I’ve read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman. I cannot imagine Richard Feynman trying to get away with the “sometimes personally prudent and not community-harmful” excuse.
IIRC Feynman publicly maintained and announced that he didn’t have an exceptionally high IQ or was generally not much smarter than his peers, in a way that seemed deceptive in kind of similar ways.
His son (who I think occasionally comments on LW) also briefly commented on this.
In-general Feynman seemed to me like someone who was pretty cavalier with public discourse. I could dig up the references, but the last few times I checked he routinely exaggerated things, and often made points about society that seemed pretty clearly contradicted by other things he believed.
IQ seems like the sort of thing Feynman could be “honestly” motivatedly wrong about. The thing I’m trying to point at is that Feynman seemingly took pride in being a straight talker, in contrast to how Yudkowsky takes pride in not lying.
These are different things. Straight talkers sometimes say false or exaggerated things out of sloppiness, but they actively want listeners to know their reporting algorithm. Prudently selecting which true sentences to report in the service of a covert goal is not lying, but it’s definitely not straight talk.
James Gleick’s Genius cites a transcript of “Address to Far Rockaway High School” from 1965 (or 1966 according to this from California Institute of Technology archives for Feynman talking about how he got a not-exceptionally-high 125 for his IQ score. Couldn’t find an online version of the transcript anywhere with a quick search.
Sorry, I meant that I’d like to see references for @habryka’s last sentence specifically (i.e., the part for which he says “I could dig up the references”). The IQ thing doesn’t seem to be that.
IIRC Feynman publicly maintained and announced that he didn’t have an exceptionally high IQ or was generally not much smarter than his peers, in a way that seemed deceptive in kind of similar ways.
His son (who I think occasionally comments on LW) also briefly commented on this.
In-general Feynman seemed to me like someone who was pretty cavalier with public discourse. I could dig up the references, but the last few times I checked he routinely exaggerated things, and often made points about society that seemed pretty clearly contradicted by other things he believed.
IQ seems like the sort of thing Feynman could be “honestly” motivatedly wrong about. The thing I’m trying to point at is that Feynman seemingly took pride in being a straight talker, in contrast to how Yudkowsky takes pride in not lying.
These are different things. Straight talkers sometimes say false or exaggerated things out of sloppiness, but they actively want listeners to know their reporting algorithm. Prudently selecting which true sentences to report in the service of a covert goal is not lying, but it’s definitely not straight talk.
I would love to see references for this!
James Gleick’s Genius cites a transcript of “Address to Far Rockaway High School” from 1965 (or 1966 according to this from California Institute of Technology archives for Feynman talking about how he got a not-exceptionally-high 125 for his IQ score. Couldn’t find an online version of the transcript anywhere with a quick search.
Sorry, I meant that I’d like to see references for @habryka’s last sentence specifically (i.e., the part for which he says “I could dig up the references”). The IQ thing doesn’t seem to be that.