Who smeared Richard Feynman? (2014)

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/07/11/smeared-richard-feynman/

by srean • 5 months ago

73 60 5 months ago

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

Plausible; also marginal. We already knew that Edward Teller made these kinds of accusations against a lot of people and thereby did much greater harm.

srean7• 5 months ago

Teller would misspell Fermi and Fuchs' names ? That would be strange.

tclancy• 5 months ago

Counterpoint: nomative determinism.

gerikson• 5 months ago

Would Teller have had to mail Hoover though? Or just let the concerned people know that Feynman was unsuitable.

KPGv2• 5 months ago

Are you alleging that the FBI interviewer unknowingly interviewed Teller who was posing, with a high degree of skill, as a woman known to be closely associated with Feynman?

Because the FBI interviewer refers to the interviewee with feminine pronouns.

nemomarx• 5 months ago

admittedly it would be really funny if Teller could just do that

sigwinch• 5 months ago

I don’t think Teller worked with Feynman.

mellosouls• 5 months ago

(2014) Relevant because since then it's become quite trendy to throw mud at men like him.

chrismatic4• 5 months ago

Not entirely without reason though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpj2ISQAc

ecshafer4• 5 months ago

That video is such an extremely weak argument. Sure Feynman probably has more fame than he is merited. But he is still one of the most influential physicists. He just also happened to be entertaining and wrote some books. Personality and self-marketing makes a difference, welcome to society.

poulpy1234• 5 months ago

I cannot take seriously someone pretending that Feynman was a sham

glenstein• 5 months ago

I haven't seen many people going around saying Ed Witten is a security risk due to communist loyalties.

Analemma_• 5 months ago

Feynman really deserves it though: [0]. I admit to being part of the problem here, because in the 2000s and 2010s, I was in the Feynman cult with everyone else, but once you dig a little deeper under the quirky anecdotes (many of which are probably fictional), it’s clear he was kind of a scumbag and a lot of his reputation is whitewashing by what we’d now call fanboys.

If his wife did write that memo, I’d say she had pretty good justification.

[0] https://www.tumblr.com/centrally-unplanned/76851065507251814...

woodruffw• 5 months ago

That link demonstrates that he deserved a domestic abuse charge, not that he was a communist. I think the latter is still a smear, insofar as the (speculated) author is seeking justice through any avenue afforded.

(I should note that I have never particularly liked or cared about Feynman or any of the 20th century cult-of-personality physicists.)

srean7• 5 months ago

The stuff that the material in Feynman's book is not his is just made up nonsense. They follow his course lectures very very closely. The minutiae of writing may not be his, but the material certainly was his.

Regarding domestic abuse charges, this was before we had no fault divorce. It was common at that time to make up charges of abuse, often in concert with the lawyers of both parties just to ensure that divorce is granted.

So it is not a clear open and shut case at all.

poulpy1234• 5 months ago

In the very first sentence, with the usage of "Feynman bros", we understand that it is not a text honestly discussing the limits and failures of Feynman (which would not be very interesting anyway), but a politically motivatedl attack against a man seen as too famous and influential.

rimunroe5• 5 months ago

I know what you mean but this framing is dismissive. I think the larger change is that it's become a bit more acceptable in the society as a whole to acknowledge that many men we've held up on pedestals were actually flawed, or at the very least to give more credence and attention to stories told by contemporaries. In the case of Feynman, I think the way he writes about his relationship with women gives clear examples of misogyny. From an article[1] on this subject:

Among his many accomplishments, he contributed to several key conceptual breakthroughs in quantum physics, and his role in developing the field of quantum electrodynamics led to a Nobel Prize in 1965, which he shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga. [...] He came off as a fun, likeable guy who just liked to do math, play pranks, and bang on the bongos.
These things are true. But it’s also true that throughout his career, Feynman reveled in blatant misogyny and sexism. In “Surely You’re Joking”, Feynman details how he adopted the mindset of a pick-up artist (an outlook he also claims to have eventually abandoned) by treating women as if they were worthless and cruelly lashing out at them when they rejected his advances. He worked and held meetings in strip clubs, and while a professor at Cal Tech, he drew naked portraits of his female students. Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him.

Mythologizing or overly condemning figures is bad. I think it's one of the worst things we can do. It's both a disservice to everyone who knew them because it can minimize his impact on them and a disservice to the person themselves by inaccurately remembering them and is bad for society because it impedes our ability to learn. Personally I would be quite surprised if a guy at that time wasn't fairly sexist just given how often even as a kid I saw obvious sexism from people who were even a generation younger than him. I read the Feynman Lectures (which are freely available[2]!) as an undergrad and later interned on a couple collider experiments at RHIC and CEBAF where I encountered a lot more of his impact on quantum electro and chromodynamics. He was undeniably massively impactful and a brilliant communicator. I'd recommend everyone studying physics read his lectures and watch some interviews[3] with him.

He was also human and would have had common flaws like anyone else. His books strongly indicate this. I don't think this means he was the devil, but it should be something we think about. I think you can reasonably debate whether or not people in historical contexts should be judged "good" or "bad" based on ethical standards which are more commonly accepted now than they were then, but I can't imagine a good reason to ignore the existence of those flaws or to say they don't matter. People treat Feynman as a role model, but I hope most people can agree that trying to sleep with undergrads when you're a professor is bad and should not be emulated.

[1] https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...

[2] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

[3] I particularly like this one, though I feel a bit bad for the interviewer (also his ice melting explanation is probably wrong, but he does couch it with "so they say") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q

an0malous• 5 months ago

hell hath no fury

rurban• 5 months ago

I thought it's known for a long time already that it was his second wife, from Boise, Idaho.

crazygringo• 5 months ago

This is actually kind of hilarious. That your ex-wife would write to the FBI to denounce your character a couple of months after the divorce.

I did really enjoy this detail:

It was an extremely ugly, long (2 years!) divorce hearing: it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos.

Brilliant guy... but it is funny to think how nonstop bongos could definitely drive a spouse crazy.

srean7• 5 months ago

Vindictiveness is a real thing.

ricardo812• 5 months ago

The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them. They're typically going to be non-conformist in any event, and may come across as arrogant if they have an intricate belief system that you may not take the time to understand. I'd think one of the greatest scientists of a generation would have the kind of depth of thinking that few would understand. Having listened to many of his interviews (unfortunately I'm too young to have witnessed these things in real time) he comes across as one of the most eloquent people I can think of.

While reading through that I was suspecting it was perhaps a peer that was envious of Feynman, but an ex (scorned?) partner is extremely plausible.

abtinf• 5 months ago

The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them. They're typically going to be non-conformist in any event, and may come across as arrogant if they have an intricate belief system that you may not take the time to understand.

This is the bucket Ayn Rand falls into. Her philosophy is radically different, revolutionizing the entire field, to the point that most people can’t even grasp that the things she questions are open to debate.

esseph2• 5 months ago

LMAO Ayn Rand could get rolled up by an 8th grader.

No idea about how social systems actually work, or how real humans act.

If there's one thing that was real about Rand it was that ego.

There's few people that can make an ass of themselves to multiple fields so quickly, but if you stuck an artist, an economist, and an anthropologist in the room with Rand, after 15 minutes they could have all left with a laugh on Rands behalf.

It's also so funny to me the modern US libertarians that claim to love her so much. Rand hated libertarians! She thought they were crybabies and had no moral or logical foundation.

jcranmer• 5 months ago

The problem with extremely smart people is not many people understand them.

I know this is a common trope in many media portrayals, but it's really not my experience. The "insufferable genius" stereotype tracks most not for the extremely smart people but the kinda-smart people who are absolute jerks but try to defend their jerkassery on the basis of their intelligence.

esseph2• 5 months ago

The "insufferable genius" stereotype tracks most not for the extremely smart people but the kinda-smart people who are absolute jerks but try to defend their jerkassery on the basis of their intelligence.

Autism plays a lot into this. You'll get people who can seem condescending or unaware of different social norms, and it's genuinely not from a bad place, just a complete inability to understand their own communication style (especially in the moment).

ricardo812• 5 months ago

I understand where you're coming from. I wasn't meaning from the context of the pseudo-smart person portraying that (which is obviously a thing, probably more obvious nowadays), but a person that is the real article. You meet all walks of life in your lifetime and that unattainable-ness of very smart people can come across as inaccessible, unexplainable or arrogant.

The kind of person that has spent much time chiselling their belief system or is simply fascinated by a field of study that not many people can relate to on that depth. Feynman was a great communicator, but I can think of a few people that may have Asperger's syndrome that have that exceptional insight into things that sometimes results in collateral damage in relationships.

What I mean is there are exceptional people, and sometimes people fail to understand what is exceptional and take exception themselves.

The political narrative of the time obviously was extra cynical about declarations of which team you're playing for, or non-declaration. That's what I meant about non-conformist, they're not interested in the politics.

ASalazarMX• 5 months ago

The few very brilliant people I've known devoted themselves to master a subject, at the cost of neglecting others, like socialization. They were not autists by any measure of the condition, just very socially undeveloped. Some embraced the awkwardness, but others chose to be jerks because it is easier than rescuing an atrophied skill. The jock equivalent of wearing baggy pants because they skipped leg days.

I've also known a handful of artists, and some seemed to adopt the tortured artist stereotype out of style, not fate. They were convinced no one would take them seriously artistically if they weren't interesting and eccentric. In their case, being a jerk is a fashion.

I guess my point is, we choose what skills we want to develop, and also if we accept the skill exchange, or make excuses like "I'm bad at X", "I am this way and can't change", etc. Leave that to people that are actually diagnosed with a limiting condition; they usually put a great deal of effort and still need help to succeed.

dang• 5 months ago

Related. Others?

Who Smeared Richard Feynman? (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418130 - June 2020 (56 comments)

Who smeared Richard Feynman? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024982 - July 2014 (54 comments)

Who smeared Richard Feynman? (2014)

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