Senthil comments on Double Illusion of Transparency - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 October 2007 11:06PM

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Comment author: Senthil 25 October 2007 08:46:43AM 4 points [-]

It's like the way someone said that good thinking is to hold two diametrically opposite thoughts at the same time but still continue with whatever we're doing.

When asked to explain in a few words what he had accomplished, Feynman said, "Buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I had done, it would not be worth the Nobel Prize." Though not exactly it's kind of contradictory to what he said about explaining Physics to your grandmother. He also says he wasn't able to explain what he did to his father.

Feynman said "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool." In a book 'Some time with Feynman', when he talks about working on problems he says you have to fool yourself. It's in a different sense. He says that when you are attacking a formidable problem you may doubt how you'll be able to solve something where others haven't been able to. But then you fool yourself saying you're kind of special and you'll be able to solve and keep working on it.

Usually, what is said taken out of context or only one side of it is taken, as most people want to take things to be either black or white, when most things are in varying shades of gray.