what do you care what other people think?

aidan recommended this book to me when we called for 30 minutes the other week

there’s a passage in the beginning of this book which is quite famous

“I HAVE a friend who’s an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don’t agree with. He’ll hold up a flower and say, “Look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. But then he’ll say, “I, as an artist, can see how beautiful a flower is. But you, as a scientist, take it all apart and it becomes dull.” I think he’s kind of nutty.

First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people—and to me, too, I believe. Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But at the same time, I see much more in the flower than he sees. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. There’s beauty not just at the dimension of one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.

There are the complicated actions of the cells, and other processes. The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insects can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

this passage fairly accurately lays out the reasons why i wanted to major in physics, and later in math. and it remains fairly accurate for a large number of my friends who are still in those hard-science majors.

this is also an aesthetic.

the drive to understand how things work at a deeper level, not to necessarily make things work better (that is what engineers do), but because it makes things more interesting. in many cases, understanding how things work at a deeper level have led to great developments. and in many cases it’s necessary. so i think it’s a rather amazing accident of evolution that “finding out” is something that humans find pleasurable.

so that is one way i align with feynman’s philsophy expressed in this book.

here’s another important one, and the titular question of this book. here he’s talking to arlene, his first (and possibly only) love. feynman was someone who was full of love.

I thought one should have the attitude of “What do you care what other people think!” I said, “We should listen to other people’s opinions and take them into account. Then, if they don’t make sense and we think they’re wrong, then that’s that!

this makes a lot of sense. he’s basically defending against ‘authority’

I learned from my father: have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, “Is it reasonable?”

the reason i think this was likely feynman’s only love is this:

It was easy to talk her into thinking that in our relationship, we must be very honest with each other and say everything straight, with absolute frankness. It worked very well, and we became very much in love—a love like no other love that I know of.”

i tried to do the same thing when i was in high school, during covid. you remember what i told you, at the hot springs, about the first two people who i tried to talk to? maybe you remember i saw that the second person had sent me sia’s snowman the day after?

with the second person, we tried the exact same experiment of absolute frankness.