Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard P. Feynman

So right away I found out something about biology: it was very easy to find a question that was very interesting, and that nobody knew the answer to.

got special permission so I could give a nice lecture about what we were doing, and they were all excited: “We’re fighting a war! We see what it is!” They knew what the numbers meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released, and so on and so on. They knew what they were doing. Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They improved the scheme. They worked at night. They didn’t need supervising in the night; they didn’t need anything. They understood everything; they invented several of the programs that we used. So my boys really came through, and all that had to be done was to tell them what it was. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did nine problems in three months, which is nearly ten times as fast.

context meaning purpose commitment instead of compliance

you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in.

I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

“If I ask you a question during the lecture, afterwards everybody will be telling me, ‘What are you wasting our time for in the class? We’re trying to learn something. And you’re stopping him by asking a question.’”

I explained how useful it was to work together, to discuss the questions, to talk it over,

I’d choke a little bit when I talked. It was difficult at first, but gradually it got easier, and finally I had enough confidence that I wasn’t afraid of anybody.

you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up. It’s much easier to just plain decide.

I’d better listen. I don’t want to start trouble right away.”

the idea of distributing everything evenly is based on a theory that there’s only X amount of stuff in the world, that somehow we took it away from the poorer countries in the first place, and therefore we should give it back to them.

It isn’t the stuff, but the power to make the stuff, that is important.

I assumed, incorrectly, that she had the same attitudes as I did.

if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it:

Avoid confirmation bias

Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right.

Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist.