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

by Richard P. Feynman

I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of saying that you can’t.

I always do that, get into something and see how far I can go.

So we joked with the mathematicians: “We have a new theorem—that mathematicians can prove only trivial theorems, because every theorem that’s proved is trivial.”

People’s hands smell very different—that’s why dogs can identify people; you have to try it! All hands have a sort of moist smell, and a person who smokes has a very different smell on his hands from a person who doesn’t; ladies often have different kinds of perfumes, and so on. If somebody happened to have some coins in his pocket and happened to be handling them, you can smell that.

And Von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of Von Neumann’s advice. It’s made me a very happy man ever since. But it was Von Neumann who put the seed in that grew into my active irresponsibility!

“I don’t think so. In appendicitis we understand the causes better, and something about the mechanism of it, whereas with insanity it’s much more complicated and mysterious.” I won’t go through the whole debate; the point is that I meant insanity is physiologically peculiar, and he thought I meant it was socially peculiar.

I DON’T believe I can really do without teaching. The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.

Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!

“You know, you made a big mistake: I was brought up in a Jewish family.” He went out, and that was the beginning of my loss of respect for some of the professors in the humanities, and other areas, at Cornell University.

Not much has changed there, it seems!

“You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!”

It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.

“Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

What tantalized him was such a simple proportion hiding inside such complex motion.

Somebody who’s wise could have told me that was dangerous: When you’re away and you’ve got nothing but paper, and you’re feeling lonely, you remember all the good things and you can’t remember the reasons you had the arguments.

What I’ve always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I’ve decided that I can’t accept your offer.”

Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.

A friend of mine who’s a rich man—he invented some kind of simple digital switch—tells me about these people who contribute money to make prizes or give lectures: “You always look at them carefully to find out what crockery they’re trying to absolve their conscience of.”

The consul saw I was worried. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “Most of them don’t come.”

He was delighted. He said, “You’re perfectly right.” I think he was in the same position—having to set up a party for this jerk was just a pain in the ass. It turned out, in the end, everybody was happy. Nobody wanted to come, including the guest of honor! The host was much better off, too!

“So Professor Feynman,” he said, “next time you give examples of things that everybody talks about that nobody knows about, please include international relations!”

Because of this tendency to learn things all the time, new ideas from the outside would spread through the educational system very easily. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Japan has advanced so rapidly.”

husbands always like to prove their wives wrong—and he found out, as husbands often do, that his wife was quite right.

I had once thought to take drugs, but I got kind of scared of that: I love to think, and I don’t want to screw up the machine.

it’s unusual, in the sense that you usually would imagine the ego to be located in front of the back of the head, but instead you have it behind the back of the head.

you could meditate and do it if you practice, but I didn’t practice.

Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas—which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age.

A/B testing experimentation

So we really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.

the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science.

I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential,

If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it,

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.

So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.