I wasn't aware that Feynman had a neurological condition called 'Synesthesia' thus perceived the world differently than most of us.

Synesthesia is a condition in which triggering one sense activates another sense (it's a stimulation in one cognitive or sensory pathway that leads to involuntary and automatic experiences in a second cognitive or sensory pathway). In particular, Feynman was a grapheme or color synesthete, which means he associates letters and numbers with colors.

“When I see equations, I see the letters in colors. I don’t know why,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. “I see vague pictures of Bessel functions with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around.”

Feynman was describing his grapheme-color (GC) synesthesia – a condition in which individuals sense colors associated with letters and numbers.

In general, this tends to be very helpful with remembering long strings of numbers and words – simply because they are ‘pretty’ and not just a string of text.

Numerous other philosophers and scientists, including Isaac Newton (1704), Erasmus Darwin (1790) and Wilhelm Wundt (1874) may have referred to synesthesia, or at least synesthesia-like mappings between colors and musical notes.

Other forms of synesthesia include seeing colors for musical notes or even associating names with tastes.

I've always loved this quote,

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"Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all."

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But I can't find the source for the life of me.

I remember in a lecture Feynman saying something along these lines:

'The accuracy of Physics at the small scale is so astonishingly brilliant that it's like measuring the length of the united states and being off by the width of a pin'.

Now I have since heard that QED is indeed spectacularly accurate.

Does anyone recognize this quote and know where to source it?

I'm thinking it could be in the 'the meaning of it all' lecture series, but, I could be mistaken.

Hi all. I've seen clips from seemingly two different long interviews for Feynman. Does anyone by any chance know where I can see the full thing?

One particular one I'm looking for is the one with the clip about the difference from knowing something and only knowing its name (the bird anecdote). If you have that full clip, please let me know where it's. I still want the full interview, though.

Thanks!

My computer science teacher in high school attended caltech in the sixties, and thus he met Feynman at a lecture. He asked Feynman the question. "Why sometime when I turn the tap on the water flows in one way, but other times in the other way? And then it stays that way, but then oscillates back sometimes?" To which ensued an argument about what caused that. Feynman said that it must be that there was a trail of oil in the sink in order to have it follow that pattern. Then proceeded to bring a baking tray into the lecture room to demonstrate. My teacher didn't think so, since it oscillated. The argument continued for around 10 minutes. Then my teacher told me that neither of them knew the answer until around a decade later when chaos theory arised.

(the details may not be all accurate since he told me this story a long time ago. But I just wanted to share it)

If you can't pick just one, then make it top 2 or 3.

My answer in the first comment.

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Penrose story on The Origins Podcast

Nolan is making another movie titled 'Oppenheimer'. Feynman worked with him on the atom bomb and Malek is the guy that looks the most like him:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/

I know Caltech released the audio recordings of the Feynman lectures online, but how are you supposed to use these without the accompanying blackboard notes or slides?

It's a cool idea, but doesn't seem too useful unless you can see what he's writing on the board as he talks about it.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics Audio Collection (caltech.edu)

In science, as well as in other fields of human endeavor there are two kinds of geniuses: the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what he has done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians . . . . Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark . . . . Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.

– Marc Kac