Most people are not Feynman. Most engineers today think they have the capability of being Feynman one day - of course, statistics dictates that most will not be.
This is why Feynman's advice is powerful -
The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to.
Feynman here is instructing someone with too much ego, not too little. Koichi Mano thinks the problems he's working on are beneath him - that he should already be working on Feynman level problems! This is why he writes with shame to Feynman about his "humble" problem. Feynman demonstrates to him that no, no problem is too small, and backs it up with how he chipped away at "lesser" problems for a long time to build up confidence and competence. Finally, he closes with advice that could be ported to a middle manager at the smallest bureaucratic company who thinks they don't do anything important -
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office.
If you do not have too lofty of an opinion of yourself (less ego, not more), then you will not be ashamed of the problems you succeed in, and only then might you have the chance to do something important.
The professor's point was, being great at something isn't just a matter of having a big powerful brain, it's also a result of putting in the work, and that work is not glamorous. A lot of people want to go straight to the big, fun, "important" problems, the big job titles and pay checks, while skipping all the toil that gets you to that level.
You kind of missed your own (or possibly your professor's) point there: being great at something is a matter (in part) not just of putting in the work, but of having the inclination and motivation to put in so much work. If you think of it as "all the toil that gets you to that level", you're not the kind of person who is going to become great in that field.
The people with variable work ethic, but who could be motivated by the subject matter itself, mastered the subject and ended up with the remunerative careers "by accident."
You have to be willing to do the work, yes, but also figure out what you really, really like doing, and then do it -- a lot. Over, and over, and over, for years or even decades.
That being said, running after high remuneration in and of itself isn't bad. Sometimes its just what you have to do because a lot of other people depend on it.
Taking on big stuff isn't necessarily a "big ego" thing, but getting upset that we didn't solve the problem might be.
In my experience, big problems get solved by teams. It's important to be a good team member, even if we are "close to the gods." From what I understand, Feynman seemed to work well in teams, but I never worked with him, so I don't know.
False humility isn't helpful either.
I have worked with, and known, many truly brilliant folks. Some were unbearable, and getting on their team meant you drew the short straw.
Others were so self-effacing that it was actually embarrassing. It was difficult to be on a team with them, as we often accidentally treated them disrespectfully, or ignored their input.
I think it was Mandela that said: "You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."
Is this really true? I've always felt that people are more likely to open up and be themselves if I demonstrate that I'm a bit unsure of myself, too.
Don't get me wrong, I _hate_ when someone presents their work by saying "here's my poor attempt at X, it isn't very good" (which is especially enraging if their work is, in fact, good). But helping to bring more quiet members of the team out of their shell by sharing a bit of my own humanity, a bit of my own weakness? That seems like it does serve the world to me.
I think the key is that you shouldn't need to shrink. You can be competent and still have weaknesses that you openly acknowledge. And you can play with how you present those weaknesses, but that shouldn't require you to think less of yourself or to present yourself as less than what you are capable of.
Like I said, I have seen both extremes. I feel it's best when we are confident, but not cocksure.
There's always someone better. No matter how good I get, there's probably some kid in a Hanoi Internet café that can totally smoke my best.
But I won't hold back from doing my best, anyway.
Apparently the author (Marianne Williamson, not Mandela) was flabbergasted and honored that her words were being attributed to Mandela. [0]
Yeah, that's why I said "I think."
LOTS of misattributed quotes out there.
My fave is "Don't believe everything you read on the Internet." -Abraham Lincoln.
UPDATED TO ADD:
I preface my Medium posts[0] with quotes, and those, I tend to research a bit more exhaustively. One of my entries[1] is prefaced by the quote "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."
The quote is by John A. Shedd[2], but is often attributed to Grace Hopper, who used it one of her speeches.
[0] https://medium.com/chrismarshallny
[1] https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...
But Feynman, at least in his written works, was more a reverse engineer than an actual engineer.
But, on the other hand, physics could be described as a way to reverse engineer nature.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#Manhattan_Proj...
It sounds like Feynman remembered that his student thought highly of the problems he was working on late into his career. Feynman's encouraging his former student, as a recent graduate, to start out with low-hanging fruit.
He goes on to describe some of the easier problems that he worked on in the beginning of his career. That gave his former student some examples of worthwhile problems to start out with.
Personally, I think Feynman was very humble. Especially for a Nobel Prize winner.
The advice he gives in the letter is to be humble in how one approaches which problems to solve. I think it's good advice.
If he managed to stay lighthearted and friendly while making fun of others he’s doing a better job than me, because I’ve lost much of my patience for stupidity.
A lot of smart people berate others for their stupidity while relying on them for production power and resources to realize their visions or to make money off of them. There needs to be a lot more humility in general about others, especially since in fields like game design, there are way too many smart or skilled people chasing too few supporters/fans, to the point of underpricing the efforts of their labor.
No, sorry. I agree everybody deserves to be treated with respect, but in my experience many people who talk the talk you talk do not walk the walk at all: if they get a chance to crush somebody smarter or more able than themselves many have no limits whatsoever (except avoiding practical consequences to themselves)...
The thing with people like Feynman who are driven by curiosity is that they are not always “super nice”, but they get no joy out of ridiculing or humiliating other people, the way a lot of “small people” do, unfortunately. I’d much prefer being teased by Feynman than being verbally abused by some of the power and money hungry mediocre people I’ve come across.
Excepting the times, of course, when John von Neumann was there.
Afterwards you’d find yourself dazed and confused, wondering what happened and what steamrolled you in front of everyone.
However, whenever he talks about getting recruited or being tasked with something important, he always claimed to be astonished that anyone thought "little Feynman" worthy of such a high task. I take him at his word that this was his reaction.
I'm not sure what to make of this.
I'll add that though his bragging felt a little distasteful to me, I greatly enjoyed the tales and deeply appreciated his honesty and forthrightness about his life (including aspects I find less savory, like womanizing).
I'd absolutely recommend the book, but perhaps try _The Feynman Tapes_ on audiobook if possible because they're the recordings of his own speech that was written down and became the book.
Well, what would you have expected him to write? He was more clever than everyone around him in virtually every room he was in, for his whole life. Usain Bolt's biography would not have very many stories about the times he was outrun by people. Feynman had a healthy attitude about assigned-at-birth characteristics, he didn't deny them, but he didn't let them make him insufferable either.
Nonetheless, I see your point - most of the time, the alternative would have been to simply not tell the story, and I'm glad these stories were told.
If this is true, then maybe Feynman really was insecure about his intelligence ("humble"), and his "boastful" stories were to make him feel better about himself and to cover up this insecurity.
(I am not a psychologist, so I can be completely wrong here.)
Paying attention to people, listening to them carefully, answering questions and explaining things clearly, talking to them as equals instead of patronizing, etc. is not inherently “manipulative” or “psychopathic”.
The word is just a shorthand for people who are able to express themselves in a way that puts other people at ease and engenders a positive emotional state.
It’s pretty much an unmitigated positive trait. Like any positive trait it can be paired with all sorts of other characteristics positive or negative.
But there’s really just nothing wrong with being charming, and no moral authority that derives from not being so.
I think that goes well with the encouraging message of finding your place in the world, because you need it to progress.
Well, if you don't think you pack a punch or can take a beating, you don't throw your hat into the ring.
The problem is always to know how to strike a balance- believe in yourself, know what you can achieve, but don't become an overblown bag of farts. Why? Because obviously nobody can stand knowing they're an overblown bag of farts, so if someone is, they don't know the first thing: who they are.
Socrates, the wisest of men, knew how to get out of this one. "I know one thing, and I know it well: I know nothing at all", he said [1]. And, he said, "know thyself" [2].
A scientist is driven by what she doesn't know, and wishes to know. But she must know the immensity of the task, lest she become an idiot who thinks she knows and knows nothing, John Snow.
________
[1] my liberal translation of his laconic "εν οίδα οτι ουδέν οίδα", "I know one thing, that I know no thing".
[2] "Γνώθι σαυτόν".
"In man a working level of narcissism is inseparable from self-esteem, from a basic sense of self-worth. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of words, sounds and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper."
"It is natural for a man to strive to be a hero, it goes deeply in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, and yet the society gets chills when someone admits the honesty of it."
If you genuinely believe that you can achieve something, you might be willing to sink many months of nonstop work into it despite zero tangible progress. Someone without that ego may not have the tolerance to last that long without progress while still believing it's a good use of time.
This implies that a lack of ego will prevent you from attempting the same thing.
One doesn't need ego to have a healthy awareness of how significant factors like self-discipline, timing, opportunity, privilege, access to resources, and myriad others can be when it comes to success.
> You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods.
This is not ego
I'd like to work wherever you do. ;x
What you call who I call a healthy disrespect for bad rules that impede people trying to get real work done.
He’s saying that he’s working on the important stuff, figuring out how the universe works.
I imagine he was simply trying to be poetic.
Only because he solved so many problems that his side work is more substantial than most successful people's careers.
"Physicist Richard Feynman helped create the atomic bomb, shared a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics, and helped to figure out the source of the space shuttle Challenger explosion" -+livescience.com
I think we all want to believe that success can "go to your head", but I am beginning to believe the opposite: it's those with temerity and a certain precise lack of hubris who go on to do great things and do not "remain nameless" to the human race. Too many engineers eschew ego as much as possible, but (as Feynman points out) sometimes it's important to congratulate yourself.