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Richard Feynman - Names Don't Constitute Knowledge

Caitlin SpiesCited 7× on HN, 2017–2022
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interview · general · evergreen · 2017–2022 on HN

A short excerpt from a 1973 Yorkshire TV film in which Richard Feynman explains that knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing it.

Shared to end arguments over definitions and terminology, and as a reminder that memorizing names is not understanding.

7 comments from Hacker News

@P5fRxh5kUvp2th2022-12 · in “Persistent and pervasive impact of being bullied in childhood and adolescence”

▶ this video I don't care what you call it, if person A starts mistreating person B and person B knows how to deal with these situations, person A will quickly stop mistreating person B. Your argument here appears to be that bullying if person A doesn't eventually fight back. I don't agree with that, but I'm not willing to argue over the names of things.

@P5fRxh5kUvp2th2022-12 · in “Letter regarding proposed free expression statement from MIT”

Sorry, I'm not reading all of that. I stopped at the second paragraph. The answer to the question doesn't actually matter, not to you, and not to me. It's a ploy to try and confound the conversation. If you and the other poster really feel it needs to be defined, then define cancelled as "the thing that happened to Dorian Abbot". boom, you're done. It now has a definition, tautological, but valid nonetheless. The thing that should be getting discussed is whether or not what happened to him should have happened to him. And the answer is no, it shouldn't happen to anyone. And now I'm going to leave you with an observation by Richard Feynman. ▶ this video

@P5fRxh5kUvp2th2022-12 · in “Why on Earth are flowers beautiful? (2018)”

Sure, if you find the phrase "common sense" to be less offensive than "blind faith", but in this case they mean the same thing. ▶ this video

@celticmusic2019-10 · in “Fair, the SoftBank-backed car startup, lays off 40% of staff, sacks CFO”

when people start quibbling over words I like to point them to this feynman video. ▶ this video The idea that risk isn't a part of the discussion about why a company is laying off 40% of its work force doesn't seem like it has much merit. The responses made sense, and they've been explained to you. You're just casting about trying to come up with some way to dismiss the other persons point while intellectualizing it for the HN audience. If we were on reddit your tone would be some passive aggressive wiffle waffle about experience or intelligence. The tone might change based upon the site, but the inaneness of the person behind them doesn't.

@vinchuco2018-08 · in “A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers (2007)”

> Do you know any other examples ▶ this video Where "complex numbers" is Chinese, "imaginary numbers" is German, and "2D numbers" is English in this analogy.