[HN Gopher] Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)
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       Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine (1989)
        
       Author : rl3
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2021-10-24 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (longnow.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (longnow.org)
        
       | 58x14 wrote:
       | Feynman was the first person who made physics relatable for me.
       | In contrast, my father graduated as a mechanical engineer, who
       | typically described mathematics as a series of expletives.
       | 
       | Feynman is lovingly referred to as "the great explainer" which
       | has been a driving influence in my life. The majority of my
       | personal network is non-technical, and I enjoy framing technical
       | subjects at a relatable abstraction. I've built a career around
       | this mentality.
       | 
       | Eerily enough, a HPC company I work with is in the middle of a
       | very similar narrative in the post, where my role is reducing the
       | complexity of the technology for different audiences. My favorite
       | encapsulation is "Kerbal Space Program but in real life."
       | 
       | I think it's critically important to always remain curious and
       | humble when discussing _anything_ and Feynman will always have my
       | deep gratitude for inspiring such thinking early in my life.
        
       | pvg wrote:
       | There are probably others the search missies but this is one of
       | HN's OG evergreens. Oldest one is 14 years old, makes me wonder
       | if there are other popular HN stories with quite that pedigree.
       | 
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
        
       | Jensson wrote:
       | > he presented his answer in the form of a set of partial
       | differential equations. To a physicist this may seem natural, but
       | to a computer designer, treating a set of boolean circuits as a
       | continuous, differentiable system is a bit strange. Feynman's
       | router equations were in terms of variables representing
       | continuous quantities such as "the average number of 1 bits in a
       | message address." I was much more accustomed to seeing analysis
       | in terms of inductive proof and case analysis than taking the
       | derivative of "the number of 1's" with respect to time. Our
       | discrete analysis said we needed seven buffers per chip;
       | Feynman's equations suggested that we only needed five. We
       | decided to play it safe and ignore Feynman.
       | 
       | I always felt it strange that people discount the value of
       | calculus, but maybe it is just that most professionals really
       | don't understand calculus that well? It is really useful for so
       | many things, and if you are good at understanding data and how to
       | properly approximate things then you come up with magical
       | solutions to otherwise intractable problems with it.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | > It is really useful for so many things, and if you are good
         | at understanding data and how to properly approximate things
         | 
         | That sounds really great and all, but I do admit to wishing
         | that depressing word "things" wasn't standing in the way of
         | some accurate examples. I do understand you said calculus helps
         | you to approximate, though.
        
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