[HN Gopher] Feynman's Razor
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Feynman's Razor
Author : mmoustafa
Score : 106 points
Date : 2024-06-07 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (defenderofthebasic.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (defenderofthebasic.substack.com)
| cde-v wrote:
| That isn't a razor...
| drewcoo wrote:
| nods to Crocodile Dundee . . .
| moffkalast wrote:
| Just physicists havin' fun.
| px43 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor
|
| > In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that
| allows one to eliminate ("shave off") unlikely explanations for
| a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions.
|
| I'd say maybe the rule here allows one to eliminate the useless
| parts of an explanation, thus simplifying the process of coming
| up with explanations for complicated things.
| cde-v wrote:
| I'd say it is too reactive to be a razor as opposed to a rule
| that would prevent dumbing it down too far to begin with.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Feynman confused pedagogical skill with expertise in a given
| field. He insisted that experts could explain things. No, that's
| what a teacher does. Feynman was good at both and apparently had
| no one to challenge him on his claim that they were the same.
|
| It's possible to be a great teacher without being an expert on
| given subject matter. And it's possible to have the most
| expertise but be inscrutable.
|
| In the case of this quote, Feynman wasn't talking about expertise
| at all, but about explaining a thing with enough relevant details
| to be understood. Without those, a layman would not understand
| either.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Maybe. I think Feynman had a point.
|
| From my experience "experts" who are unable to explain well
| typically have an incomplete understanding.
|
| Language and knowledge are linked to a degree.
|
| Personally I have had subject I thought I was an expert an and
| when I went to explain them I realized the shortcomings of my
| understanding. Later when I was truly an expert my ability to
| explain them improved.
| mlyle wrote:
| > From my experience "experts" who are unable to explain well
| typically have an incomplete understanding.
|
| You also have to give yourself permission to step several
| tiers back and think about how to distill "next pieces" into
| what they know.
|
| I also find myself handwaving away a whole lot of edge cases
| or rigor away in order to have a bite-sized step that will
| help the student make progress.
|
| > Personally I have had subject I thought I was an expert an
| and when I went to explain them I realized the shortcomings
| of my understanding. Later when I was truly an expert my
| ability to explain them improved.
|
| Conversely, I find every time I've done this exercise of
| stepping back and breaking it down for someone else, my
| knowledge has deepened.
| exe34 wrote:
| My biggest challenge with explaining things to people is the
| stuff they already know that's either wrong or not relevant.
| To save the effort of finding out later, I now ask people to
| explain it to me first, tell me everything they know about
| this, before I can figure out how far back I have to step
| before explaining it all.
| imabotbeep2937 wrote:
| Feynman was not a great teacher. Lots of people love his
| lectures now. But they're not getting graded on it.
|
| Actual students were considerably more mixed. Obviously
| individuals vary so if I post how most of his students were
| totally lost in class, they'll post how one student went on to
| win a Nobel prize and say gotcha.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are two types of teaching. One is teaching things to a
| complete beginner. The other is teaching things to someone
| who has already mastered the mechanics of a subject.
|
| Feynman was a world class second type teacher. If you already
| know how to work with physics equations and solve problems,
| then Feynman's lectures will improve your understanding
| considerably. The simplification process he does, gives you a
| grand understanding of the theory.
|
| Due to this, much of Feynman's pedagogy is not suitable for
| the first type of teaching. And should not be used as such.
| exe34 wrote:
| This reminds me of University Physics by Young and
| Freedman. The things I already understood were really
| dumbed down, and the things I didn't understand were
| inscrutable. I ended up using it as a door stop for the
| rest of the year until it fell apart and I had to throw it
| away. It was one of the first ones where the book came with
| a code that you had to use online to do the homework, so
| the book was also useless as second hand, after being
| useless when bought new.
| scarmig wrote:
| I agree this is true if your goal is to inform. If, however, your
| goal is to increase clicks, decrease support tickets, and get
| engagement, I'd be surprised if being technically descriptive and
| accurate is better than dumbing it down to the point of
| inaccuracy.
|
| None of that is to say that I agree with the goal of engagement
| over conveying information.
| barfbagginus wrote:
| It's important to begin violently opposing, not just
| disagreeing with, the theory of engagement and revenue
| creation. It must become dangerous indeed for those who decide
| to pursue those goals.
| exe34 wrote:
| If they pay your bills, it is very dangerous to say anything
| in fact.
| hifrote wrote:
| Funny thing is I think this about Feynman's own writing for "the
| layperson".
|
| I think things like Feynman's "little arrows" descriptions in QED
| only muddied and added to the mystique and mysticism of the
| physics he loved.
|
| Which is interesting because his written lectures[1], though, in
| their breadth and complexity require effort, seem as if they are
| intended for experts while being approachable to "the layperson".
|
| My only real complaint about those lectures is that even when I
| understood I rarely felt I had actionable tools for that new
| knowledge.
|
| The best descriptions of physics I feel that can sufficiently
| inform "the layperson" are ones that implements the physics in
| code[2], or through numerical methods.
|
| [1] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
|
| [2] https://www.lpfp.io/
| jarvist wrote:
| What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" / rotating
| clock hands in the QED book? I can't think of a more simple
| metaphor for the exponential of a complex phase, exp(i omega
| t). I suppose you could try and do it with more commonplace
| trigonometric functions, but then you lose the simple vector
| interpretation of adding the contributions. Or are you arguing
| that you should always try and teach complex numbers and the
| Euler identity to avoid strained analogies?
| hifrote wrote:
| > What do you not like about Feynman's "little arrows" /
| rotating clock hands in the QED book?
|
| It's difficult to articulate, but two aspects are:
|
| The amount of times I have only confused people more by
| trying to explain even modular arithmetic by calling on the
| clock analogy.
|
| And the fact that the little "clock hands" are a complete
| abstraction from both the physics being described and the
| mathematical models that describe that physics. ~"Quantum
| physics is just about adding clocks?"
|
| > I can't think of a more simple metaphor for the exponential
| of a complex phase, exp(i omega t).
|
| As I noted in the gp I think code implementations or
| numerical methods should be the goal.
|
| The solution to the confusion about referencing clocks when
| talking about modular arithmetic was just to write down a
| complete numerical example, ie all natural numbers mod 6 up
| to 10, and use that as the abstraction for further
| discussion: negatives, reals, periodicity, infinities,
| applications, et al.
| ajkjk wrote:
| In fact he didn't like the lectures and thought they largely
| failed at pedagogy. The actual Caltech students who listened to
| them didn't get much out of them. Instead they were primarily
| useful in explaining the subject to _other physicists_. I think
| he says this in the foreword? (if not, I read it somewhere
| else).
| nostrebored wrote:
| The original message is enough information to deduce what's
| probably going on as an expert and not feel alien to the customer
| base.
|
| What's the point of conveying root causes to the user? In this
| case the error tells you what you need to know: copy the message.
| Send it again if you want.
|
| The point of communication isn't always education. This isn't a
| razor. It doesn't do anything to help you consider audience. It
| will lead you to bad conclusions.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The original message is enough information to deduce what's
| probably going on as an expert_
|
| I dunno, I had no idea what the original message was trying to
| convey; it wasn't until I read lisper's comment that I got what
| was going on.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Sometimes it feels like the trend online right now is to design
| everything to make you stupider, on the theory that if it asks
| less of you will go along with it more easily. For instance,
| Google results seem more "least common denominator" every month.
| No longer can I search for something subtle and get subtle
| results; their algorithm pushes me towards and unhelpful answers.
| Maybe it's because lots of people do respond better to this, so
| it shows up better in the data. Anyway I hate it. I would like to
| gradually learn more as I interact with things, and engage with
| the complexity in systems, not have it hidden from me.
| amelius wrote:
| If you design a system for idiots, only idiots will use it.
| pier25 wrote:
| Maybe at some point Google will release a Classic version of
| the algo like Coca-Cola did.
| civilized wrote:
| Many of you will be familiar with this story: military pilot
| gear was once designed for the average person, but then they
| realized that actually, most people deviate significantly from
| the average in at least one way. So they made the gear
| adjustable, and that greatly improved performance and reduced
| mistakes.
|
| Why is it that in tech we are often told a seemingly contrary
| narrative -- that everything is better, or at least more
| profitable, when targeted to some hypothetical average person,
| and who cares about the diversity of individuals?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I miss Norton Disk Doctor, not because I work on drive recovery
| but because it had an interface that respected the user's
| intelligence.
|
| Every other storage-related system I've ever used either had
| inscrutable gibberish like: "Mode 5/7?" [Y]
|
| Or overly dumbed down questions like: Are you
| sure? [N]
|
| What am I sure about!? What is mode 5? Or is it 7? Both? What!?
| [1]
|
| Norton meanwhile had several paragraphs of text explaining what
| every decision meant. It explained _concepts_ inline. It provided
| an explanation of the benefits and risks. It let you make an
| informed choice instead of just hitting Y over and over and
| hoping for the best.
|
| This kind of respect for the reader / user applies to all forms
| of technical writing such as manuals, user interfaces, blog
| articles, and API docs.
|
| Instead of trying to dumb down the text for a "lay" audience, try
| to educate all audiences to become more technical after having
| read and understood what you wrote.
|
| [1] That is verbatim from a Hitachi SAN array that was holding
| all of the data for a government department. The manual helpfully
| explained that this option toggles between mode 5/7 being either
| on or off. If you choose wrong the array will erase itself and
| kill your cat. Or neither of those things. Who knows?
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >what the hell does this mean? The message doesn't exist, but I
| can copy its contents? If I can copy its contents...why can't I
| save it?? If it doesn't exist why do I have to discard it??
|
| Maybe it should be even less descriptive.
|
| "This message will soon no longer be available. Make sure you
| copy the contents of the message before you discard if you want
| to use them later."
|
| Talking about the cache doesn't help the user. Really the
| solution is to add a button at the end of the message that says
| "save message contents to device." Then the message is clear and
| easily actionable.
| powersnail wrote:
| I don't quite think the message-doesn't-exist example is caused
| by "dumbing down" too much. To me, the message "it no longer
| exists" is not the work of someone who, in trying to make layman
| understand, overdid it.
|
| Instead, it's the typical kind of mistake made by writers who
| forget about context.
|
| From the programmer's perspective, I speculate, the error _is_
| indeed a case of something being non-existent. The code is
| written to fetch something from the server, the server says it's
| not there, and well, the application should tell the user about
| it.
|
| Within the very narrow context of fetching it from the server,
| "doesn't exist" is correct. However, in the context of the user
| who's sitting there looking at the message, "doesn't exist" is
| simply false.
|
| The message needs to be re-contextualized, such that it makes
| sense. "The message doesn't exist on the server, it exists on
| your computer at the moment, but just for a short while, so you
| better copy it".
|
| It doesn't matter whether the user understand what a "server" is.
| Simply knowing that the message doesn't exist [at some place], is
| enough to make the whole sentence sensible.
|
| Like if I go to a car mechanic, who just points to the whole car
| and say "it's gonna be replaced", it would be confusing. But if
| he says that "xxx is gonna be replaced", that's perfectly
| comprehensible, even if I don't know what xxx is.
| sublinear wrote:
| To be great is to be misunderstood, and Feynman was a great man.
| I'm still not sure who decided to abuse some quotes and invent
| this "razor".
|
| I don't believe Feynman ever meant to overconstrain and corrupt
| information based on (likely incorrect) assumptions about his
| audience. There's no need to " dumb down" anything ever, not even
| for children.
|
| The information is either there or it isn't regardless of who can
| comprehend it. Losslessness is non-negotiable. The real problem
| is how you present that information, not whether you should leave
| it out. The only time you should leave something out is if it has
| little to no relation to the rest of what you're trying to say.
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