Feynman: Magnets FUN TO IMAGINE 4 But see NEW UPDATED file at https://tinyurl.com/ycphc432

Of anyone I've read or seen (in person or from videos), Feynman has the best fundamental grasp of meta-knowledge. By meta-knowledge, for lack of a better term, I mean understanding what it means to know something. mhartl has already posted this excellent video: [this video] , where he explains what the word "why" means in scientific inquiry. When we answer a "why" question, we don't really explain a concept in its entirety. At best, we're able to remove a layer of skin off the onion, but no one has ever really reached the center. I suppose science at it's heart is really just the elucidation of intermediate cause and effect scenarios. For the question "why did the ball fall?", "Jimmy dropped it" is a perfectly valid answer. So is "Jimmy's motor neurons passed an action potential threshold, causing the muscles in his wrist to contract". So is "the ball moved along the curvature of space caused by the earth". How far do we go?

Sometimes it's not always possible to explain something in sufficient detail to someone who has no concept of what you are trying to explain. Feynman explains this really well when trying to answer a question about magnets: "Of course, it's an excellent question. But the problem, you see, when you ask why something happens, how does a person answer why something happens? For example, Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why? Because she went out, slipped on the ice, and broke her hip. That satisfies people. It satisfies, but it wouldn't satisfy someone who came from another planet and who knew nothing about why when you break your hip do you go to the hospital... when you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you're perpetually asking why." "I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example, if we said the magnets attract like if rubber bands, I would be cheating you. Because they're not connected by rubber bands. I'd soon be in trouble. And secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces, which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain. So I have cheated very badly, you see." The key quote being: "I really can't do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you're more familiar with, because I don't u

I stopped reading after it appeared he was advocating collapse theory. About the only non-confusing quantum mechanics I've read so far that's been light on math has been Feynman's stuff like QED and this series: [link] On a meta-note, I don't really think this is anything but noise. If you want to really, really understand the physics, you have to do the math, and if you just want a high-level concept I don't see how in the space of a single reddit post you could take away loads of confusion or adequately explain a concept without cheating the person. Here's Feynman's take on magnets (really, on answering 'why' questions): [this video]

Any specialized field becomes obscure to the uninitiated. While it may be possible to use metaphors to give them a glimpse into the field, it's ultimately a false picture. And so, analogies should be used to whet appetites, not attempt to explain expert knowledge. Feynman on magnetism: "I can't explain that attraction in any of the terms that's familiar to you. For example, if we said that magnets attract as if they were connected by rubber bands, I would be cheating you[...] and if you were curious enough, you would ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again and I would end up having to explain that in terms of electrical forces." [this video]

I would argue that it (unlike all the other things that did not evolve) did evolve for the reason that it was useful. It's not like all of a sudden there was someone that had wrinkly fingers and that "stuck around because it was useful". In all likelihood, there were many incremental changes that were progressively selected for and the "reason" for that selection is that it was useful. It seems to me that it's perfectly acceptable language to say that a cause is the "reason" for an effect, even if it's not possible to assign intent. Your comment reminds me of Feynman responding to the question of why magnets attract each other ( [this video] ) which, while inscrutable from a physical point of view, seems not to be a fruitful way of approaching questions. There are always levels of deeper understanding, but you have to take it one level at a time.

This Feynman quote from the article is put in the wrong context: > I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you’re more familiar with, because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else you’re more familiar with. The article implies this is a case of the scientist expressing that he didn't understand a thing. But watching the video in full[1], one realizes he is saying something different: "It's a force which is present all the time and very common and is a basic force. [...] I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's familiar to you. For example if we say that magnets attract like as if they are connected by rubber bands I would be cheating you because they're not connected by rubber bands-- I should be in trouble if you soon ask me about the nature of the band. And secondly, if you were curious enough you would ask me why rubber bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that in terms of electrical forces which are the very things that I'm trying to use the rubber bands to explain. So I have cheated very badly, you see." In other words, for some phenomena the only simple examples are themselves instances of that same phenomena. So the only possible analogies are themselves merely tautologies. I've noticed something less sweeping though similarly absurd with the internet. As more and more of people's daily lives depend on internet technologies, it becomes more difficul