He actually did. He talked to me when I was a toddler at a physics conference in Greece and i remember it well. However, at the time I thought my father (another physicist) was smarter than him:)
Even after speaking on so many topics and fields in a single breath, he came back to original topic. That's an art. Many people tend to forget where they started.
@@schmetterling4477 i think he did answered the questions in last few seconds. Iron atoms spinning in same direction magnifying the force which u generally dont feel in other materials.
@@GAURAV-hm4xd No, he didn't. The question at 0:10 was not about magnets. It was about the nature of the magnetic field. Do you know why he was being asked that? Because he wasn't a solid state physicist but a quantum field theorist. He got the Physics Nobel for developing the correct theory of the quantized electromagnetic field. He really didn't know much about magnetism and you can clearly tell by his struggling attempt to explain what he hadn't been asked to begin with.
I have watched this so many times over te years that I almost know it off by heart; and yet, when I bump into it again I cannot resist istening to it yet again.
Richard actually forgot why magnets repulse, so he came up with the most elaborate distraction of an explanation to make you forget that you'd even asked.
"Why is Aunt Minnie in the hospital?" "Because water expands when it freezes, and because of gravity, which involves the planets and everything else. Frankly, it's impossible to really understand why she's there." "You are a bad cousin, Richard."
Yes. Yessss.....is this being clever? That’s exactly what he’s saying. Aunt Minnie is in the hospital because of electromagnetic forces holding molecules together in Aunt Minnie-shaped clumps, and gravitational forces attracting those clumps to larger clumps like planets. So, yes. You’re restating what he said. Is there a joke I’m missing? (AND BEFORE I CATCH ANY FLACK- yes I know smaller masses also tug on larger ones; but because electromagnetism is so vastly stronger, it takes a much larger body for gravity to overcome it and be noticed)
The sad thing is that he would have been able to explain the answer to the actual question quite well. He just didn't hear it. Watch the video carefully. You will notice that he was very tired. His eyes were glazing over when the interviewer asked the actual question at the ten second mark. He didn't get it and he misunderstood what he was being asked to explain. The whole thing went down from there because what he thought he was being asked is not a physics question that can be answered in anything less than a whole semester course called "Magnetism", which is so awful that I hope that you will never be required to take it. I was. ;-)
This is why I LOVE the "Explained In 5 Levels" Series on RU-vid, covering all sorts of different subjects. You get to see the cut off in your own understanding, and the deepening of the explanations as they get more technical, but also the beauty in how complex things arise from simple concepts in a progression of stacking and intertwining knowledge.
That's true - but the point is, you can start with the simple... and become more complex/nuanced. This video is the example of someone saying, it's ok you don't understand, you are dumb and don't need to. Learning should be focused (and this is a modern view) on the rising-lifts-all-boats. We need to encourage that the answers are easy, but the understanding is hard. If we can get more people past the first hurdle, the later ones become incrementally easier.
I bet at first the interviewer felt ashamed for asking the question, but after few minutes of Feynman giving this EPIC speech, he couldn't have felt any better about asking it :D
The interviewer had nothing to feel ashamed about. It is Feynman who doesn't hear one of the finest science questions that one can possibly ask. Neither is Feynman in a good situation here because in an interview the man with the camera always has the upper hand. If he decides to show one of your weakest performances as a human being, then you are toast. And, yes, that is what the interviewer did here.
I just had an epiphany. This is why young kids ask "why?" over and over. They don't have the framework with which to understand the answer that those with more experience understand intuitively.
@@MovementLiquid When Feynman has a meltdown because, like you, he didn't listen carefully at 0:10? No, I didn't miss that, but that's Feynman's shame and yours. :-)
the very moment when Feynman says "when you explain a why, you have to be in a framework where you allow something to be true, otherwise you're perpetually asking why", i believe it makes it very clear that his soul purpose in life is to EDUCATE in the form of changing peoples viewpoints to always consider the "Scientific Method", even if you're a simple person such as this interviewer who Feynman likely knows very well will have no interest in actually studying magnets to actually understand them. i believe he is basically saying, unless you really take the effort the understand the fundamentals of literally every single aspect of the question you're asking via experiment or experimental data, then your knowledge of that question is entirely based on what you read/see/ or are told. this may be because i just finished watching his Scientific Method video as well, but to me it seems he basically found it very reasonable to apply the Scientific Method to any aspect of life as lets you take into account all possible biases in the situation which can be incredibly helpful for solving problems, and literally every single thing you do in life could be considered a problem you can solve.
I did my undergraduate science degree at Oxford the unique system there is based on weekly tutorials with your tutor and a relatively few lectures and laboratory practical. Every week you are asked to write an essay on a topic you have not studied before and the tutor marks it and you discuss for an hour. I say 'discuss but your tutor is quite possibly someone like Richard Feynman and after three or four years of being exposed to that EVERY week all I can say is what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Academic people like Richard Feynman can go from asking the most annoyingly and intensely frustratingly simple question to blowing your mind in 3 minutes. Ask a question so simple a mere mortal (or undergraduate) can't understand why its even being asked and then suddenly reveal to them that everything they thought they understood has been torn apart along with their essay. Its a level of intelligence and thinking which is extraordinary as this clip shows.
Hi, I’m in my first year, and I would like to get a better understanding of what you were talking about, would it be possible to somehow give an example of the essay you wrote about?
@@user-nz6rz9bb9o Typically you will just be given an essay title to write about. Mostly you will never have had a lecture on it. Then you will be expected to go away, research the topic by reading original academic research and authoritative books. Your tutor will probably give you a reading list of papers to get you started but you will be expected to read more than that. Then you write your essay. Then you hand it in. Then you go to your tutorial (usually with a few other students) and discuss your essay. Its that simple. During the tutorial you will be asked to defend and discuss and consider everything you have written or ever thought about the topic. Your tutor is trying to teach you to think. The tutor is there to train you be an academic thinker. Your tutor doesn't teach you facts but will correct any obvious errors in your essay with written comments. I was a biochemist - so an essay title might be 'Ribosomes and their role in protein synthesis: what we know and don't know'. 1500 words
I could listen to this man for hours. The way he sees and describes the world is just so incredibly unique. I guess this is how a super intelligent alien would have answered that question. Never take anything for granted, always stay curious. 😊
He *actually answered* the question ( electrical forces ) but he stated "I can not answer your question..." because in a truly genius way he limited the scope of the answer to the understanding capacity of the receiver. There is nothing bad here. He is not meaning the receiver can not understand, it is the old paradigm of the kid that is trying to fill up the hole in the beach with the ocean. No matter how many buckets of sea water the ocean will be in his position and the hole empty... Still the kid will keep trying and truly remarkable teachers like Feynman will point out *why* the whole is still empty...
Actually, if you look closely he half-answered the question: he answered about repulsive forces but then he said he couldn't answer about attractive, because there was nothing else he could compare it to.
@@KostasAlbanidis Oh it wasn't a criticism. I think this was brilliant; it's just interesting how there's a wide diversity of ways of summarizing what Feynman was and was not saying. It's almost like "The Dress".
@@KostasAlbanidis Math, optics and the Standard Model are human constructs to make sense of qualia, including but not limited to color. Ego, perceived color is more fundamental (less of a construct) than any rigorous method one has of describing it.
@vladimir putin is andrei panin jfk is jimmy carter How do you know that you're not hallucinating right now and just responding to things you've imagined? Ultimately we can be certain of very little, but if something has been verified by enough other people, it's worth trusting them. If we try to verify every detail of every piece of information in our life we won't have time for stuff like ice cream or youtube.
2 lessons I perceive: 1. Asking "why" allows to start on the journey of discovery 2. Discovery ends only when the observer decides that they are done searching
Wikipedia does not replace the science library. People who already know the subject and can tell the quality from the bullshit articles can get something out of it, but if you think that it will do you any good as a naive user, think again.
@@schmetterling4477 Wikipedia is a good starting point and general summary. You should always check the cited sources (that's why Wikipedia puts up big red banners warning of articles which have insufficient or low quality citations), but Wikipedia is a useful resource. A scientific library is more powerful _but more specialized_ , and requires an existing working understanding of the topic to be of use. Most papers on mathematics are impenetrable for anyone without a university level education.
At 6:35 he gets so excited about his own epiphany connecting restorative force and electric attraction. This man never really prepared in advance exactly what he was going to say he just rolled it out in his own ad lib ingenious way. Beautiful.
What do you mean by would I "like" fries with that? What do think it means to like? Let me explain weather we are even able to like in the way you think you like things. We can't. Do I want fries? Yes please.
@@Jayhhardy But why does he (or she) ask the question; What do you mean by would I "like" fries with that? Probably because the McDonald's drive through assistant DIDN'T ask; DO you WANT fries with that?, Because he (or she) has probably been instructed to use the word, "like" when a customer orders, because it is a positive sales reinforcement technique.
I absolutely adore Richard Feynman. I've read his autobiographies of the time he was at Los Alamos, the death of his first wife, Brazil learning to play bongos and drums, Professor at Cal Tech, to discovering how an O Ring was responsible for the 1986 Challenger's mid air explosion, and his passing. I know simple mathematics, that's it. Quantum Physics is a foreign language. However because of Richard teaching and sharing stories, I understand it on a non verbal level... If that makes any sense. Love him. 💖
If you understand it the way he explained it, then you don't understand it. I used to tell people to read his layman's book about QED. I don't do that any longer. I think his explanation makes it actually harder to understand quantum mechanics, not easier. It is not completely wrong, of course, but it has some serious flaws.
@@schmetterling4477 your just a hater spreading your bs opinions around the comment section about the most charming intellect of his time. seriously nobody cares about your sh!t opinions (or should i say stupidity), nobody has the time to care about a lifeless person. actually why dont you try get a job that might give your meaningless existence some depth of life in it.
Yes , he expands your methods of thinking about anything , it makes you more analytical about everything and gives you wisdom in dealing with the world around you at a safer level than just the simple mthd of not exploring he “why” deeper , it’s a survival skill multiplier , so to speak , if you choose to use the informationsafely
This is brilliant, I keep coming back to this one to, most people seem not interested or devote the time to understanding the deeper meaning to fundamental questions, rather want quick answer to satisfy limited understanding.
yes, yes! I totally agree! And as a father of a 7 year old child I hope that every time I tend to be anoyed by the billion questions a day I will remember this clip and very calmy explain the things, just the way they are and how "I"! understand them to my boy - in HIS language :-)
What this shows is that you are capable of many levels of understanding as a kid. The educational system in public and some private schools today wants to keep your stupid, so they provide stupid answers, the same stupid answers that Feyman is unwilling to use. Kids want to and understand the need to get it completely right. Adults don't want to take the time to indulge them.
i don't think Feynman draws the difference here. I don't think he thinks the interviewers was mistaking motive or an agency behind natural phenomena. I think he sees the interviewers curiosity to ask such an interesting question about physics to be the start of an inquiry that if the interviewers is being scientific, would lead to a series of questions that would eventually bring him to the most fundamental question--a question about the fundamental forces. and so he's answering the question that would be asked in the future and pointing out that at the end of the would-be series of inquiry, the questioner would have to be contend with not knowing further because that's as far as one could explain. this fundamental premise is known as axiom. a valid axiom can be demonstrated by its alignment with reality--and hence verified with the senses.
@@GrammeStudio Well, there is also no known answer for why magnets work. I think he could have answered honestly, but had the wherewithal to explain his reasoning. The answer is that no one knows why.
@clayfame I used to think the same. But if I carefully analyze answers that I am satisfied with, they are merely descriptions as well. More importantly, we can differentiate actual descriptions from false ones by being able to correctly predict outcomes of yet unknown scenarios. Then i ask why am i satisfied with some descriptions while a few others leave a bad taste (or a certain kind of uneasiness in accepting). The only answer I can come up with is randomness of my mental state of acceptance.. Given an alternate universe, I might have been satisfied and dissatisfied with completely different sets of descriptions.
@@garysutherland7004 That's simply not true. There are varying levels to what 'understanding' is. As eloquently explained by Feynman in this video, there are varying depths of understanding how magnets work, that varies among different people. Eg. a university student will know more about how magnets work than say a child. Sure, we may not know how magnets work to the deepest level of quantum physics, but just because we do not, does not mean the answer is "no one knows".
An ordinary man is eager to tell you what he knows. An extraordinary man goes to great lengths to tell you what he doesn't know. By the time he is done, you know 10x more than what you asked for.
no. you ask him "what is today" Feynman: "Well, first you have to know what day it is NOT. Me: "Just answer the damn question! What is the truth!?" Feyman: You can't handle the truth!
I use this method with my children they are the hyper active type and they naturally don't think much but they enjoy the mental aerobics of these types of questions I think your nephew will also enjoy this type of game
You should rather listen to your 5 yo nephew's questions and wonder why yourself. That's actually the point Feynman makes: if you're curious enough you'll end up questioning why until you find the fundamental "why" that actually gives you fundamental and true understanding. We took more than 2 thousand years do find the "atom", that literally means uncuttable or indivisible, just to find out it wasn't the fundamental, smallest constituent unit of ordinary matter that the philosophers of old thought it was... so we asked "why" until we were satisfied just to discover 2 millenia after we didn't fully comprehend reality, we had an incomplete answer to our "why", and yet again we were asking "why", a new "why". I started out in Physics... I'll be asking why till the day I die. Your nephew is trying to understand the world, it's good that his curiosity still wasn't hampered and he still digs deeper on those why's, for as long as he does his understanding will deepen more than of those who stopped asking it earlier.
@@21.parthjoshi20 he DID go straight to the point by saying "magnets repel each other" however he predicted the interviewer would ask 'why' again and had to tell him that he could not explain anything deeper than this. It seems like very few people listened to him speak.
This is the best answer to a 'why' question i have ever seen. His final answer at the end is humbling - "I really can't do a good job, any job, in terms of explaining it in terms of something else that you are more familiar with, because i don't understand it in terms of anything else you are more familiar with"
There was no why in the question at 0:10. You simply didn't listen to it. ;-) Here is how you answer why questions in science: Why is the sky blue? Because of Rayleigh scattering. Don't make a fool of yourself, my friend. It's bad enough that Feynman did that, already.
@@schmetterling4477 Learn english then rewatch the video, i guess. The first two questions did not make sense. My thoughts: "what's the feeling" - you're feeling the force, like any other thing you can feel with your body... was that really the question you wanted to ask? "there's something there" - there's nothing between them, it's obvious - that can't be what you actually want to know - you surely won't be satisfied by that. "what's going on" - for me it's already equivalent to asking "why", but Feynman took it literally. "why" - the question. And about your example ("why is the sky blue")... So if someone who does not know anything about Physics asks you that question, do you think that saying "it's Rayleigh Scattering" mean anything to him? Short answer is no, it's just a name - so congratulations, you did not answer his question. Be prepared for the following "what is Rayleigh Scattering" and then "why does it happen". Which is the whole point Feynman is making in this video. Again, learn english and then rewatch the video.
@@Gigasimo456 Yes, that was a huge pile of bullshit. I understood the actual question at 0:10 just fine. I can also answer it nicely. It's one of the deepest questions that one can ask and it has one of the most profound answers. If you don't understand that, then you simply don't know anything about modern physics. Which you don't. ;-) Why does what happen? Rayleigh scattering? Because you are not superman and you don't have x-ray vision, kid. Your eyes can only see wavelengths of visible light that are much longer than the size of air molecules. ;-) See how easy it is to make a fool of yourself. Next time... don't. ;-)
@@schmetterling4477 Feynman DID answer the question! It's YOU who won't answer the question "Do you love me?" Why do you torture me like this Ling! I can't take it!!!
@@schmetterling4477 Well, making the same mistake as Feynman can't be that bad :) Although in this case, there was no mistake: the 'why' actually came at 0:38
Now I know why my toddler has so many WHY questions as the resulting answer helps him understand much more about the world around him.. Many of these facts are fascinating to him while grownups are so used to it, they really don't care..
When my daughter was about 2 years old, she went through a phase of asking "why" constantly. I would answer each question as best as I could, then she would ask another "why?", often to statements that were self-evident for me and everyone else. Seeing that video helped understand that she has a totally different framework than mine - she knows nothing about the world so everything needs to be explained to the most basic level. It would go on until she would have an answer that she understands in her framework or until she would not understand the words I was saying: "The car is white" - why? "hmm Because someone painted it white" - why? "Because I asked them to paint it white when I bought it" - why? "Because I like the color white, just like you like purple!" -oh... ok...
Umm yeah? I don't even have children and I knew this... this is something everyone already knows, you didn't need to spend the effort writing a whole novel about it.
Best advice to keep trying to answer the whys. She will stop asking about the specifics after she feels to understand the deepest basics of it. Its something like the natural "first priciple".
My father was the same.He would start with a subject,jump from that to a second one ,third one,forth one etc.,and finally after 15 minutes he will come back and explain the first one.Drove me crazy.
"You have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise you're perpetually asking why". What a great great neuron connections.
morbikdon nothing is true everything is permitted as self imposed limits dictate and as ones own internal harmony harmonizes with the harmony of others or dis harmony so to speak Mr Anderson
If you actually keep answering their questions they soon lose interest (normally when you mention doing some research) 🙄 hopefully well before you're completely out of your depth.
@@midnattsol6207 Yes. This is also true. But with small chlidren, when they get stuck in the why loop, they're rarely listening to what you're actually saying, they're playing a game. You play the game by answering the questions, but you're just playing the part of the person delivering a set-up line for the child. You can tell when a child is genuinely inerested in obtaining information to answer questions, and I think the best way to help educate children these days is to demonstrate to them that they can educate themselves using the resources directly at hand. I tried to explain how lightening worked to my nephew when he was about 5 and quickly realized I _didn't know_ how lightening worked and we spent a good 20 minutes learning about it together on the computer. Job done! 👍
@@wavydavy9816 noooo, when I was a kid I would ask my das questions for HOURS, and I was lucky enough to have a dad who was well educated and could answer a lot of them. But it always bugged me when we reached the "that's just how the universe works" point.
•aunt minnie is in the hospital •ice is slippery •some husband aren't interested in their wife's welfare and are drunks •grease is wet and slimy •ordinary people don't know anything •if you put your hand on the chair it pushes you back •i can't explain it revise for test
My learnings The importance of curiosity: Richard Feynman emphasizes the value of curiosity and questioning the world around us. He believes that asking why is essential to understanding how things work. The need for a framework: Feynman suggests that to explain why something happens, we need to have a framework that allows us to accept certain things as true. Without this framework, we can fall into an infinite loop of questioning. Understanding complexity: Feynman acknowledges that the world is a complex place, and explaining why something happens is not always straightforward. It may require digging deeper and exploring various directions. Question everything: Don't accept things at face value. Always ask questions and seek to understand how things work. Have a framework: To explain why something happens, develop a framework that allows you to accept certain things as true. Go deeper: When you get an answer to a why question, don't stop there. Ask why again, and keep digging deeper to gain a more profound understanding. Imagine yourself as an explorer in a vast jungle. You come across a beautiful waterfall and wonder how it was created. To understand the waterfall's origin, you must first develop a framework that allows you to accept certain things as true. You understand that water flows downhill, and it takes a long time for a river to erode rock and create a waterfall. You then start asking why questions. Why does water flow downhill? Why does it take a long time for a river to erode rock? As you delve deeper, you begin to discover the complexity of the natural world. You learn about gravity, erosion, and the forces that shape our planet. start by cultivating your curiosity. Ask questions and seek to understand how things work. Develop a framework that allows you to accept certain things as true. When you get an answer to a why question, don't stop there. Keep digging deeper to gain a more profound understanding. For example, if you're learning about a new subject, don't just memorize facts. Try to understand why things work the way they do. Ask questions and explore different angles. By doing so, you'll gain a deeper understanding and be able to apply that knowledge in new and creative ways. Everything in the universe is governed by fundamental forces, including electrical, magnetic, and gravitational forces. These forces are intertwined and intimately related to each other. The behavior of these forces can be explained and predicted using scientific principles and laws. Tactics: Study and understand the principles and laws governing the forces. Observe and experiment to test and validate these principles and laws. Apply the principles and laws to solve real-world problems and create new technologies. Metaphoric Map: Think of the principles and laws governing the forces as a map that guides us through the complexities of the universe. Just as a map helps us navigate and understand a physical landscape, the principles and laws help us navigate and understand the invisible forces that govern the behavior of matter and energy. Learn the basic principles and laws governing the forces through studying physics and other related fields. Practice observing and experimenting to test and validate these principles and laws. Apply these principles and laws to solve real-world problems, such as developing new technologies that use magnetic or electrical forces, or designing structures that can withstand gravitational forces.
With 12,000 comments I'm sure whatever I had to say was already said. So I'm just going to go with thank you for the time and effort you put into this video, thumbs up.
@@MarsLonsen Well, first you ask how did he detect it and I might tell you that he perceived it with his senses, but then you might ask how do senses tell us things. Then I might say that our sensory system consists of sensory organs that perceive outside stimuli and deliver it through a neural network to our brains. Then you might ask ''how come we have such sensory organs'' and so on... That's interesting.
A simple question that results in such an elaborate series of other questions. Simple in its own genius to elicit a shockwave of analysis from a recognised genius.
@@UnknownMFe Listen to the question at the ten second mark, again: "What is the feeling between the two magnets?". It's not a why question but a what question. It doesn't ask about the mechanism inside the magnets that causes the magnetic field but it asks directly about the nature of the magnetic field itself. Why would the interviewer ask such a question? Because Feynman had received the Nobel Prize in physics for illuminating the mathematical structure of the theory of the field. Feynman didn't spend a waking second in his life on the question of how permanent magnetism works, as far as I know. That's a completely different and unrelated question to which no easy answer exists. What the field is, however, that much more fundamental question can be answered easily and it was Feynman's field of work.
@@johnjonjhonjonathanjohnson3559 I do understand what you mean, but maybe the person is, not the question. According to Sagan, questions are not stupid because it's a 'method' to get information. If you tell the person (a child maybe), 'Earth is a sphere because of (proof)' and he/she goes 'ok', then it was not very stupid...
Why is not a stupid question, and when Feynman says it is a good question he isn't patronizing, he's genuine in his response that it is difficult for him to answer it in a way that can be considered satisfactory to the interviewer. I'd have to transcribe what he says because I don't have a better way to explain it, it all depends on the reason for asking it is, whether your trying to understand forces, the way materials behave under certain circunstances, if you're interested in metallurgy, applications, curious about science, and so on. Sagan was talking about how as we grow up we start to take into account how we are perceived by our classmates, so the more pressure we feel the more we try to avoid questions that are considered 'stupid', and social animals that we are, we tend to ask 'safely', to supress the questions that would reveal our ignorance even if it's a perfectly good question and, as seems to be happening in the video, ask a question that we don't know if it's good or not, and not be really prepared for its answer.
i grew up around hundreds and thousands of people that spoke to me the exact same way richard feynman is speaking to the gentleman that is interviewing richard feynman. it was highly frustrating but most importantly, highly rewarding, because i learned how to think about thinking. i am very grateful for the time everyone spent, educating and guiding, my potential. truly wonderful.
Well, except how did Feynman know what exactly is familiar to that person asking questions. So he himself made some /pretty unjustified/ presumption about someone's knowledge or mental abilities... And he implied that he doesn't like that question, actually insulting his interlocutor.
@@fidziek The thing is, Electromagnetism is notoriously for being a very difficult topic to most people in the STEM disciplines and requires substantial prerequisite knowledge. If you go further than that (to describe the nature of forces within particles), you would be tackling Quantum Mechanics, which kills all. So, unless Feynam happened to know that the interviewer had a background in engineering or physics, I think it's pretty fair that Feynman can make that claim.
@@fidziek It's not about knowledge. The fact that he asked that question should make it clear that electromagnetism cannot be explained in terms of anything that interviewer knows. Otherwise he wouldn't have asked the question.
@@studiousboy644 only he's not asking for his own benefits, but on behalf of the viewers/listeners, and I pressume he's not one of Feynmann apprentices/students... i.m.H.o.
@@philipfry9436 it's not about someone's feelings, but so called personal culture (including empathy, EQ, IQ) of Great Master Feynmann - he should not humiliate anyone, simple as that.
Yeah that’s really a good way to look at things. Once one questioned is answered, what other questions arise after it to truly understand the full picture. I try to do this constantly with things I talk to myself about
"Do try to understand that I haven't called you fat at any point leading up to this interaction. I clearly haven't shown that I think you're fat. I might notice it if I really look. But at this point I know I don't care. So to me, I have to say no, not at first glance. But now that you've put me in the mindset that you might be fat, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say yes, it does. Not necessarily the dress alone, unfortunately. It definitely exasperates some visual features that people see more in someone they would call fat. I'm not calling you fat. But someone else might. So if someone else seeing you as fat is the issue you care about, then yes, the dress absolutely makes you look fat. I would go as far as to say some people would call you a heckin chonker. But that's not me. I didn't want to be here in the first place. I just wanna touch your butt and watch south park with you."
This is actually an incredibly useful exercise in limiting the scope of a question. "How" and "why" questions have answers that are entirely defined by the expected knowledge of the *questioner,* just as much as that of the answerer. Notice how Feynman _did_ answer the question to various levels of satisfaction as a component of his overall criticism of asking unbounded questions.
Schmetter Ling is right. The point is not that one has to limit the scope of a question, but that every question contains numerous, almost infinite implications and frameworks. Communication between two people always depends on these implications and frameworks, and part of Prof. Feynman's pleasure is that he WANTS you to ask deeper, deeper, deeper until you go with him to truly understand the marvels of the universe.
@@schmetterling4477 do you really think the interviewer would have been satisfied with, "the magnetic force" in response to a question about what is it that he's feeling when he feels two magnets repel? The interviewer already knows that the magnetic force exists, but he's not clear about what is going on-he doesn't even have a framework to articulate why it seems mysterious to him that magnets repel each other. He wants a deeper answer than just, "they do" and yet ultimately, as Feynman points out, there is no deeper answer. It's a feature of the universe. You're the kid who is so convinced he's smarter than everyone else that he doesn't even need to listen to the full video before setting himself up as superior to Feynman. We get it, you think you're a genius, and so insecure you have to point out flaws in people with reputations for being brilliant. Christopher Sykes was the interviewer, and had immense respect for Feynman. Maybe you should consider that he got a lot more out of the answer than you think he did.
Feynman's ability to instantly delve deeply into the topic of "Why' with so many examples that are immediately relatable is really quite remarkable. He takes what seems to be on the surface a simple question and expounds on it to an extraordinarly deep level. He really was quite a fascinating person to listen to.
@@walter4180 I'm with you Walter; in a sense, Feyman sort of gives a good reason as to why he didn't need to go into any of that. It's called "reading the room." It's pretty obvious to most people watching this video (or that film) that the dude asking wanted to know some of the inner workings of the physical universe that aren't so apparent on the surface as regards magnetism. If you go to my channel and watch my recent Vlog on magnetism, you will get a much clearer understanding of this magical force (that was a joke - I generally make an ass of myself - purposely :-) In any event, the basic principles of magnetism and why it seems like magic but the explanation of why it isn't maybe given in about one or two minutes would have sufficed.
@@voicetube That's complete nonsense. Feynman simply messed up here. There was no need to start a rant about why questions. The initial question was "What is that feeling (force) between two magnets?". That is a perfectly fine physics question that has a straight forward answer. Why Feynman couldn't give it is a mystery to me.
@@schmetterling4477 because almost every question of magnetism doesn't have simple answers. He tried to say that on the beginning but the man wasnt satisfied. So Feynman just explained how his question will turn in another ten questions and will take hours to explain
@@schmetterling4477 - It's simply because he is such a smart-arse dickhead that he didn't know HOW to answer it. So smug and arrogant in his own self-righteousness, yet totally unable to answer the most simple question. There are various technical terms, including "fuckwit", "knob-jockey", "bell-end" and "tool".... mostly related to penises, however it's notable that a penis is a useful object.
I'm a Mechanical Engineering student. You learn about guys like this that were geniuses and changed mankind's understanding. But what makes me smile is that he sounds just like MY professors, the good ones anyway. He's angry that I asked a good question in a stupid way and he wants me to understand what's proper and try again. I've always wondered what it would be like to be taught by professors Like Feynman but I've realized that he was human like the rest of us and that my professors were amazing like the greats before them.
This has gotten me in trouble my ENTIRE LIFE. Asking a question can and becomes SO LOADED with so many intricacies that NO QUESTION is an EASY OR SIMPLE QUESTION
Wow! I mean, it's not just his explanation that is impressive, it's his ability to understand a question better than the person asking the question. He sees the inner workings of the mind of the interviewer, understands his motivation, notices a flaw or weakness in that mind and then sets out to repair or awaken that mind in that very precise and almost ruthless way of his!
You mean that the interviewer didn't give Feynman a second take and showed the entire world just what kind of a jerk he could be? Yes. The lesson here is... never pick on a guy with a camera. Feynman didn't have enough EQ to know that. ;-)
@@irshviralvideo Rolling on the laughing floor. My floor also laughs at me sometimes. I stopped rolling on it since that time it tried swallowing me though. Don't piss off your floor. It's friendlier when it's laughing. Much friendlier. Oh god.. so much friendlier...
Both philosophy and science need to be put into play if the human race wants to "know" more and more about the nature of the universe from its -obviously, human- perspective. Even religion is vital to that, sadly (for me). You could even reach to saying that pilosophy is a field of science, in some way.
@@fL0p Very true. Just like there is a search for a unified theory that can explain all of the universe that principle, those rules of nature govern our existence and therefore our perception. Humans evolved from a world following rules, equations, principles, whatever terminology, and so really the physics and the philosophy are just interpretations of existence.
