Feynman: Magnets (and Why?) FUN TO IMAGINE 4/ higher quality version!

You asked the question, "Why is the hard problem a problem?" There's a documentary where someone asked Richard Feynman why magnets work, he spends almost 10 minutes talking about how a scientist assigns meaning to a question: [VIDEO] "When you explain a 'Why', you have to be in some framework where you allow things to be true." So what I would say is that people generally allow Cartesian Dualism to be "true" and that's the thing that needs to be challenged. Sometimes this is called Nondualism or Nonduality. If you look at it that way, the idea that the consciousness problem is an appropriate area for inquiry seems like a straightforward idea. As far as Carl Sagan being wrong, he was big on the idea that our subjective minds are just a thing that hydrogen atoms do, if you give them billions of years to do it. But he never came out as a Strict Materialist. He also liked to poke holes in religion but never came out as an Atheist. Yes, he was being clever and cute about it. But I don't think that makes him wrong, just that he was onto something more subtle about the nature of what we are. Human beings are a way for the universe to know itself.

It's an easy mistake to make, to have incorrect pedagogy around the concept of temperature, and Feynman was fanatical about correct pedagogy. This is always good: [VIDEO]

i can't help but tack on my favorite Feynman video, on magnets: [VIDEO] i'm just mesmerized by his answer, that without an understood context, it's not at all easy to explain how magnets work. his riff for 8 minutes on this is just a joy to watch.

> If photon is not waving something, then it's not a wave. No, you’ve simply hit the limits of needing/wanting to understand something in terms of something else similar or more familiar. Makes the same point on a related matter: [VIDEO]

> But the relationship between brain chemistry and consciousness is at best correlating certain conscious states with certain neurological states. How ironic that you would say that in a thread about Daniel Dennett's passing. You have obviously not read "Consciousness Explained." > And QFT explaining laws of nature would be strange considering QFT is included in the laws of nature. You should watch this: [VIDEO] > there are philosophical arguments as to why there must be an ultimate, necessary explanation Yes, obviously. There are arguments for why the earth must be flat too. Why should I care about either? They're just wrong .

I disagree! I think fields are very intuitive and it's everything else that's nonsensical! Magnetism isn't made of anything. It is a field, and it's one your can interact with directly. Compare that with, say, table salt. "What's table salt made of?" Uh. It's made of atoms entirely unrelated to salt, like sodium and chlorine. "What are atoms made of?" Uh. They're made of tiny electric particles zipping around at relativistic speeds but bound together by forces like magnetism. Richard Feynman does a better job than me of describing this exact problem in one of my favorite physics videos of all time: [VIDEO]

Not quite. It was declared useless to think about precisely because physics can't answer the most fundamental question of "Why". Richard Feynman went off on an interviewer for asking "Why are they doing that?" (regarding magnetic attraction/repulsion) precisely for this reason. [0] He considers it a waste of time to consider, because you fundamentally can't make meaningful progress on the problem with our current tools and understanding, and it's possible that no amount of tools or understanding can reach the bottom-most turtle. There are some things we may simply never know. [VIDEO]

I know what you mean but this framing is dismissive. I think the larger change is that it's become a bit more acceptable in the society as a whole to acknowledge that many men we've held up on pedestals were actually flawed, or at the very least to give more credence and attention to stories told by contemporaries. In the case of Feynman, I think the way he writes about his relationship with women gives clear examples of misogyny. From an article[1] on this subject: > Among his many accomplishments, he contributed to several key conceptual breakthroughs in quantum physics, and his role in developing the field of quantum electrodynamics led to a Nobel Prize in 1965, which he shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga. [...] He came off as a fun, likeable guy who just liked to do math, play pranks, and bang on the bongos. > These things are true. But it’s also true that throughout his career, Feynman reveled in blatant misogyny and sexism. In “Surely You’re Joking”, Feynman details how he adopted the mindset of a pick-up artist (an outlook he also claims to have eventually abandoned) by treating women as if they were worthless and cruelly lashing out at them when they rejected his advances. He worked and held meetings in strip clubs, and while a professor at Cal Tech, he drew naked portraits of his female students. Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him. Mythologizing or overly condemning figur

I linked the "why do magnets do that?" interview elsewhere in the comments, but if anyone else missed it I highly recommend it: [VIDEO]

At least you are aware of the lies. I'm reminded of Feynman's refusal to lie about the nature of magnets ( [VIDEO] ): "You'd soon ask me about the nature of the [rubber] bands." Even in his digression about "why" questions, in giving a very high level reason for why ice is slippery he adds "they say ", since I suspect he knew at the time the usual explanation had problems, and only recently do we have better explanations ( [LINK] ). But at the same time, I've thought, it can be fun to try and come up with nice sounding lies, or analogies, or oversimplifications, especially for some types of people who won't leave you alone about something until they think they've understood something (even if a lie), or who want something repeatable to tell their friends about so they can brag about you. Still I think honesty is a better policy, even if it's not as satisfying, and if departed from at least making sure both sides know there are convenient lies and oversimplifications. As a student I would be (and have been) very put out if the goal is to understand something on a technical level and the teacher starts with lies.