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Richard Feynman - The World from another point of view | mrtp | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Richard Feynman - The World from another point of view
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Core Theme
The content explores the essence of scientific inquiry and original thinking, emphasizing the importance of questioning assumptions, seeking deeper understanding beyond mere labels, and embracing curiosity to uncover the fundamental truths of the universe.
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you take any crazy idea uh well I don't
know it's hard to make up a very crazy
one they witches or something like that
you tell about what people used to
believe in witches and of course nobody
believes in witches now and you say how
could they believe in witches then you
turn around you say let's see what
witches do we believe in now what
ceremonies do we do every morning we
brush our teeth what is the evidence
that the brushing the teeth does us any
good in cavage so you start wondering
are we all imagine in the
the as the Earth turns on the orbit
there's an edge between light and dark
and along that edge all the people along
that edge and we doing the same
ritual for no good reason just like in
the Middle Ages they had other rituals
and you try to Picture This Perpetual
line of toothbrushes going around the
earth it's to take the world from
another point of view now it may be May
well be that brushing teeth is a very
good thing because it gets rid of
cavities and you're going to ask you can
find out whether it does or it doesn't
by trying to find out now you're going
to ask your dentist he says of course
and you say how evidence I have not
found the evidence from dentists because
they just learned it in school now I'm
not trying to argue that it's good or
bad to brush teeth what I'm trying to
argue for is to think about thing from a
new point of view [Music]
[Music]
you see I have had in my life a number
of uh Pleasant experiences when the
earliest one when I was a kid I invented
a problem for myself the sum of the
powers of the
integers and in trying to get the
formula for it I developed a certain set
of numbers that I for formula for which
I couldn't get and I discovered later
that those were known as the boli
numbers and discovered in
1739 so I was up to 1739 when I was
about 14 you see and then a little later
I discover something I find out I just
may invented a thing called uh which we
now call uh operated calculus and that
was invented in 1890 something you see I
was gradually I was inventing things
that came later and later but the moment
when I began to realize that I was now
working on something new was what I read
about Quantum electrodynamics at the
time and I read a book and I learned
about it for example I read the rxs book
and he had these problems that nobody
knew how to solve it were described
there I couldn't understand the book
very well because I really wasn't up to
it but there in the last paragraph at
the end of the book it said some new
ideas are here needed and so there I was
some new ideas were needed okay so I
started to think of new ideas [Music]
[Music]
Richard feineman nobbel Prize winner and
his son Carl stepped gingerly down the
wet cobbles of Milbank high in the
Yorkshire penines feeman professor of
physics at the California Institute of
Technology retreats to this remote
Village near his wife's home for a
special purpose it's here he finds the
time and Solitude to sift the ideas that
have made him the most feared and
original mind in modern [Music]
physics feineman is in the Forefront of
one of the oldest and most intriguing
games of hid and seek in science finding
the ultimate constituents of the world
in this search Fineman is a celebrated
Maverick who was encouraged by his
father a New York Clothing salesman to
confront conventional wisdom
one Sunday all the kids were all walking
in little parties with their fathers in
the woods then the next Monday we were
playing in a field and the kid said to
me say what's that bird what's the name
of do you know the name of that bird I
says I have the slightest idea he said
well it's a brown throated thrush he
says your father doesn't teach you
anything but my father had already
taught me about the names of birds he
once we walked and he says that's a
brown Thro of thrush he says know what
the name of that bird it's a brown Thro
of thrush in German it's called a
f in Chinese it's called A in Japanese
a and so on and it when you know all the
names in every language of that bird you
know nothing but absolutely nothing
about the bird then we would go on and
talk about the pecking in the feathers
so I had learned already that names
don't constitute knowledge if knowing
the name of
something that's caused me a certain
trouble since because I refuse to learn
the name of anything so when someone
comes in and says uh you got any
explanation for the Fitz cloning
experiment I says what what what's that
he says you know that the long lived
keson disintegrates into two pies oh oh
yes now I know but I never know the
names of things what he forgot to tell
me was that the knowing the names of
things is useful if you want to talk to
somebody else so you tell them what
you're talking about but the basic
principle of knowing about something
rather than just knowing its name is
something that you stuck to is it yes of
course it's you have to learn these are
kind of disciplines in the field of
science that you have to learn that to
know when you know and when you don't
know and what it is you know and what it
is you don't know and it's uh you got to
be very careful not to confuse
yourself how else did he try and
progress mold your methods of thinking
the way you looked at the world well we
had a lot of uh little
games like he would say at the dinner
table you'd think of some little problem
and he'd say suppose we were you were a
martian we were martians and we came
down to this earth that and we look at
got it from the outside and that I can't
explain exactly what he meant but
there's a way of looking something a new
as if you never saw it before for the
first time and asking questions about it
as if you were different for instance uh
if you would ask later I did some little
amusing research for a paper in college
on sleep but it started with a question
of his kind suppose you were a martian
who never slept they didn't have sleep
you didn't have to sleep and you came
down to this earth and you saw these
people had this funny flppy that every
day for a certain amount of time have to
lie down and become unconscious and then
the natural question would be how does
it feel to get unconscious what happens
do you ideas run along and suddenly they
stop or do they just run more and more
slowly but what happens to your ideas
how does it feel to become unconscious
so I tried to answer the question what
happens when you become unconscious but
do you find that these days you still
when you're faced with a particularly
difficult problem when you're absolutely
stuck you tend to say let's look at it
like a Maran would look at it sometimes
there are lots of things that people did
for example Maxwell Put the equations
together the farad he formulated the
equations mathematically with some model
in his head then dur uh got his answer
by just writing and guessing an
equation and uh other people got their
answer like in relativity got the idea
by looking at principles of
symmetry now all these methods and
Heisenberg got his Quantum mechanic by
thinking only talk about the things that
you can
measure now all these ideas we should
only talk about things that we can
measure try to Define things in terms of
only things you measure or let's
formulate the equation mathematically or
let's guess the equation or all these
things are tried all the time look for
symmetries all that stuff is tried all
that stuff when we're going against the
problem we do all that that's very
useful but we all know that that's what
we learned in the physics classes how to
do that but the new problem where we're
stuck we're stuck because all those
methods don't work if any of those
methods would have worked we would have
gone through there so when we get stuck
in a certain place it's a place where
history will not repeat herself and
that's more makes it even more exciting
because whatever we're going to look at
at the other the method and the trick
and the way it's going to look is going
to be very different than anything that
we've seen before because we've used all
the methods from before
before so
so
uh therefore a thing like the history
of the idea is an accident of how things
actually happen and if I want to turn
the history around to try to get a a new
way of looking at it it doesn't make any
difference it I I don't care the only
thing that the real test in physics is
experiment and history is fundamentally
irrelevant the most enduring Legacy from
his father was not just learning to
question the physical world but an
enthusiasm for the inquiry which at 54
Fineman still shares today it has to do
with curiosity it has to do with people
wondering what makes something do
something and then to discover that if
you try to get answers that they're
related to each other that things that
make the wind make the waves and the
motion of water is like the motion of
air is like the motion of sand the fact
that things have common features turns
out more and more Universal what we're
looking for is how everything works and
how everything is what makes everything
work and uh what happens first in the
history is we discover the things that
are on the face of it obvious and then
gradually that we asks more questions
and then we dig in a little deeper to
things that we can just make we need to
do a little more complicated experiment
to find out about but it's a curiosity
as to where we are what we are is it
very much more exciting to discover
we're on a ball half of it sticking
upside down it's spinning around in
space there a mysterious Force which
Hold Us side it's going around a great
big glob of gas that's burning by a fuel
by a fire that's completely different
than the fire any fire we can make well
now we can make that fire nuclear fire
now but uh that's much more exciting
story to many people than the tales
which other people used to make up who
worried about the universe that we were
living on the back of a turtle or
something like that they were wonderful
stories but the truth is so much more
remarkable and so what's the pleasure in
physics is that to me is that as it's
revealed the truth is so remarkable so
amazing and I can't I have this disease
and many other people who have studied
far enough to begin to understand a
little of how things work are fascinated
by it and this Fascination drives them
on to such an extent that they've been
able to
convince governments and so on to keep
supporting them in this investigation
that the race is making into its own
environment as a theoretical physicist
Fineman doesn't have a laboratory and he
finds family relaxation helps him to
concentrate in recent years he been
concerned with the long asked almost
childlike question what are things
really made of what makes up the world
we see around us have we at last come to
the foundation stone from which we can
make anything a tree a human being or
must we go on looking at smaller and
smaller pieces and going deeper and
deeper into a bottomless pit pinan is
trying to knit together our scattered
knowledge of the smallest pieces of
matter to see whether they fit a pattern
the problem although fundamentally
important to all branches of science
seems far removed from everyday reality
the world is strange the whole universe
is very strange but see when you look at
the details and you find out that the
rules are very simple of the game the
mechanical Rules by which you can figure
out exactly what's going to happen when
the situation is simple it's again this
chess game business if you were in just
a corner where only a few pieces are
involved you can work out exactly what
should happen and you could always do
that when there's only a few pieces and
so you know you understand it and yet in
the real game there's so it's so many
pieces you can't figure out what's going
to happen so there was a kind of
hierarchy of different complexities it's
hard to believe it's incredible in fact
most people don't believe that uh the
behavior of say me W yak yak and you
nodding and all this stuff is the
result of lots and lots of atoms all
obeying these very simple rules come out
that that it evolves into such a
creature that a billion years of life
with its experiences has produced the
thing with prongs that stick out like
this and so
on the real there's such a lot in the
world there's so much distance between
the fundamental rules and the final
phenomena that it's almost
unbelievable that the final variety of
phenomena can come from such a steady
operation of such simple rules but
you've had to build the most complex
scaffolding to find out the simple rules
but it is not complicated it's just a
lot of it and if you'd start at the
beginning which nobody wants to do I
mean you come in to me now as an in an
interview and you're asking me about the
latest discoveries that have made nobody
ever asks about a simple ordinary
phenomenon in the street oh like what
about those colors or something like
that we have a nice interview explain
all about the colors butterfly wings
whole big deal don't care about that
want the big final result then it's
going to be complicated because I am at
the end of a 400 years is a very
effective method of finding things out
about the world in the search for the
ground rules of the physical world John
Dalton worked out a comprehensive
explanation over 150 years
ago he assumed that everything we see is
made out of tiny atoms that they are
immutable and indestructible and that
atoms of different chemical elements
like lead or copper have different
weights too small to be observed the
atoms combine with each other to form
complicated molecules and vast
collections of these molecules are
recognizable to us as tables trees or
whatever but in the final analysis atoms
were to be the smallest constituents of
matter ultimate and
unchangeable at the turn of the century
we evolved our present picture of the
atom light electrons surrounding a heavy
Central core or nucleus once the atom
was shown to be destructible attention
turned to the nucleus and during the 30s
it was found that bombarding one nucleus
with another led to a release of energy
and the breaking up of the nuclear
this process which takes place in
nuclear accelerators is photographed in
a liquid bubble chamber you take a
liquid liquid hydrogen or some other
liquid and expand it so it's ready to
boil low temperature and your decreased
de pressure it's ready to boil and it
has to form bubbles somewhere and it's
any little piece of dirt or any little
disturbance it'll form a bubble in that
condition if a particle comes flying
through from some machine it leaves a
track it tears up the atoms along where
electrons are knocked off the atoms
along its track
and uh we can't see that but when the
gas tries to expand when the liquid
tries to boil the bubbles form around
these charged particles which are left
so it leaves a a string of bubbles are
then formed then you can take a picture
of the bubbles so simplest picture would
be if you had a machine that made fast
particles particle go through and you
see a string of bubbles but if the
particle on the way through hit the
nucleus of another atom then you see a
string of bubbles in a kind of a y if it
made its recoil plus some other thing
instead of why you may see more
complicated tracks three or four coming
out and then one of them going along and
going into two then you know that some
particle went along and disintegrated
now these things are going nearly at the
speed of light and so if you can see a
short distance a few centimeters that's
corresponds to a tenth of a billionth of
a second that is if a track comes out
goes along here and then Bates into two
you know you made a particle which
integrated into two in less than a 10
billionth of a second so you see it's
not very difficult
to to find out about these things with
the right with clever techniques since
the war with evidence from bubble
chamber photographs like this physicists
have explored the nucleus of the atom
the results have been spectacular and
confusing the harder the nuclei were
bombarded against each other the more
they disintegrated into even tinier
particles until literally hundreds were
known in the last 10 years some order
has been made out of seeming chaos by
arranging the particles into patterns
each pattern has eight or 10 members
related by nuclear properties like Spin and
Mass to the physicist patterns like this
imply the possibility of even smaller
particles not yet identified but already
named the key to the question of what
makes up the physical world then lies in
the understanding of the nature of these
nuclear patterns we're getting close
because we have a number of little
theories by which we can understand
these patterns
one picture which descries what
particles you're going to find rather
well is that all these particles are
made of out of something else which we
happen to call quarks and now Quark is an
an
object which comes in three varieties
it's either a type B type or C type
Quark okay and that the particles that
we find are of two big classes and one
class we can understand is being made
out of three
quarks and depending on the different
proportions how many A's B's and C's and
how they're moving around each other if
we count how many states we would get
from putting three objects together
could be made in so many ways in 27
different ways each one being three we
find groups of particles and groups of
27 analogously and so on a little more
complicated but it's more subtle but
it's like that and then when we allow
for their motion around each other we
find the higher energy states anal to
the way that that we ought to get and
even even semiquantitatively there seems
to be a relation between the states the
rates that which one turn into another
so it looks like they're made out of
just three quarks then there's this
other class of particles which are
called mesons the first class we called
Barons the words aren't going to do any
good but the other class of mesons we
have to understand is being made of a
quark one quark and one antiquark an
antiquark is a negative partic with all
the numbers all the charge properties
the exact opposite of a Quark we make a
quark and an anti Quark put those
together we understand the meeson states
put three quarks together we understand
all the others
so we have made a really great progress
in analyzing these patterns so much so
that it looks very much as if to me at
least that we're very close to
understanding this part of physics this
strongly interacting
system but what's the main barrier still
to well the quarks have well the main
barrier is we don't understand it
quantitative we don't know exactly the
laws I mean I we do things like I'm just
talking to you only a little bit more
carefully counting how many states we
should get and so on but we don't know
exactly how they move and exactly what
holds them together and so on so on also
there are a number of paradoxes with
this Quark
picture this picture helps to give us a
behavior at low energies of the what
kinds of particles to expect but then
you'd expect that a particle would be
made out of only three parts but we've
done some experiments at very high
energy hitting a proton with an electron
which can only be
interpreted by supposing that the number
of particles inside is really infinite
if there are particles inside it can't
be done with just
three you can calculate it doesn't come
out right so there's a difficulty
furthermore the idea that they're just
B3 particles is self-contradictory to
the ideas of Relativity and so on which
imply the exist of particles and anti
particles and when there are three there
should be possible for the forces to
produce pairs of particle anti particle
in various numbers so there should be
not just three but many more so the
infinity is not a paradox by itself the
three is more of the Paradox why is it
so simple why can we get away and
understand so much with just three when
there should be an infinite number
probably in there both theoretically and
experimentally another thing uh that's a
little technical but very power
paradoxical is that we had a rule back
for atoms that no two electrons can
occupy the same state it's called the
Exclusion Principle and we thought we
understood that that was necessary
according to quantum mechanics and
relativity you know has to
be and with the quarks we find the exact
opposite rule two particles tend to
occupy the same state the exact opposite
seems to be contradictory with
principles there are ways of escaping
this all the time only by complicating
the picture but the simplest picture
just three which explains everything is self-contradictory
self-contradictory
furthermore some people suppose that
maybe these quarks could come apart that
would mean the prediction of new states
which consists of only one Quark say if
there were such a state it would have to
have a charge of one3 normal charges of
our objects for example or
2/3 and uh we don't find experimentally
any such particles now everybody's
looking for them
but it looks as if if they exist at all
they have to be extremely heavy then the
problem is very good if they're
extremely heavy how compared to a proton
say how is it when you put three of them
together you get a light object that's
not heavy like the proton there are
technical ways of arranging it but
they're always
complicated every the situation is as it
always is when we're near the answer it
looks much simpler than it has any right
to be and we have to understand that simplicity
simplicity
and why we think it must be more
complicated our minds are complicated
somehow just like the the orbits of the
planets which were supposed to be
circles which looked simple then they
were experimentally they weren't circles
so they made circles on circles on
circles on circles got more and more
complicated turns out it was really much
simpler it was a force invers as the
square of the
distance which made ellipses and so but
different way of formulating entirely
which was beautiful so now we have our
Wheels within Wheels we it looks simp in
nature is no doubt simpler than all our
thoughts about it
now and the question is what way do we
have to think about it so that we
understand its Simplicity that's where
now on holiday in the penines Richard
Fineman is paid a neighborly visit by
yorkman Sir Fred Hy the astronomer
cosmologist and science fiction
writer at First Sight there seems little
in common between the study of galaxies
and nebuli billions of miles in diameter
and millions of light years old and
nuclear physics where particles exist
for only a million millionth of a second
but the formation of stars and galaxies
is determined on a massive scale by the
behavior of the very nuclear particles
Fineman studies Hy and Fineman share an
interest in the foundations of physics
and exchanging ideas in the local pub is
always as profitable as it is
enjoyable you think you agreed that the
quazar are in real trouble that the very
big red shifts I think so I I've had
this uneasy feeling now for about 5
years it looked crazy for a while but
it's like up of evidence all the time
this way each one makes a new problem
every piece of evidence is the same
problem in the same sense if there were
any cause for a red shift as big as that
other than recession we'd be all right
that's right but in the present physical
laws there doesn't seem to be any place
for such a reged that's
God that one fa at the same time the
same kind of laws predict the kind of
peculiar phenomenon of black black holes
which we confusing yeah and it could be
that either the gravity is wrong or one
of the physical laws are wrong too some
physical law that's involved because I'm
not arguing at the moment the physical
laws are wrong I mean you you would
agree that one has to push it through
along these lines yeah the best way to
progress I always think maybe is to try
to be as conservative that's what
wheeler always said to try to be as
conservative about the physical laws as
possible and explain the phenomenon if
you continuously
fail you gradually realize you got to
change something but when you start out
by saying I got to change something
there's so many ways of changing and you
don't know how the it's most likely you
don't have to change anything most of
the time we succeed ultimately in
explaining these damn things in terms of
the known laws but it's the cases that
fail are the interesting ones yeah yeah
story is it the chat with the under the
single lamp in the street yes that's uh
where a passor by says what are you
looking for he says I'm looking for my
key and they search for it for few
minutes and at the end of the minute
these minutes the passer by said are you
sure you lost it here and the man said
not at all but unless I lost it here
I'll never find it cuz the light's
yeah yeah we work with the lights better
yeah once I was thinking by analogy that
there was a time in the 1900s when the
thought that the properties of
substances were not physics for example
it would be numbers we would find a
series of numbers the index of refra
diretion that was physics but the number
for the index that glass had an index of
1.54 3 and so on that salt had another
index that those numbers the properties
of substance would come from chemistry
or something but that there it was that
time all it was considered a different
branch then when the quantum mechanical
understanding of the atoms was evolved
then we could calculate all these
properties and we realized that all
these numbers were really part of
physics and so properties of substances
became a branch of physics whereas
previously it was a sort of chemical
branch yeah then I wondered by analogy I
was always worked by analogy what today
do we not consider part of physics which
may ultimately be part of physics I see
and I realize immediately
something we consider at the present
moment most people consider that we
study the laws of physics that is how
things go given a certain condition how
the things behave after that but how did
they get into that condition is
considered another problem in other
words condition right B are given the
conditions the circumstances and then it
evolves from there according to physical
laws we're studying the
laws it's as though we were doing the
chess game again and we're working on
the rules but we're not worrying about
how the pieces are supposed to be set up
on the board in the first place that's
not our business that's the business of
History how the world evolved his
astronomical history history of
cosmology how the the universe exploded
or the steady state or whatever it was
it's not our business it's interesting
that in many other Sciences there's a
historical question like in geology the
question how did the Earth evolve to the
present condition in biology how do the
various species evolve and to get to be
the way they are but the one field which
has not admitted any evolutionary
question is physics here are the laws we
say here are the laws today how did they
get that way in time we don't even think
of it that way we think of well that is
that way from Forever it's always been
like that the same laws and we try to
explain the universe that way so it
might turn out that they're not the same
all the time and that there is a
historical evolutionary question but how
do you see it going it's it's hard to
speculate is it a continuous change or
is it something that depends on big
you're the spec you and I think
differently I think of the possibilities
but I'm afraid to to put things in when
I see op it's the dark I always figure
the dark is it's too big for me to guess
at a guess it's not much use in guessing
things but but you're different that I
would like to discuss with you sometime
how do you do that because I'm really a
little afraid to make specific guesses
your backround I don't know way you you
kind of grow up I don't know I'm afraid
to make specific guesses because the
moment I'm making that guess I can see
seven other
Alternatives and so since I see these
other Alternatives I don't know which
one to to p with I don't like to spend a
lot of energy on my choice is is very
simple I I I don't set any requirement
that the answer be right it's just what
I'm interested to follow that's the
difference that's the difference that's
the difference I'm trying to find I'm
interested in I'm trying to find out not
how nature could be but how nature is
see how what's right don't find it you
see I don't think you ever find it I see
and your idea is to find out what nature
could be different possibilities what
what I think is interesting yeah even if
it's wrong common ground is
enthusiastically explored but is it only
shared experience and knowledge that
forms a bond between working scientists
and separates them from us the
interested Layman or even the artist I
mean scientific fields are becoming so
specialized and they're so varied are
you really saying that you have more in
common with say a paleontologist or
someone in a branch of science very far
removed from yours then you would with a
playwright or a poet absolutely
especially if he's a good paleontologist
because he's a good paleont he's not
just looking at old rocks he's looking
at the history of the earth he's looking
when he stands and he looks at his own
fingers and he knows it's got five bumps
and he thinks of how did it evolve with
five bumps it's got the same as whales
and so on and we keep talking about the
importance of the fact that the thumb
opposes then we can start discussing is
it really so important the thumb or is
it language that has been involved the
system of symbolis then or the size of
the brain this is a paleontologist I can
talk about this stuff that's close to
his field dolphins have bigger brains
than we are they have a signaling system
and they get interested in that and you
start to discuss all that they know
about dolphins and you complain that the
way the United States Navy has been
doing its experiments is not right and
we ought to find out more about doph and
you go on and on you talk those are
things of the
day they're just as good but you can go
on and on with would I talk to a
playwriter or something I I find because
I don't look go to plays or something I
don't find it easy to talk to them I
don't get much out of it I was going to
say this is because you can talk to
scientists in other fields presumbly
because you read the scientific
magazines presly and hear the scientific
gossip rather than no because we don't
have to have magazines or gossip we
think originally we think of a new
idea we talk to each other and we try to
look at something from a new point of
view and we Delight each other in a new
point of view and when you're talking to
somebody else who's trying to think of
something new different and he thinks
he's thought about the whales or the
Dolphins and he had some little thing
he's thought of that's a little
different than the thing that you've
thought of and so when you're talking
back and forth he's excited by your
point of view about
dreams and you're excited by his little
observation that he has made about
dreams if he has happened to have
thought about that so the point
is and our backgrounds Give us a
slightly different point of view I mean
a scientific back like I specialize in
physics to say he specialized in
paleontology so his his information on
dreams might be more deeper more
evolutionary for example he might well
he can't we don't have way of telling I
suppose about the evolution of dreams
but he might know for example about
other animals he might have thought
about whether other animals dream and
what the signs are and all other things
that I hadn't thought of I can't make it
up now because I'm not the
paleontologist but I believe that yes I
find always that a good man uh I take it
all back
I take it all back a good man I've
talked to Good Men in other
fields there's certain kinds of man in
every field that I can talk to as well
as I can talk to a good
scientist I met a historian a writer of
history from France once and I had a
marvelous conversation with
him MOA his name was Andre
MOA and then I met an artist
Robert Irwin who's a very important
artist in Los Angeles in modern art and
I could talk to him at the same depth of
excitement so I take it all back if you
give me the right man in any field I can
talk to him I know what the condition is
that he did whatever he did as far as he
can go that he studied every aspect of
it as far as he has stretched himself to
the end he's not a diletant in any way
and so he talk deep as far as he can go
and he therefore he's up against
Mysteries all the way around the
edge and or and we can talk about
mystery and a that's what we have in
common you are talking a bit about these
fallow periods when things are get very
painful after discussing working
problems it is natural that Fineman and
Hil should Savor that most thrilling
pleasure of all the moment of Revelation
try all sorts of things and you about
trying it have you had a moment when in
a complicated problem where quite
suddenly the thing comes into your head
and you're almost sure you've got to be
right oh yes that's this is a God
yeah and then you tried to figure out
what the conditions were were of that
moment that you can do it again for
example I worked out the theory of
helium once and suddenly saw everything
I was struggling struggling for two
years and suddenly saw everything only
after I can remember everything about by
the way psychologically funny you can
remember the color of the paper you were
writing on has that true the room and
everything else and uh then you wonder
what's the psychological condition well
I know at that particular time I simply
looked up and I said wait a minute it
can't be quite that difficult the must
be very easy I'll stand back and I'll
just treat it very lightly I'll just tap
it and it'll see Bo Bo and there it was
so how many times since then I'm walking
on the beach and I said now look it
can't be so
complicated tap happen nothing Happ Happ
nothing happens yeah so the lights are
great but uh the secret way how what the
condition it's that missing bit in the
brain isn't it that suddenly lights up
and yeah and I have no idea I've thought
about it because some uh some may
suggest that I think about that because
if I could only figure out the formula
for how what condition to be in to get
good ideas i' be much more efficient and
more happy know so I've often paid
attention to what the condition is and
have never found any correlations
by the way it's the the light that's
absolute easy I just got absolutely wild
how it drives how long it
last it's not very short it's a very big
moment and then yeah yeah days and then
there are lesser Pleasures as you see as
you work on more things and more people
notice it and you're on the high Fe for
about three days that's right yes it's
like a it's like a supernova I suppose
no that's 54 days that's better yeah but
uh I was going to say
that it's the the hope of that kind of
goal that keeps you going that can keep
you going through these dos you see and
that I think uh what I learned when I
was a child from my
father was that if you did work a little
bit at these things there would be your
time which you get this yeah and I had
to learn that first I'd never been able
to to do it yeah and then afterwards you
wonder why that devil was I so stupid
that I didn't see this that's not only
true of you it's true of history of the
history of the science you can always
look at a particular moment in history
and wonder why they hadn't thought of it
20 years earlier or 10 years ear
depending on the case it's because we're
du somehow it's most mysterious that it
just means that however good you may get
comparatively compared
to apes and things apes and so we're
still very bad at it absolutely yeah
we're doing the best we can kind of very good
good yeah
this depressing and sobering
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