[HN Gopher] Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)
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Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)
Author : areoform
Score : 390 points
Date : 2022-02-11 08:32 UTC (14 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (cs.au.dk)
| sgt101 wrote:
| Just because you are best at arguing doesn't mean you are
| right...
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| My ex-gf will disagree ! :P
| paulio wrote:
| I just sat through 3 hours of meetings. I wish this had been read
| before we started.
| Datenstrom wrote:
| Commented on another post before reading in classic HN fashion,
| but the environment of the committee described sounds very much
| like the Braintrust Pixar leadership uses to create their
| stories. Any leaders looking to cultivate an environment that
| supports that kind of productive decision making can likely find
| some great tactics in the book "Creativity, Inc."
| smitty1e wrote:
| My takeaway from the anecdote is that greatness != omniscience.
| These smart fellows brought experience and biases to difficult
| questions and had to have enough trust and confidence in the
| group to let the group function as a seminar.
|
| The best teachers never really quit being students.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The more you learn the more ignorant you feel. It was
| refreshing to hear that even eg Noam Chomsky feels this way.
| suction wrote:
| This also describes companies during the "we're creating a great
| product / service" phase, when meetings aren't "won" by those who
| can sell themselves or their ideas best. Companies on the decline
| will always have very charismatic / well-spoken / authoritarian
| characters at the top who'll put their own ego before sustainable
| success. Think Ballmer at Microsoft.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >Companies on the decline will always have very charismatic /
| well-spoken / authoritarian characters at the top who'll put
| their own ego before sustainable success.
|
| And countries.
| Max_Ehrlich wrote:
| I recommend everyone read "Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman."
|
| The parts on Brazil were particularly interesting.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| It's a great angle on the communication side of science.
|
| I think the notion of "great man" like the genius of "Einstein"
| or "Newton" is seriously skewed. If you take a closer look at
| their correspondence and upbringing, they both were very well
| "connected" in their own ways beforehand.
|
| This picture of a loner sitting bored at a Patent Office and all
| by himself coming up with 4 groundbreaking papers (photoelectric
| effect, brownian motion, special relativity) in 1905 - [or
| Newtons "annus mirabilis" after fleeing Cambridge University
| because of the plague in 1665 and "quarantining" himself for 2
| years in his native village (by his own account (!) there he
| singlehandendly developed integral calculus, dicovered the
| composite nature of light and finally refined his gravitational
| theory)] - readily highlights the individual instances of
| "genius" which I do not want to dismiss here - but entirely
| blanks out how those free floating ideas were able to circulate
| and bounce off each other giving rise to those great insights in
| the "quiet" moments of those "geniuses".
|
| Only after their recognition of "genius" they seemed to develop
| some really unhealthy stubbornness.
|
| Newton - beginning in 1686 with his publication of the Principia
| - "disputing" any influence Hooke might have had and at his
| height of power letting his "Royal Society" create a comittee to
| decide against Leibniz "priority" regarding "calculus" in 1712).
|
| Einstein beginning with the Bohr debate (1927 onwards) and
| productively contributing to the EPR paradox in 1934 (further
| developed by Bell to the infamous "Bell's theorem") felt more and
| more "misunderstood" and isolated himself to work on his own
| "unified field theory" and from then on did not participate in
| any of the "quantum mechanics" of his time.
| chandmk wrote:
| I am wondering what would have happened if the committee chooses
| another idea instead of Compton's. Would Compton leave the
| committee? Would Feynman resent the decision? Or they wouldn't do
| that that is why they are called "great men"?
| civilized wrote:
| Feynman is impressed because the committee remembered the best
| argument and got to the right decision without Compton having
| to insist on himself. Compton made the best argument, once, and
| won.
|
| If the committee didn't choose Compton's idea, it would just be
| an average lame committee where quality of thought isn't a
| priority.
|
| There's a reason "design by committee" is an epithet. People
| thinking in groups normally suck at it.
| morelandjs wrote:
| This was the value I saw in my PhD. It has opened doors to jobs
| where the people I work with are brilliant and generally
| objective in their evaluation of competing ideas. It is an
| absolute treat to work in an environment like that. On many
| occasions, I worked with people who just _knew more_ than me on a
| certain topic, and I was enthusiastic to take a back seat and
| learn from them.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm curious, does one really need a PhD outside academia? Does
| sufficient experience make up for it?
| morelandjs wrote:
| Definitely don't need it, but it does introduce you to cool
| people.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| There is something magical when everyone leaves their ego at the
| door and is willing to build upon each other's ideas like improv.
|
| In the end, you're left committing to only one idea and everyone
| is supporting it because that's the only way it's going to be
| successful. This is known intrinsically by everyone
| participating.
|
| What this quote is missing is all the context. They were fighting
| for time and had to make a decision to get started on
| experiments. Many of these contributors were doing experimental
| work and Feynman was doing theoretical work.
|
| Also he was 24 years old at the time.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| This made me almost cry. In most companies the person who is the
| loudest or most persistent wins. The merit of an idea is almost
| irrelevant.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| It is a great pleasure to be among people who respect each
| other, listen, focus on the topics instead of on ego/politics.
|
| Sad if most companies are not like that, I must have been lucky
| to be in the right teams then.
| samim wrote:
| jart wrote:
| How many people didn't die due to Pax Americana?
| thombat wrote:
| A more nuanced description: the men who directly instigated the
| US atomic bomb effort were refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe
| with knowledge of the discovery of the fission and potential
| chain reaction of uranium in Germany in 1939, which meant that
| an atomic bomb was quite likely to be possible.
|
| Once Germany had been defeated and the largely-ruined Japan
| plainly had no realistic pathway to developing such a weapon
| mmany of these same men argued for the bomb not to be used [1]
| but as the British found with their strategic bombing of
| Germany, a weapon propounded as a saviour and developed at
| staggering expense is difficult to lay aside, even if both its
| utility and morality are questioned.
|
| [1] https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/leo-szilards-fight-
| st...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Bomb somebody else's harbor next time, kthxbye.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I don't think many of the scientists would have agreed to
| surprise attack Japan on population centres. It was a decision
| taken by the senior military, and came as a shock to most.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| You're confusing greatness with your approximation of goodness
| dkarl wrote:
| What strikes me is not a bunch of people keeping their ego in
| check -- that helps because it ensures that all points will be
| heard, but it doesn't ensure coherent decision-making. What
| strikes me is that everybody was able to keep track of what were
| the major points and minor points, so they could talk through the
| whole range of possible objections and decide that they were all
| less valid or less important than the points in favor. This is
| how engineers talk, searching for flaws and weighing the ones
| they find.
|
| I think it's important for engineering decision-makers to be
| comfortable with this culture. It's disheartening when you have a
| great conversation like the one Feynman describes, the engineers
| are in agreement, and then the person in charge stands up and
| says, "Look, if everybody hates this idea, we can't be lazy and
| go forward with it just because we don't have a better one," or,
| "I guess we can't make a decision on this, because there's too
| much negativity and people are just going to nit-pick every idea
| to death!" No, no, talking through every possible objection to an
| idea is how you can tell that people are starting to zero in on
| it as the most likely best solution. The closer an idea gets to
| acceptance, the more thoroughly you vet it. The more it becomes
| clear that an idea is the best way forward, the more you start to
| prepare for dealing with the reality of it.
|
| This makes practical sense, but not political sense, so it seems
| weird and unnatural to a lot of outside observers, who expect
| respect to be communicated by agreement, and emerging consensus
| around an idea to be expressed by a shared avoidance of
| mentioning the downsides.
| [deleted]
| pjungwir wrote:
| Even in literary criticism, this balance and _specificity_ is
| such a pleasure. It 's one of the things I love about Samuel
| Johnson's essays. (Contrast with what people are saying in the
| article about failing literary magazines.)
|
| I just started reading Boswell's biography, and the
| introduction to the Everyman's Library edition makes the same
| point:
|
| > Part of this comes from a literal-mindedness that won't
| mistake one fault for another or all others. This worked even
| when his dominant feeling was not of fondness (as for Smart)
| but of dislike (as for Sterne). Boswell reports Goldsmith
| toadying up to Johnson, in a conversation on Sterne, by saying
| 'And a very dull fellow': Johnson replied 'Why, no, sir.' Fact.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Tangential to this is I have observed one thing. I work in
| science, and a lot of our hires are fresh PhDs/postdocs. The
| best question to ask is the limitations of their approach. The
| more thoroughly they have worked on it, the better they know
| the limitations.
|
| On the other hand, people who are super confident and wave away
| any limitations of their approach have invariably been
| problematic hires.
|
| There is a cultural aspect to this too, because America for
| some reasons worships confidence and hates ambiguity.
| jerf wrote:
| I think one of the most important life hacks of all is to
| search out the reasons why you are wrong, not the reasons why
| you are right. Your brain is primed to tell you why you are
| right already. It takes active cognitive effort to find the
| reasons why you are wrong.
|
| I've characterized this before as the single most important
| aspect of science [1]. It is obviously very important in
| engineering. It's important in navigating the noise of
| propaganda and lies out there in the world. It's important in
| day to day life, e.g., it's hard to scam someone who is
| actively trying to figure out why your scam offer is not going
| to work rather than helpfully talking themselves into going
| along with it.
|
| I suppose there is an excessive negativity trap. In the end you
| must decide something. But for many people that would still be
| an upgrade, vs. letting their natural inclination to self-
| justify every decision with the full power of the human brain
| run rampant.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680397
| rileyphone wrote:
| For a book around this, I would recommend Scout Mindset by
| Julia Galef, which close to a self-help-type book but still
| highly informative while still being digestible. From the ACX
| review [1]:
|
| > Of the fifty-odd biases discovered by Kahneman, Tversky,
| and their successors, forty-nine are cute quirks, and one is
| destroying civilization. This last one is confirmation bias -
| our tendency to interpret evidence as confirming our pre-
| existing beliefs instead of changing our minds.
|
| I certainly agree with the premise that there is a deep
| epistemic flaw in the nature of our reasoning that we can
| counteract with conscious intervention, such as your
| suggestion.
|
| [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-
| scout-...
| kqr wrote:
| Absolutely. This is a distinguishing mark of experts in any
| field: they are quick to construct situations that disprove
| their mental models.
|
| So instead of looking for corroboration, they actively set up
| a situation which they think could disprove their hypothesis.
| This is a very economical way to zero in on truth.
|
| It's also why I ask seemingly stupid questions when someone
| teaches me something. It's not that I don't think I know the
| answer -- it's precisely because I think the answer is
| obvious. One out of fifty times the answer is different, and
| that tells me my mental model is seriously flawed and I
| should question everything else I thought I just learned.
| [deleted]
| Datenstrom wrote:
| > talking through every possible objection to an idea is how
| you can tell that people are starting to zero in on it as the
| most likely best solution. The closer an idea gets to
| acceptance, the more thoroughly you vet it. The more it becomes
| clear that an idea is the best way forward, the more you start
| to prepare for dealing with the reality of it.
|
| Sounds a lot like the Braintrust described in the book
| "Creativity, Inc." which was accredited with a large portion of
| the credit for Pixar's success.
|
| > This makes practical sense, but not political sense
|
| The book says that to create the kind of environment that a
| Braintrust can function in takes a deal of care and one thing
| was all politics needed to be removed. Great book though highly
| recommend it.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Not just politics, everyone has to be actively engaged with
| the process because it runs contrary to instincts.
|
| One time I saw a room full of zoned out world-class
| scientists do this exact thing: reject the heavily vetted
| good option and accept the bad alternative because in the
| back of their heads they were just counting up positive
| attention and negative attention. The leader of the group
| realized what was going on, swung the conversation around
| again, re-framed things on more even footing, and people came
| to their senses.
|
| Still, it was a pretty stark reminder that we're all human
| and prone to misusing the "attention survey" shortcut if the
| group is even slightly disengaged.
| texuf wrote:
| Put a lawyer in the mix and everyone loses their minds. No
| offense to lawyers, they're just doing their job, but I've
| seen the group pick the absolute worst option over and over
| because a lawyer mentioned maybe something might be
| possibly questionable. When debriefed after shipping the
| lawyer couldn't understand why no one pushed back.
| hammock wrote:
| There are at two paths when you vet an idea to death (life?)
| like that. One is that you come to the optimal solution.
| Another is that enough people get exhausted defending their
| objections and eventually give in to what is a suboptimal
| solution.
|
| So there is something still missing from the recipe for
| coherent decision-making. It's the reason Feynman says these
| are "great men" - it's NOT the process which makes it work, but
| rather a quality inherent in the character of these men.
|
| I don't have an answer for what that may have been, but in the
| spirit of your second paragraph I just wanted to bring up this
| thought.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| It's always a great pleasure to work with people that aren't only
| at the same level, but also recognize and use that to not dwell
| on things that are obvious to everyone in the group.
| [deleted]
| neuro_image2 wrote:
| I wish there was anything close to this in healthcare.
|
| Most medical group meetings are:
|
| a)A small number of people that understand the issue (generally
| specialists) being drowned out by:
|
| b)A large number of people with a vague understanding of the
| issue (related specialists and generalists)
|
| c)A number of people with no understanding of the issue with the
| most political clout (administrators)
|
| And then a final decision made by the least knowledgeable, most
| political administrator with the most vested interests.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| One can not overstate how important it also is, that the public
| is suspended for this type of meetings.
|
| Meaning no gathering of material for self-aggrandizing or as
| ammunition for department warfare.
|
| No PR-stunts and no humiliation for gaps in knowledge. The person
| and ego has to be suspended for a moment and the "competition" of
| man go take a hike, replaced by a competition of ideas.
|
| Fairness has to be upheld, as in everyone in the round has to be
| a good sport and accept his/her idea to be less likely. Todays
| self-obsessed culture makes such a round nearly impossible,
| except - ironically for near anonymous internet forums.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| I was at a conference in Amsterdam once with a lot of talks from
| CEO's of fast growing companies. The day was very inspirational.
| The speakers were obviously very competent and the questions from
| the CEO's in the audience were interesting and they all received
| great answers.
|
| To top it off the chairman of the day summarised the whole event
| in a speech that I still remember to this day. It was so
| charming, intelligent and erudite. I was floored.
| testmasterflex wrote:
| Name of the conference? :)
| dijit wrote:
| I have been in such environments and I while I hadn't considered
| that the _reason_ they worked so well was that they were great
| people: they were, in fact, great people.
|
| An interesting thing happens when there's a high level of
| respect.
|
| People stop being so anxious about not "winning", or "being
| heard", people just remove themselves from their ideas and feel
| comfortable and confident.
|
| I left that company because the company around that team was a
| bit shit, but I wish I could foster an environment of high trust
| and mutual respect like that again.
| jart wrote:
| Well I imagine when you're an Arthur Compton or a Richard
| Feynman or an Oppenheimer, you don't have a whole lot to prove.
| [deleted]
| tigerlily wrote:
| I like how you included all the Oppenheimers :)
| smilespray wrote:
| ...and all the Arthur Comptons and Richard Feynmans!
| watwut wrote:
| I dont think it is just the question of quality of individual.
| It is result of the way leadership shapes the place, what it
| rewards or not. People react greatly to the environment they
| are in.
|
| Whether people worry about being heard, whether being winning
| is important or not influences a lot how they will discuss.
| Whether you can afford to remove yourself from the idea is
| artefact of the environment too.
| pnt12 wrote:
| I agree with the thought about leadership. Peer to peer
| discussions can be exhausting, where a consensus is hard to
| achieve and a majority vote is often unsatisfying. A good
| leader can listen to every idea, make a decision and steer
| everyone in that direction.
| [deleted]
| tomohawk wrote:
| We have a better way of doing things now-a-days.
|
| Whatever politico has enough sway with the social media companies
| makes it known what the proper narrative is, and then any other
| point of view is simply labelled as misinformation.
|
| That way we don't have to put up with the misinformed views of
| great men.
| tmule wrote:
| It's unclear what is being praised- is it the high working memory
| (and reasoning power) of those great men or the ability to have
| an open discussion about the merits of a case?
| _delibash_ wrote:
| It looks like it's both. But either way, it's not that
| extraordinary.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The memory one could be, depending on how much detail and new
| ground is covered. Imagine your first day as a developer and
| you hear their architecture for the first time, and you
| recall all the points if a discussion between 5 expert people
| there. You remember the words and build the mental model
| simultaneously. It would be impressive, unless your full time
| job is consulting in such meetings.
| tmule wrote:
| " It would be impressive, unless your full time job is
| consulting in such meetings."
|
| There's self section of individuals with high working
| memory into such roles. There are many managers who attend
| meetings all day and can't synthesize what's being
| discussed in real time, indicating that this isn't about
| practice.
| coldtea wrote:
| What's not extraordinary? "the ability to have an open
| discussion about the merits of a case"? You'd be surprised...
| 30minAdayHN wrote:
| i think he was praising their ability to not bring in their
| egos to the discussion while trusting that best idea will win.
| best idea won without lot of inefficiency of repetition which
| often happens.
| janandonly wrote:
| I recently read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" and it's a
| good little book filled with stories like these.
| [deleted]
| lordnacho wrote:
| I get the feeling this anecdote leaves out some important
| information. Perhaps whether people were giving hints about how
| confident they were on their contribution, or whether there was
| an aha-reaction to something insightful that was said.
|
| But also it's important to separate oneself from ideas that
| appear in one's head and not be too closely invested in them.
| jokoon wrote:
| "Some people are better than others. Some are great, some are
| losers".
|
| I really dislike the wording of that title.
| slingnow wrote:
| Good to know. Thank you.
| lbriner wrote:
| I'm unsure of what is surprising to Feynman. Is he saying that he
| assumed clever men would be obnoxious and self-righteous when
| they weren't?
|
| Although an anecdote, I would imagine there are plenty of
| examples where the opposite would happen to people who could
| still fairly be called great men/people.
|
| In fact, some times, great people are necessarily obnoxious - or
| at least cold. I can't imagine that kind/warm people could have
| got Tesla or Apple to where they are, it takes a certain hard
| nose to make hard choices in business.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| I guess there really are a spectrum of the graph if you plot:
| intelligence-VS-nice-guy-rating.
|
| I was lucky enough to work with some 'really really clever
| people (math+physics+cs)' in my career. Bar one or two
| generally the nicer they were the higher their intelligence
| seems to be at least from my point of view.
|
| The reverse were also true. I've also had the misfortune to
| work with some really 'difficult individuals' and you can spot
| their lack of basic knowledge + intelligence from a mile away.
|
| Maybe it's an evolution thing ? The "dumber" you are... the
| more you need to be aggressive (I.e Caveman: No charm, but I
| got a club to seduce females + competitors) to have your genes
| continue.
|
| Versus if you clever, you don't need all that aggression, you
| can finder clever ways to "woo" the women to carry on your
| genes :) ?
| vasco wrote:
| I interpreted it as it merely being a side point, this aspect
| of obnoxiousness. What Feynman was impressed it was the fact
| that they didn't need to repeat the ideas more than once. I
| think you're trying to see a deeper argument when this is the
| argument itself. Even in groups of smart people I've found that
| the group needs to write ideas down as it discusses them and
| repeat some of them to clarify to one person in the group that
| didn't get it the first time. If you don't do the writing down
| / repeating most people will lose track of most ideas, the same
| way most people can't play blind chess and remember all the
| pieces on the board. It's a comment on mental capacity moreso
| than manners.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| As an aside, while I don't do Feynman point regarding some of
| the exceptional meetings he has been to, as a chairperson my
| experience is you can significantly improve the meeting by
| systematically restating arguments, asking for clarification
| when a participant doesn't agree with your restatement and
| providing a brief summary of propositions before a decision
| is made.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I don't know anything about uranium separation, but is it
| possible the situation was not "Arthur Compton has the best
| idea, nobody needed to repeat it because they all remembered
| it on one hearing" and was more like "Arthur Compton started
| the meeting by setting out the main Uranium separation plan
| we all know well and have been leaning towards for weeks, and
| everyone lay out their previously hotly argued views and no
| dealbreakers with better alternatives arose so the committee
| agreed on the way". Or perhaps that nobody had any stake in
| doing Uranium separation one way over another way for
| personal identity reasons?
|
| Perhaps the surprising bit was that they could all agree on
| the not-ideal method because they needed to move on and the
| meeting was a formality of agreement and alignment, not a
| brainstorming fight for your own idea session?
|
| We have another anecdote of Feynman being shown blueprints of
| a nuclear power plant and he doesn't understand and
| eventually asks a stupid question about a part, "expecting"
| to be laughed at and told it's a door, but it turns out to be
| a valve which could cause a problem if it fails. Nobody else
| had noticed, implying they were pretending their
| understanding, and they left thinking he was a great
| insightful man which he's saying he isn't (but is likely
| downplaying for comedy as well as humbleness)
| nefitty wrote:
| It's interesting to me that when I imagine the trope of an
| idealized executive, I imagine a cold, stonefaced person.
|
| When I imagine a manager, my imagined ideal is a warm and
| conscientious person.
|
| For individual contributors, I imagine lukewarm and single-
| minded. For team members, warm and cooperative.
|
| So if most of humanity values warmth, how did executive types
| end up at the top of the pile? I thought that I would
| eventually move into executive levels when I was focused on a
| management career, but the managers I admired who could move
| their people always seemed distinct from the hardasses who
| could move mountains. I'm just now realizing this.
|
| Anyways, your comment piqued my interest because of the big
| impact the mental model of "warm/cold" has had on my social
| life. I'm more compassionate of cold people because I assume
| that they just haven't learned that mental model. I also
| literally sometimes imagine myself as cozy warm to help me open
| up and welcome in.
| dguest wrote:
| There are plenty of kind / warn / "great" people who got Tesla
| and Apple to where they are. They aren't all figureheads, but
| they are there.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| For me, it was the 'correctness being unsaid', he was thinking
| to himself the ideas being shared were running away from what
| seemed right.
|
| Another interpretation might be that he considers this a rare
| trait in people.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| An idea I'm coming around to is that the "great men" dynamic
| Feynman is talking about isn't actually a property of individual
| people, it's situational.
|
| Like, being humble, competent in your field, mature enough to
| actively listen to other people, etc, all help. But there are
| also more subtle factors like compatibility, company culture,
| project parameters, etc, that are also necessary to have that
| dynamic where everybody cooperates in discussions.
|
| Getting those subtle factors to align is hard, sometimes it's
| down to conditions you can't control, and it's definitely not as
| simple as "just" getting great people in a room.
| teddyh wrote:
| In the words of Richard Hamming:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3msMuwqp-o&list=PLctkxgWNSR...
| xiphmont wrote:
| This is a great recommendation (thanks!) and worth watching.
| csours wrote:
| Several comments here about what is the missing X factor - why
| did these guys get along. The quoted story takes place during
| World War II, and they were developing nuclear technology,
| specifically The Bomb. It's very easy to look back and criticize
| the outcome, but AT THE TIME, these people thought that they had
| to do this to preserve their way of life and defeat evil.
|
| I think this is a critical component of any moonshot - you have
| to have competition or some motivation that feels like an
| external compulsion.
| avazhi wrote:
| Not sure who, besides the Japanese at the time, have really
| criticised the outcome. Even now the Japanese seem to at least
| understand why it had to happen. It was the difference between
| Nazi fascism winning global hegemony or not. I don't think
| there's a serious argument that it shouldn't have happened.
| [deleted]
| lr1970 wrote:
| > It was the difference between Nazi fascism winning global
| hegemony or not. I don't think there's a serious argument
| that it shouldn't have happened.
|
| By the time nukes were dropped on Japan [0] in August 1945
| nazi Germany was defeated, the war in Europe ended, Soviets
| attacked Japanese army in Manchuria [1] on August 9-th -- the
| day of Nagasaki bombing.
|
| Dropping bombs on Japan had one main purpose - to show the
| Soviets who is the boss and prevent them from invading and
| occupying Japan before the USA can do it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshim
| a_a...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet-Japanese_War
| stdbrouw wrote:
| That's a pretty bizarre reading of history. The Soviet
| Union declared war on Japan because Stalin had promised
| Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1943 Tehran conference, so
| this was not some sort of surprising or unwelcome
| development.
| lr1970 wrote:
| It was not surprising for sure, but Truman who succeeded
| Roosevelt was not keen seeing Russians meddling in Japan
| when it was already on a brink of defeat and surrender.
| Nukes can cool off Stalin's appetite quite effectively.
| vkou wrote:
| The surprising development was just how quickly the
| Manchurian front collapsed against the Soviet Union. The
| Kwantung Army, and Japan's ability to continue the war,
| even in a defensive capability completely fell apart in 7
| days. Japan was utterly reliant on supplies and raw
| materials from its Chinese and Korean puppet states.
|
| Between that, and the amphibious attacks against Korea,
| the Kurils, and Sakhalin, the US was on a pretty short
| clock to end the war before communism had a chance to
| move in, and settle down.
|
| Stalin respected the pre-agreed partition of Europe, but
| neither Postdam, nor Tehran said very much about who
| would be in control of what part of the Japanese empire
| after the war... And in practice, this meant that when
| the war ended, possession, in the form of 'whose army is
| parked where' was nine tenths of the law.
|
| The United States was not at all interested in seeing an
| East/West Japan partition. North/South Korea was bad
| enough.
| andrepd wrote:
| The atom bomb project was initiated out of a fear that
| Germany would get it first.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Which has nothing to do with the question of why the
| bombs where dropped years later.
| psd1 wrote:
| I'm not well read on the topic, and I do tend to agree with
| you, but I can imagine an argument like:
|
| - nuclear threat is a serious cost to productivity and well-
| being - the bomb merely brought forward a conclusion that was
| already looking inevitable
|
| There's an obvious counter that some nation likely would have
| developed nuclear weapons independently - America was merely
| the first.
|
| Nonetheless, I think it's not a given that the bomb was a
| positive.
| pegasus wrote:
| There are very convincing historical arguments on why the
| bomb was both unnecessary and also why it didn't in fact play
| any role in Japan's surrender (it sound unlikely, but
| conventional bombing raids were annihilating Japanese cities
| at such a clip that Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't even
| register as anything different with the decision-making
| group; they decided to capitulate when the Soviet Union
| declared war on Japan and all hopes of avoiding unconditional
| surrender were dashed). Google brings up plenty of reading
| material.
| pegasus wrote:
| Adding this link: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/202
| 0-08-05/hiroshima-a...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Listen to at least the end of the "Supernova in the East"
| episodes of Hardcore History.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Those arguments decontextualize the war and are self-
| defeating in that the Allies were willing to give Dresden
| and other cities a treatment not much different from
| Hiroshima in the end. At the scale of 2 bombs, the a-bomb
| was wasn't a revolution in war, that wasn't going to happen
| until solidly in the mid 1950s where there was a large
| supply of devices that were practical use.
|
| Another factor was that the U.S. thought it was very
| possible we'd be going to war with Russia and was slow to
| demobilize so there was definitely the intent to intimidate
| the Soviet Union even that early.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Plenty do criticize the outcome and with reasonable
| justification. Your reasoning doesn't take into account that
| when the nukes were dropped Nazi Germany had already
| unconditionally surrendered. Sure, it was too costly to
| invade Japan.. but in retrospect, blockading and sanctioning
| might have achieved the same goals without indiscriminately
| obliterating 200,000 innocents.
| Alenycus wrote:
| A blockade and air raids also causes deaths. The literal
| name for the blockading operations with mines around Japan
| was Operation Starvation.
|
| Sometimes there are only bad options available. The bomb
| was the best choice
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Thanks for the interesting reading! I took a dive and it
| turns out Operation Starvation was remarkably effective
| and arguably should have been used earlier [0]. Also it
| didn't actually lead to any deaths from starvation [1].
| Here are some excerpts.
|
| "After the war, the commander of Japan's minesweeping
| operations noted that he thought this mining campaign
| could have directly led to the defeat of Japan on its own
| had it begun earlier. Similar conclusions were reached by
| American analysts who reported in July 1946 in the United
| States Strategic Bombing Survey that it would have been
| more efficient to combine the United States' effective
| anti-shipping submarine effort with land- and carrier-
| based air power to strike harder against merchant
| shipping and begin a more extensive aerial mining
| campaign earlier in the war. This would have starved
| Japan, forcing an earlier end to the war." [0]&[2]
|
| "While some of the main actors (the UK, the US, Germany,
| and Japan) escaped famine..." [1]
|
| "In Britain, Germany, and Japan, rationing was effective;
| even though food availability was sharply reduced almost
| everywhere, few literally died of hunger. Britain and
| Germany managed to maintain food consumption per capita
| at about 3,000 calories throughout the war. In Japan
| consumption fell from a norm of 2,000 calories per capita
| before Pearl Harbor to 1,900 calories in 1944, plummeting
| to 1,680 calories by the war's end." [1]
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation
|
| 1: https://voxeu.org/article/famines-wwii
|
| 2: https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm
| flerchin wrote:
| Germany did not unconditionally surrender until Hitler was
| dead and Berlin was overrun. Japan would have done the
| same. More than 200k innocents would have died.
| robbomacrae wrote:
| Hence blockade and sanction. No need to invade.
| dralley wrote:
| I fail to see how that would have led to a more humane
| outcome for the civilian population. The military
| controlled the government, they get first dibs on
| resources, not the civilian population.
| flerchin wrote:
| More than 200k still would have died under that scheme as
| well.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Would they?
| flerchin wrote:
| Yes
| user-the-name wrote:
| And how do you know that?
| flerchin wrote:
| You're welcome to find the original sources. There are
| several excellent books on the topic. I suggest using
| Google to find one that piques your interest. You
| definitely seem like the type to "do your own research"
| Mr Just-Asking-Questions guy.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Why did they need to unconditionally surrender?
| flerchin wrote:
| Mostly to free Korea, Burma, and China.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Why would that be needed for that? "Conditional
| surrender" doesn't mean there are no conditions the other
| way.
| flerchin wrote:
| Japan rejected losing the occupied territories.
| user-the-name wrote:
| And nothing other than murdering thousands of civilians
| with an atomic bomb could change that?
| pokepim wrote:
| GlennS wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "the outcome" here.
|
| If you mean developing the bomb, then fine.
|
| If you mean dropping the bomb, then that seems pretty
| controversial.
|
| I thought it was pretty well established that the USA knew
| Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped the bomb anyway?
| Banana699 wrote:
| >If you mean dropping the bomb, then that seems pretty
| controversial
|
| I honestly see this as a purely gut-level reaction to the
| astonishing power of the nuclear bomb more than anything
| about the victims. The casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
| are but a rounding error next to all those who died by fire
| bombing, carpet bombing, siege and starvations, and all the
| other infernos of WW2.
|
| It's not that this makes it okay, it just makes it strange
| that the bombings get all this attention in popular culture
| over other much more horrific atrocities and massacres.
| This was probably an effect of the 1960s/1970s/1980s terror
| of nuclear projected back on the events of 1945.
| 7952 wrote:
| Pure gut level reactions do make a difference though. The
| exact mechanism of threat can make a substantive
| difference to fear and how an enemy react. The brutal
| nature of nuclear weapons could be a feature.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| The speculation I've read is that dropping the bomb was as
| much about deterring the Russians than preventing a ground
| invasion of Japan.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I have studied this and as yet I am unable to find any
| evidence that Truman thought Japans surrender was imminent.
| All evidence I have found seems to point to Truman actually
| believing that dropping the bomb would save lives- both
| American and Japanese.
|
| If you have any evidence otherwise, I would be interested
| in reviewing it.
| alecbz wrote:
| > the USA knew Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped
| the bomb anyway?
|
| This is the opposite of what I usually hear? I've heard
| things about how Japan was getting ready to fight to the
| last man, starting to arm civilians.
|
| I have heard that the _emperor_ was maybe willing to
| surrender, but that the country was essentially being run
| by the military leadership, who would ~never see surrender
| as an option.
| GlennS wrote:
| Well, that's what Truman said.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the US thought that every man between 16
| and 65 was going to be given a weapon and fight for every
| inch of Japanese soil. That at the time it was considered
| likely that we would have to fight a long war of attrition
| across the island losing hundreds of thousands of Americans
| and being forced to kill uncountable Japanese conscripts.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| We never had to do that. We could have simply not invaded
| the main islands. Furthermore, we could have offered a
| peace agreement that ends the war without occupation of
| Japan.
| me_me_me wrote:
| If you want to have a comprehensive view of what happened
| and why things happened, I cannot recommend Dan Carlin's
| Hardcore History series enough on this topic [0].
|
| The A bomb is extensively discussed late in the series,
| with shift in the strategy from strategic bombing to mass
| firebombing as US were preparing the invasion of mainland
| japan.
|
| TL;DR: > I thought it was pretty well established that the
| USA knew Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped the
| bomb anyway?
|
| Simply not true, however answering if Abomb was good move
| or not, is such a complex and nuanced question you cannot
| just have a simple statement for or against.
|
| The USA feared the invasion of mainland japan because of
| the unimaginable looses they would incur. Japan's
| population was prepared to fight USA with sharpened bamboo
| stick, and I mean population as in civilians, as in EVERY
| single person is possibly out to get you. Just imagine what
| kind of mental damage you would put of your soldiers to
| have to mow down scores of suicidal civilians. Note that
| this behaviour was already showing up as US were nearing
| closer to actual japan.
|
| Also you had USSR freed from fighting nazis having a
| massive score to settle with japan. Do you want uncle
| stalin also be involved? (given what happened to west/east
| germany was it better japan avoided est/west japan split?)
|
| Have a listen to [1] on the accounts of firebombing of
| Tokyo. It horrendous fate in comparison to A-bomb. On top
| the horror of slowly burning alive trapped in fire cage
| there were far more death from firebombings/carpetbombings
| than Abombs.
|
| [0]https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
| history-62-supern...
|
| [1]https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
| history-67-supern...
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I thought it was pretty well established that the USA knew
| Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped the bomb
| anyway?_
|
| There are a few different theories about this, and still
| some controversy about it all to this very day as I
| understand it.
|
| One idea holds that Japan would have surrendered earlier
| had the Allies not insisted on the abolition of the role of
| the Emperor (who as I understand it, is something akin to
| God in Japanese culture). This was apparently a step too
| far for the Japanese at the time.
|
| Another idea holds that even if the Allies _had_ invaded,
| the Japanese would have quickly capitulated IF the Russians
| were part of the invasion. Supposedly Japan was uniquely
| afraid of Russia at that moment in history, for some
| reason. I don 't recall now the details behind this
| suggestion.
|
| I can't say much about the veracity of either position, but
| those are two themes I've heard repeatedly about the
| situation.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That is wrong. The difference was how quickly Japan would
| lose the war after Germany was already a non-factor. The cost
| was how bloody the defeat would be and the calculation was
| that the bombs would result in fewer lives lost overall.
| Japan wasn't going to win one way or the other.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| What I hear is that these people are really listening and
| paying attention.
|
| In so many normal conversations people are repeating over and
| over again because they assume it goes in one ear and out the
| other and they are right.
| gumby wrote:
| I think most conversations are each person waiting for the
| other person's mouth to stop moving so they can make their
| own point. I.e. no listening, just talking. Worse in larger
| groups.
| ehnto wrote:
| I find part of the issue is how fleeting opportunities for
| intimate conversation are. It's been a long time since I've
| sat down with a drink, a friend and a few hours to kill. I
| have friends and do a lot of things, but they're all
| activity based. I do love that, but it can make
| conversation pretty shallow.
|
| Another part of the issue is the internet, for many
| reasons, but specifically related to this is that it's
| killed people's curiosity and their ability to discuss a
| topic for fun. The internet gives people their opinions,
| and answers any ambiguity in an instant. Want to know what
| the best tire for your bike is? No need to discuss it, the
| internet told them what's correct, case closed.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| "I find part of the issue is how fleeting opportunities
| for intimate conversation are. It's been a long time
| since I've sat down with a drink, a friend and a few
| hours to kill. I have friends and do a lot of things, but
| they're all activity based. I do love that, but it can
| make conversation pretty shallow."
|
| It's rather curious to me to see how others live their
| lives in ways that they're limited on details that I take
| for granted as normal and regular. I see many people here
| describing activities that I haven't done in years or
| ever too, and then run into something like your comment
| above, where sitting down with a friend for a drink and a
| few hours of conversation is a rare thing, though in my
| case I usually find the time to do it at least once a
| week to refresh and relax, and have done it without
| interruptions for years now. Just an observation on these
| differences between lives in general.
| gumby wrote:
| Covid has had an effect. I like to do things like ski,
| backpack and such with my friends. We'd usually drive up
| together in a car, or couple of cars, which gave time for
| all sorts of yakking. With Covid you're supposed to take
| individual cars.
| ineedasername wrote:
| If the context wasn't WWII then the meeting might have gone
| very differently. A high level of crisis can tend to focus
| things a bit. It will, by necessity, bias things towards
| action when some action is definitively required. At that
| point the hope is that you stumble upon a moderately
| effective (or better) course of action and not just one that
| says, "we have to do something. $X is something, therefore we
| have to do $X"
|
| In my workplace during the pandemic I have seen this bias
| towards action play out. New (barely MVP) systems and
| integrations build in a week that would have been a year to
| get to the same point normally. A yes, there were a few
| nonsense "$action must be done" as well, but we managed the
| crisis too.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You're missing the point of the story. It wasn't "bias
| toward action". It was "the point was made once sat the
| beginning of a long meeting, never brought up again, and
| ended up being considered the right outcome at the end."
| That is, what made the meeting exciting was that everyone
| presented an opinion, did it one time, and retained what
| everyone else said.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, and I'm saying that if it weren't a war crisis that
| meeting may have played out very differently. And I'm
| saying that meetings today, now & throughout the COVID
| crisis, have played out very differently than before,
| resembling that of the linked article more closely.
|
| There has certainly been more discussion & review of
| options than in the linked article, more debating of
| relative merits. But, then again, the circumstances I've
| been working through in my organization are not as clear
| cut as the optimal method of extracting a substance where
| there are discrete known facts. And the people involved
| have been experts in varying domains, not all physicists
| or related backgrounds where the merits of an opinion can
| be understood by the others without more discussion. Also
| this was one meeting: I doubt that every meeting among
| the people in the article all went so smoothly, with
| never debate or need for someone to rearticulate or
| expand their explanation of a point of view.
|
| Please note that I am not saying these men weren't great,
| and that the group dynamic Feynman describes isn't at
| least partly indicative of their level of intelligence.
| What I am saying is that the group dynamic described is
| not unique to people of towering genius. Having weathered
| many crisis (to be sure none on the scale of WW II) my
| observation is that this group dynamic cannot be
| disentangled from the crisis context and _only_ --
| somewhat simplistically-- attributed to "these were great
| men". Greatness of mind is not a universal panacea for
| indecision and uncertainly. Crisis on the other hand
| forces people to push through those things.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There was a really good TED talk at some point about
| effective communication - and probably books as well - where
| points in your comment and other sibling ones were addressed;
| repeating oneself was one of them, it assumes the other party
| wasn't listening. Not listening was another one, either
| through distraction or because of waiting for their turn to
| speak.
|
| I've seen it a lot in meetings, part of it is excitement,
| people really eager to bring their Knowledge to the table, or
| that they need to get things out of their system before the
| conversation goes somewhere else.
|
| I think there should be a lot more formalized meetings, in
| the sense that people are coached to finish one sentence /
| idea before moving on to the next, to ensure that all voices
| are heard, etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think about how to get better at it a lot.
|
| I worked at a mediation center with a woman (a founder) who
| could listen to two people talk about a dispute for 90
| minutes, not take any notes, listen carefully and make a
| detailed verbal summary of what the people said. It amazed
| me.
|
| I was in a call just now where there was a knock-down drag-
| out discussion going on that we've had before. It was
| tempting to disengage, daydream. I was waiting to write
| this comment the whole time but was able to stop it because
| it was worth listening to the group which is the only way
| out of the impasse. I find myself asking, "What is it going
| take for this person to feel heard?" (I wish I could just
| ask them that!)
|
| David Snyder is a hypnotist who makes videos on Youtube and
| he says that if you want people to feel mirrored it's
| powerful to remember and be able to repeat what the person
| said using the same words in the same order. Even if there
| is a place for paraphrasing, the more exact you can be the
| more certain you can be heard.
|
| We were having a stoned discussion at my house and my son
| was feeling that people were talking over him so I cleared
| off the whiteboard and summarized what he said. I was not
| going to "lose" and let him walk away saying that I hadn't
| listened to him. Sometimes he got really upset when I made
| him pause so I could take a picture of the board and clear
| it but I didn't stop until he didn't have anything more to
| say and he acknowledged that he'd been heard.
|
| I have an ideal of working towards of being able to offer
| people an unreasonable level of mirroring because of the
| power it has for drawing people in. I know I can't be
| perfect at it and can't expect perfect mirroring for others
| but I try to imagine there's no limit to how good I can do
| it.
|
| I was at a party the other day and a woman tried to flatter
| me based on a superficial thing about my intelligence and
| my first reaction was "Yuck! I've always felt my
| intelligence was something that separated me from other
| people. I'd appreciate it if somebody said I was funny or
| brave and probably not be able to think straight if
| somebody said I was handsome, but..." I had to step back
| and try to appreciate the sentiment but I thought about it
| and thought some more and decided I'd rather not make that
| mistake when I'm trying to seduce someone.
|
| I see a lot of people at the gym who have their bodies on
| display but are really defended and I don't feel I could
| talk to anybody about their superficial characteristics. I
| am only going to talk to somebody if I can show I really
| saw something about them that was personal, unique and
| touches me.
|
| There's one lady who really whoops it up when the Baltimore
| Ravens are playing on Sunday and that's one of the very few
| people I can talk to because boy I know she is crazy about
| football!
| jdrc wrote:
| Also, these were _the only_ guys who were trying seriously,
| they were on a mission,and in a military environment
| searealist wrote:
| An alternative theory is that they all got along because they
| were mostly Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe, especially
| Hungary.
| narrator wrote:
| If I want to make a serious effort to know the truth of a
| controversial matter, I make it a point to argue without using
| fallacies or relying on cognitive biases. This kind of arguing
| tends to work better in traditional forums instead of newsy
| forums like HN and Reddit. One can spend a long time researching
| one's argument and come back several days later with a well
| researched and formed argument and bump the thread back to the
| top. In HN and Reddit, by the time one has done this research,
| everyone has moved on.
| max_ wrote:
| >It was such a shock to me to see that a committee of men could
| present a whole lot of ideas, each one thinking of a new facet,
| while remembering what the other fella said, so that, at the end,
| the decision is made as to which idea was the best---summing it
| all up---without having to say it three times.
|
| Can we attribute this to the fact that in physics, everything can
| be validated mathematically? Hence less room for debate.
| zb wrote:
| No, because he's clearly describing an engineering problem, not
| a physics problem.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Right, so it can be validated experimentally, but this team
| had a real goal and a real deadline. To succeed they needed
| to get things as right as possible as quickly as possible.
| They needed to be efficient.
| somishere wrote:
| Honestly, my reading of this wasn't as clear cut as most of the
| other comments here. That said, I'm a devotee of the likes of
| Evelyn Waugh and Joseph Heller .. satirists both
| W0lf wrote:
| In my experience (and coming just out of a meeting alike) these
| types of respectful and forward-moving meetings are typically in
| a case where each attendant has roughly the same level expertise
| in a given domain and knows the basics of scientific principles.
| Hence, everybody in the meeting brings in his or her unique view
| of the topic at hand and knows intrinsically when it makes sense
| to contribute something to the discussion. Usually things get out
| of hands, if somebody is talking just for the noise or, and this
| is worse, a clearly bad idea wins the discussion because politics
| or the messenger has shouted the loudest.
| cousin_it wrote:
| Maybe it's not necessary for everyone to be at the same level,
| you just need to have everyone knowing everyone else's level
| and be humble about it. "Bob says the tractor can't pull this
| load, and he knows more about tractors than I do."
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Even if participants have same level of domain understanding,
| it takes more to be willing to work towards a solution _without
| their egos, their achievements, their alpha-ness_ getting in
| the way. I've seen the opposite more often than not. Where I do
| see this level of camaraderie is amongst close friends who know
| better about each other.
| darkerside wrote:
| Two keys here I think. One is the way the team was built. The
| people selected had truly remarkable skills in their own
| domains such that everyone already had the respect of others.
| There was nothing to prove in part because the team fit
| together so well. Big credit should go to the person or
| people who selected the team.
|
| Second is the chairman facilitating who didn't controlled the
| conversation, didn't leave time for bullshit, and probably
| had a very tight agenda.
| sockpuppet69 wrote:
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I think experts naturally tend to befriend each other, for
| the simple reason that they are the only one who can
| understand each other. And that even when there is rivalry in
| the ideas.
|
| Maybe being alone at the top is good for the ego, and some
| people like that, but it is also boring. If you are at the
| top in some field, is is probably your passion, something you
| want to talk about all day, but no one understands you, you
| feel like you are talking to babies, repeating "obvious"
| things over and over. On the opposite, you can't find anyone
| to teach anything new to you, being a pioneer is nice, but if
| you get stuck, you can't count on anyone but yourself, and it
| can become tedious.
|
| So, when you finally meet someone on your level, it is
| someone you want to keep. At last, you can talk with someone
| who understand you, who can provide a meaningful input, and
| even teach you a thing or two. And even if there is some
| rivalry, you have a worthy opponent, not an annoyance.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's also important for each participant to not be afraid to
| not be heard. I feel like that's a big issue in a lot of
| meetings, especially between developers, where it often feels
| like people are interrupting each other and talking over each
| other, where the strongest opinion wins, instead of letting
| each other finish and waiting your turn to speak. It
| reinforces people's tendency to talk over each other - "if I
| don't jump in now, the conversation will have moved on" -
| while at the same time reinforces less verbal / confident
| people to just keep their opinion to themselves while others
| talk over each other.
|
| Don't hesitate to call others out for their behaviour, as it
| occurs. And involve those who seem to be withdrawn or quiet,
| ask them about their opinion and input. It takes concerted
| efforts, if not coaching and training, to get out of that
| habit.
| foobarian wrote:
| There used to be meetings where I wished we could have
| installed those campaign debate buttons that buzz when
| someone's time is up. It could be infuriating. I have high
| hopes that remote meeting software will grow features like
| this eventually.
| 317070 wrote:
| Overheard on such a meeting yesterday: "Well, an alternative
| would be to use the coordinate system named after me."
|
| I feel these meetings work best when there is no career
| pressure, but when people have aligned goals and just want to
| make progress. It's easier to leave good points unsaid if
| everyone prefers having any conclusion to having no
| conclusion.
| avazhi wrote:
| Can you get Descartes' autograph for me? Thx
| 317070 wrote:
| I don't want to dox the professor that uttered the quote,
| but he was talking about these coordinates ;-)
| http://fusionwiki.ciemat.es/wiki/Boozer_coordinates
| psd1 wrote:
| It could also have been Dr Polar
| m463 wrote:
| I suspect the men in the feynman meeting had been rigorously or
| even ruthlessly chosen to form an effective group (for such an
| important mission)
| foobarian wrote:
| I suspect it may partly also be cultural for that segment of
| people. Repeating yourself at seminars or other academic
| meetings was highly frowned upon in several instances I've
| seen, it was not just greatness/respect/intrinsic etc.
|
| Perhaps sufficient greatness of attention span is a
| prerequisite to remember what everyone has said since the start
| of the meeting :-)
| mseepgood wrote:
| juanci_to wrote:
| Maybe I don't know the necessary context, what is the point you
| are trying to make with this statement?
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| Narrator: What these guys didn't know is that Compton talked it
| over with the chair before the meeting.
|
| If you've worked in a bureaucracy, you'll know that the important
| decisions are not made in meetings.
| elb2020 wrote:
| Judging from his book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, he was
| not a very modest person himself, with regard to his own
| accomplishments and ideas, maybe that's why he was shocked by the
| modesty and restraint of other men with (presumably) similarly
| great talents.
| mrjangles wrote:
| for some reason, a great many people on the internet don't seem
| to understand that it is not "his book". It was written after
| his death by his friend.
| pacman128 wrote:
| It was published 3 years before his death. https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!
| mrjangles wrote:
| Oh wow my mistake. Yes it is actually the sequel "what do
| you care what other people think" that was written after
| his death.
|
| Yeah knowing he wrote it, I guess it does come off a little
| more egotistical than I at first assumed. Still a good book
| though.
| dhbradshaw wrote:
| I think you have to distinguish between being socially humble
| and being humble about truth.
|
| Feynman was humble in that he tried to learn what was true
| instead of assuming that he already knew. He was always looking
| to improve his understanding.
|
| Being humble in the search for truth can sometimes even seem
| arrogant socially. It means that you'll regularly question not
| only your own beliefs but those of other people as well.
| dralley wrote:
| >Being humble in the search for truth can sometimes even seem
| arrogant socially. It means that you'll regularly question
| not only your own beliefs but those of other people as well.
|
| Although according to Murray Gell-Mann, Feynman might have
| gone a bit too far in that regard
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnMsgxIIQEE
| vixen99 wrote:
| Doesn't it depend on whether you feel he had a substantially
| realistic view as to his talents or not? Few would disagree
| that he was correct on that score. Moreover Feynman told a
| number of stories against himself - of how he turned out to be
| quite wrong about something. We may agree that false modesty is
| not much better than hyping one's non-existent qualities.
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