Richard Feynman’s Caltech Graduation Address on Integrity

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

by swany4 • 14 years ago

136 28 14 years ago

tokenadult2• 14 years ago

The .PDF of the June 1974 original Caltech publication of the address,

http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/3043/1/CargoCult.pdf

besides confirming the text, includes photographs of Feynman delivering the address in academic gown. As always, the famous line from the address is "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool." This is something for every thinker to think about every day in daily life, for a lifetime.

cheatercheater• 14 years ago

This speech is very good because it illustrates well the points I was missing when explaining to many people why their bogus wasn't science. Great tool to now have at my disposal.

irahul2• 14 years ago

What's remarkable is Feynman went to great lengths in investigating the crackpot theories, instead of outright rejecting them. I won't even bother trying doing anything he mentions in the article, except for the esalen jaccuzi thing(wink wink). And I am pretty sure I will end up as Feynman did. Geeks and there "Well, actually" http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Feb-17.html

I think the point he is trying to make to audience is he is willing to accept ideas which invalidate what he knows. His believes are verifiable, and though he is willing to give yours a chance, he won't just "let it be" unless it's verifiable.

I read another of his stories in which he took the class to the gym where he had a bowling ball attached to a string hanging down the ceiling in the center of the room. He went to the opposite end with the ball, had his back by the wall, brought the ball to his nose and let it go. The ball swung to the other side, swung back, and came dangerously close to his face(well, at the same spot where he let it go - simple pendulums. duh). He told the students "I want you to know I know and believe what I am going to teach. There are no manifestations or biases - only truth"(paraphrased)

ymusti• 14 years ago

There's another Feynman bowling ball story. He was watching a younger physics prof make the same demonstration in a Caltech lecture hall. Instead of cleanly releasing the ball, she inadvertently gave it a slight shove. Fortunately for her, Feynman saw the mistake and pushed her out of the way of the returning ball which left a mark in the wall where her head had been.

gjm112• 14 years ago

The kinetic energy in the ball's motion when it returned to her face should have been no greater than that imparted by the "slight shove". Can't have been so very slight. (Or else leaving a mark in the wall was easier than it sounds.)

I just tried thwacking my nose with about as much force as I could reasonably describe as a "slight shove" in that situation. It wasn't terribly pleasant, but it wasn't very painful and did no damage.

I cordially doubt that the younger prof was in danger of anything very bad. Assuming that the rest of the story is true, I suspect that Feynman was either being (commendably) over-cautious or showing off. Perhaps both.

(There's a more unpleasant failure mode for this demonstration: If you move your head forward after releasing the ball, then it'll hit your nose earlier, when it's lower down, which if the ball is very heavy can mean quite a considerable amount of extra energy.)

tokenadult2• 14 years ago

SkepticBlog had a recent post by Michael Shermer on the current activities of Esalen Institute.

http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/06/05/a-weekend-of-woo/

The "elegantly designed hot tubs (clothing optional, and most opt to go without)" are still a big feature of meetings at Esalen Institute, but Shermer finds more to discuss about the activities during his latest visit there.

AFTER EDIT to comment on another interesting comment. A top-level comment mentions, "Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both." Feynman indeed was dubious about much of psychology as it was written about during his academic career. He was not alone. Psychologists wrote in similar terms during the same period, for example David Lykken in is article "What's Wrong with Psychology Anyway?"

http://cogprints.org/371/3/148.pdf

inconditus2• 14 years ago

Your anecdote about the bowling ball is (AFAIK) incorrect, you're thinking about Walter Lewin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaALPa7Dwdw. (starts at 1:08)

pm90• 14 years ago

It was done by Feynman first (I had heard of it in 2007, before this video was published, when I was finding about Feynman after reading his classic "Surely you're .."). I don't think Lewin acknowledged that though

jpwagner• 14 years ago

his point about not selling to laypeople is important in at least two ways.

it's a shame that many scientists game the grant system making their research sound more sexy than it is, seems to undermine the point of publicly funded research (as feynman points out).

and i know i drive myself crazy every morning reading most of the articles here: https://news.google.com/news/section?topic=snc

Jun83• 14 years ago

As always, many of Feynman's points are spot on. Yet, why do I get a sense of unease after reading this piece? I think his description of the scientific process is right, but its a bit too simplistic (of course, he was giving a address, not a lecture, but still). Specifically,

1. Very cleverly, he mixes in examples of absolute crackpottery (e.g Uri Geller, reflexology) with those of somewhat researchers (e.g. the psychology student) who may be somewhat clueless in their experimental procedures but are trying to do valid science, which in our minds equate both.

2. He seems to say: "This is the way to proceed scientifically, you can't do it another way", where the methods he alludes to are the methods of experimental physics. (simply put) In physics you do your experiment, carefully controlling factors and you get your result. Unfortunately, this method is either hard to apply (e.g. in the rat experiment, there are so many variables to control, some unknown, because it's a complex organism, now think of experiments on humans) or downright impossible (e.g. the educational problem he mentions, which is a good example of a Wicked Problem, we're still discussing solutions).

3. Expanding on the education system point: Feynman says: " A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one." But therein lies the big problem: nobody can agree on how to measure how good a system, observe the huge teachers's ratings debates taking place in the US. What Feynman misses, I think, is that these are socio-scientific problems, if scientific problems have O(n^2) complexity these have O(2^n). You definitely need the scientific method but that's not going to be enough in attacking these problems.

4. Feynman also directs his assault solely on the "experts" and charlatans who create and perpetuate these stupid pesudoscientific theories, e.g. "ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience." What would be a better way to eradicate such tendencies would be to study why human beings are so susceptible to ideas like religion, UFOs, superstition, etc., i.e. target the consumers rather than dealers.

Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp of complex physical concepts he may be the best in history. And from what I've ready about him he seemed to have a weak spot (like Newton's alchemy, Einsteins's reluctance to accept QM, etc.) for showmanship, by which I mean: when he got the momentum going with a good example/though/principle that has applications outside physics he was a bit too quick to overgeneralize.

evincarofautumn• 14 years ago

I’m not sure his generalisations were really overgeneralisations. When you have a strong intuition about something, it’s going to be a real challenge to cast it into words for an audience that lacks that intuition. You can impart understanding but not sense—like explaining colour to someone blind from birth.

crusso4• 14 years ago

Right. As was typical, Feynman had a level of understanding of a great many things that were difficult to convey to even some of the smartest people like a bunch of Caltech graduates.

The beauty of his genius was that he managed to distill an important essence of Science into a relatively short and entertaining address that he could pass on to those new Scientists in hopes that they would grasp it as a useful concept that could be applied to their careers, the Scientific community, and to society in general.

The fact that we're still quoting it here on the Internet and thus passing on the wisdom is a nice bonus.

crusso4• 14 years ago

I think your criticisms miss the mark by a long shot.

1. Mixes in? Is your charge that he tried to commit the fallacy of equivocation in some way? I'm not following how discussing the obvious abuse of integrity that Geller demonstrated and then the less-obvious abuse of integrity the psychology student demonstrated detracts from his point that integrity is really important to the usefulness of the Scientific method.

2. Seems to say? To me, he "seems to say" that a lack of integrity in the whole process is a commonly occurring characteristic of Cargo Cults. He seems to say that a lack of integrity diminishes the utility of the Scientific method.

3. You entirely missed the point of Feynman's education comment and the context of the part you quoted. Basically, he said that what we're doing to fix problems in education isn't working and we continue to rely on the same people and methods to fix them. The funny thing is that here we are almost 40 years after Feynman gave that address and we've never added the integrity that he spoke about to the process of improving education in America. As with the Cargo Cults, it's not surprising that results haven't improved.

4. This item/suggestion makes no sense. Feynman isn't proposing a holistic plan to fix the problem. The speech we're discussing was a commencement address to upcoming graduates from an institute that trains Scientists. Why wouldn't it be entirely appropriate to urge new Scientists to consider the importance of integrity to the Scientific method?

> Of course, Feynman was a genius in Physics, in his intuitive grasp [...]

I don't think you made one semi-solid point in your critique of this address by Feynman; but you're going to double-down and start to generalize about how Feynman was too quick to overgeneralize? Are you trying to be ironic?

Jun83• 14 years ago

1. There's a huge difference between the Geller and the psychology student, the former does lack the integrity but you can't talk of "abuse of integrity" for the student, because (i) she was doing things in the prescribed way (unless, of course, you're ready to say almost all psychology departments (and most other humanities, too) are guilty of the same sin, and (ii) even if she did want to do a better experiment, in general it's not obvious how to do it in most cases in such disciplines. The point about putting the rat maze in sand is far-fetched (how many of us took such precautions in our PhD experiments). My point is that there's absolutely no comparison between Geller and his ilk and the student. Feynman is beating up on psychology here, I think, because it's not as rigorous as physics.

3. I think you missed my point here, based on your mentions of "same people" , "integrity", etc. Many, many approaches have been used to solve the education problem in the US in the past 40 years, some quite innovative, and not by the same people either. People from outside the field, like Feynman or more recently Bill Gates, think that the problem is just a case of idiots doing the same old thing, once you bring about the better methods, "integrity" (in this case perhaps may refer to teacher's ratings) and money, the problem may be solved relatively easily. As we have seen, that is not the case, because although the above sentiments contain most of the truth, there are other factors affecting the problem, too. The point is, unless you can attack all the factors at once, you won't be able to solve such deep sociological problems, which is why these require scientific++ approaches.

As for your tone, why not try to be a little more humble, rather than "makes no sense", "semi-solid" etc., why not "I didn't understand", even if the argument does suck.

Retric2• 14 years ago

His point is science is all or nothing. If you half ass it your simply wasting time.

Perhaps you can't do controlled experiments with people that's fine, give up and go work on something else don't compromise and still call it science. Because your results are meaningless.

PS: How much useful information has been gained from human nutritional experimentation over the last 50 years?

Jun83• 14 years ago

I disagree. Take the education reform problem (in the US). A number of solutions have been proposed, which one should we implement, or should we come up with a new one? Are teachers' ratings completely bogus, as some claim, or can they be used to rate them. People want answers, you can't just give up. Not everybody can close shop and work on other, more well-defined problems because these problems need to be solved, or lacking that, addressed. You have to come up with a methodology. Now, you may not want to call it "science" but that doesn't make the results meaningless.

Similar problems that require a combination of statistics, biology, psychology, ethics, and politics:

* Should universities stop affirmative action, should they stop reverse affirmative action for Asians?

* Should we (like Norway) enact laws that require a certain percentage of women on company boards?

* Should there be gender equality (in the sense of numbers) in almost all professions? Are men (or women) more suitable for certain jobs?

etc., I'm sure you can think of many more.

rd108• 14 years ago

Did not realize Feynman used meditation, isolation tanks, etc.!

"First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was."

paulovsk• 14 years ago

To be more precise, he used isolation tanks and not meditation (as far as I can tell, after reading his autobiography "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", highly recommended).

He played around with lockpicking too. Outstanding dude.

Nevaeh• 14 years ago

"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."

Upon reading this paragraph, I was reminded of his book "What do you care what other people think", which was a homage to Arlene, partly because Feynman made the fatal mistake of trusting the doctor's judgement to disregard the blatantly obvious diagnosis. He wrote about his experience in much more detail here:

Part 1: http://i.imgur.com/CSNop.png

Part 2: http://i.imgur.com/7mDTW.png

--------------------------------------------------------- //Comments below are irrelevant to the thread, I just felt like sharing.

Feynman was depressed for a while but eventually his love for physics helped him recover. Hans Bethe once said, "Feynman depressed is just a little more cheerful then any other person when he is exuberant." Feynman is arguably the most logical and happiest human being that has ever existed.

Feynman's magnificent exuberance and puzzle solving enthusiasm remained up until his last days, where his coworker Christopher Sykes remarked "Look at this man. He faces the abyss. He doesn't know whether he is going to live through this week. But he was consumed by it, and he worked on it all day long...." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h11m33s

A few days before his second operation, Feynman sang a bongos song about orange juice, an amusing take of Linus Pauling's advice to possibly cure his cancer. Just look at his smile at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKTSaezB4p8

I would also like to add that on Feynman's last days at the hospital, his last words to his artist friend Jirayr was "Don't worry about anything, go out and have a good time!" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzg1CU8t9nw#t=1h32m15s Maximus would be proud. "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."

Richard Feynman’s Caltech Graduation Address on Integrity

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