high that drove this trend. It's the incredible volume of demand that drove prices down. Again, see the history of Bell Labs for this as far as computers and cell phones go. It was a government-sanctioned monopoloy that made these possible.
Your DC link was unfortunate, but was just a case of idiots in government. This isn't something inherent in governments. There are more than enough idiots in management. Luckily we live in a democracy that can be changed with an informed electorate.
> Insurance companies profit only because of the fact that it costs MORE to have health insurance for most people than it costs to NOT have it. It's risky to not have health insurance, but if you are of normal health, you come out ahead financially by not having it. Also, [5] many hospitals, doctors give discount for paying cash
I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make. This is all obvious. The point is that you never know your future health states. The fact that doctors give discounts for paying cash is analogous to people not paying interest rates when they pay off their credit cards on time. But in the real world, most people can't afford to do this. As I mentioned before, the number one cause of individual bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills.
> Consumer Reports is a private regulatory agency. Amazon ratings are a consumer-driven regulatory agency. Yelp too. Ebay feedback, etc. Your social network is a regulatory agency.
Okay so you never actually meant regulatory agency. Consumer Reports is a consumer advocacy magazine. Amazon, Yelp, and Ebay are a sort of word-of-mouth that only exist due to technology developed by the government and public-private parternships. And Yelp has recently been accused of removing negative reviews if the businesses pay up. None of these can do anything about abuse of workers or pollution or anything else industry has a history of doing.
>We can take risks for discounts, or be conservative and pay a premium for a trusted brand, and when that trusted brand starts overcharging, people like me step in and offer a new solution at a better price.
This really depends on what you're talking about. We shouldn't have to risk that discounted item being unsafe or dangerous or snake oil. Not everyone can afford items that are too expensive. And sometimes the profits just don't exist for goods and services at the price point that people can afford them at.
>Let's say there's a mafia. They steal from everyone, but they use the money to fund research projects. They steal half of what everyone earns (total cost of govt taxation over what things would cost without it, includes regulatory costs), but they take credit for everything that is done by the researchers they pay with the stolen money. Some people defend it, and say "without the mafia stealing from everyone and paying some of the people to research things, it would be impossible to get humans to create amazing things!" That is absurd, that human society requires guns to our heads to make us innovate.
Or let's say there's a charity that everyone chips into. They build roads so we can transport goods. They organize police forces so thieves don't rob us. They have fire departments so our homes don't burn down. They fund a military to protect us from foreign threats. They fund scientific research so that our children don't die of diseases that we suffer from or so that energy costs go down in the future from new and cheaper sources of energy.
Do you think ideas just pop into people's heads? You really really need to read up on some science history. I really hate to repeat myself, but you are incredibly ignorant and should educate yourself if you really want to argue that your magical free market could have built the world we live in. Private industry has no financial incentive to fund basic science research. Without basic science research, there can't be future applied science research. Without applied science research, there can't be future engineering in that field. Humans don't need guns to their heads to innovate. That's why we got together and use our tax dollars to fund basic science. But private industry sure as hell needs a gun to its head or else they risk pissing of their shareholders for throwing away profit on research they won't see an ROI for decades or centuries.
> Venture capitalists are the exact opposite of govt research, and they have funded every major advance in the past 20 years.
Buuuulllllllsssshhhiiiiiiiittt. Holy crap don't even try to act like you know what you're talking about. Are you gonna tell me that it was a VC who funded the Human Genome Project? It was a VC who funded CERN? It was a VC who put Rovers on Mars? You are completely divorced from reality.
NASA ended shuttle launches because America doesn't give a damn anymore. And those private enterprises you claim have no government funding . . . they get their grant money through NASA. It's called contracting. And in case you were unaware, contracting is done using tax dollars. Those engineering firms don't do it out of charity. They have to get paid like anyone else.
Learn some fucking history.
Also, you said you want to be an ecologist?
I highly, highly, highly recommend you look at Mark Lewis' site at the University of Alberta. All of his research is in math biology, but he does research areas like invasive species modeling, animal movement modeling, bio-invasion and and ecosystem modeling (e.g rivers, mountains).
He publishes in journals like Theoretical Ecology, Journal of Experimental Biology and American Naturalist. All the links are to papers he's published in those journals.
A word of warning though: just because you have a passion for physics does not necessarily mean you have what it takes to be a researcher in a physics/math related field. You have to love the area you are researching (e.g ecology), but more importantly, you have to love the research PROCESS. As you may have seen from the .pdf links, the papers rely heavily on mathematics. In order to succeed in this area, you have to love solving math problems, writing code, reading journal papers, and solving math problems (yes, I mentioned it twice). If you don't have a passion to do these things, then it will be really hard to succeed.
If I were you, and are really passionate about learning physics, I would find an online resource or textbook that is just above the knowledge you have now, and start studying. I can recommend some resources if you like. If you are truly passionate about physics, start doing problems. Within a year, you will be doing the kind of crazy math you want to do (and be able to apply it to physics problems in no time). If you don't want to work on math problems, then maybe you aren't as passionate as you thought.
Perhaps you can satisfy your desire for physics by reading popular science books (e.g Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking), or becoming a high school science teacher. I can tell you though that what you read in these books, and the actual process of doing science research could not be any more different.
You talk about devotion in an earlier comment. Here's an anecdote about Freeman Dyson from the book Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
>"He read popular science books about Einstein and relativity and, realizing that he needed to learn a more advanced mathematics than his school taught, sent away to scientific publishers for their catalogs. His mother finally felt that his interest in mathematics was turning into an obsession. He was fifteen and had just spent a Christmas vacation working methodically, from six each morning until ten each evening, through the seven hundred problems of H. T. H. Piaggio's Differential Equations."
Now Dyson was a child prodigy who came from a privileged family, but that's an example of the type of people who "do" math and physics. It makes me wish I hadn't played video games from six each morning until ten each evening playing video games :(
You remind me a bit of myself back when I was trying to figure out what I want to do. Hell, I STILL don't know what I want to do, but I have a bit more experience then I did then when I was an undergrad (all of 2 years ago). So this is like a warning letter to my past self.
Sincerely,
A former mathematical biologist/physicist who discovered is passion for science from reading popular science books, but realized he didn't have what it takes to do research.
And he became a notorious woman chaser/misogynist afterwards. Not that anyone particularly minded or cared.
Losing the love of his life embittered him but I think physics became his true love. Watching his lectures even in this day and age is marvelous, and I highly recommend it.
Sauce: Gleick's biography (he's an amazing biographer) and A set of lectures from the University of Auckland (NZ.) Also look up Project Tuva for older MIT lectures.
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Yes I would highly recommend it. Especially if you have even the slightest interest in physics. And famous people who frequently...well...had loose morals.
Linchpin - Are you indispensable?, which argues that each one of use should be passionate and deliver art (emotional bond to what you do), and also critizes the way of seeing workers as when Ford's manufacturing era began.
I think also reading biographies of guys like Feynman (not only the anecdote ones) and Nikola Tesla inspires one to be more passionate, creative and modest.
The most important book could be Your Brain at Work
which discusses how one can be more effective and gives introduction to why that is so (references to modern brain research).
Of course, there are plenty other important books, classics, etc. Like the popular 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Robert Pirsig's 'Zen...' and not so well known 'Lila', maybe also Social and Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.
I also recommend Genius by James Gleick
Have you read Gleik's book on Feynman? It's absolutely outstanding!
http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp/0679747044
Complain to James Gleick about your issues with this characterization
https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp/0679747044
its been a while since i've read it but i recall them mentioning this competition in this biography of feynman, http://www.amazon.com/Genius-Life-Science-Richard-Feynman/dp/0679747044 .
>Ok, what are his misconceptions?
When it was written, how it was written, who he is talking to. I pointed that out already. And that is a start.
>He thinks it's a shame that these young men are spending their time only worrying about how to apply science to interpreting their holy book. Is this a misconception of rabbinical students' interest in science?
Well, that it is about interpreting a Holy Book is also a misconception. In their view, and their view is quite important in understanding what they are doing, they are trying to understand God's Law. Oh, and in Judaism, which is not Christianity, there is more than the "Book" that gives God's Law. There is Written and Oral Torah, both from God.
>he in fact tried to help the students settle whether electricity was fire and to prevent any sparks.
Unfortunately there is no evidence the he tried to understand what "fire" meant in the Torah. And that is what matters here, not what modern science talks about.
>I recommend The Meaning of It All for anyone really interested in Feynman's world view. He's actually quite open-minded.
I agree, but he was not perfect or a saint. I would recommend Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman as a start for those who don't have the math. But Meaning is quite good.