Tags: writing feynman science life art learning knowing understanding feynman-technique

I)

As someone who grew up looking up to Feynman as a source of inspiration [0] to keep on learning whatever I tend to “like”, Feynman has shaped a lot of my “beliefs” around learning and “understanding” things to its core; the “knowing-vs-understanding” conundrum of lives stemmed very early from my post-teen and early 20s when I started going too deep into the rabbit holes of topics I tend to think about. This book is one of few books I tend to go back to often for inspiration, when I feel my life is in a “rut”. I will leave a more detailed review later here when I am in the mood to talk about life, science, art, and philosophy…the mental models I think I revolve around!

For now, all I can say is there’s something profound in the absurd world we live in, the pleasures of actually finding some meanings [1] in the things I like to do despite that absurdity.

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.” - [[Richard Feynman]]

“The thing that doesn’t fit is the thing that’s the most interesting, the part that doesn’t go according to what you expected.” - [[Richard Feynman]]

II)

Another aspect of “knowing-vs-understanding” conundrum is teaching. Once you start to teach and explain (at least try to), you’ll be enforced to actually think from 3rd person POV to consume what you are conveying. That helps. Of course, you don’t have to be “The Best” in whatever you do. Of course, you don’t need to. What you need to do is to understand that the topic you’re “consuming” is something you actually “understand”. I am tempted to even say that a single life isn’t possible to get my hands into a multitude of things like Feynman [2]. I don’t have to think in that way. That’s my realization after reading this book twice last year.

III)

Another aspect of “thinking thoroughly” is scientific methods through which we can come to conclusion, to claim that a certain chain of thoughts is “true” or “false”. That in addition to the infamous “Feynman Technique” is also something I like to talk about a lot to people (if I am actually talking).

Additionally, I liked the chapter on the relation between science and religion that talks about contrasting similarities and dis-similarities between “doing science” and “following a religion”

Overall, this book resonates deeply with my core. [0]

Footnotes

[0] - Don’t get me started on how much of a fanboy I am while talking about Feynman!

[1] - I was an utter nihilist in the past. But I have come to terms to realize that I need to find some “coping mechanisms” (an improvisation) to my life. Surely, I get hit by the utter absurdities. of life in itself. But whenever I look up to Feynman, I feel I can at least try to go deeper into the world.

[2] - It’s quite inspiring that a lot of Feynman’s thought experiment makes sense from his time. For instance, the chapter about his thoughts on nanotech as well as computers is fascinating. Another instance is the whole journal for the Manhattan Project. That’s one of my favorites from the book

Brain Dump: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

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