Richard Feynman: Magnets and Why Questions
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited whenever a discussion turns to how hard it is to answer "why" questions or what counts as an explanation.
What it is
A clip from a BBC interview in which Richard Feynman is asked why magnets repel and attract. He explains that "why" questions depend on what a person already accepts as fundamental.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2015 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Cites tedsanders · 2015-12 · on “The Fed’s imminent interest-rate decision – Is America ready for lift-off?”
This is not a consensus view by macroeconomists. While fraud may have been important, and possibly more important than macroeconomists believe, I think you do a disservice to the HN reading community by not acknowledging the vast body of experts who have already tried to answer the question of what caused the Great Recession. It's a very difficult question to answer convincingly, given that we cannot run multiple trials to see any counterfactual scenarios. I think any attempt at an answer should be presented with humility and caution and nuance. Wikipedia discusses a bunch of factors related to the Great Recession, correctly mentioning that different economists place different weight on them
Cites acqq · 2019-07 · on “What If Consciousness Comes First?”
> Why is there subjective experience? It evolved in animals because it is advantageous. It is known that even the simplest worms can make a difference between the part of their own body and the body of the other worm or the rest of the environment: they would eat another worm but not their own tail. Worms eating their body are typically not having an advantage (but the local optimums of scarifying a part of the body can of course still develop). So the "subjective experience" of distinguishing between "me" and "anything else" allows the living things to protect themselves from the rest of the environment. Then if you question "why are there living things" the answer is again that they evolve
Cites deanCommie · 2024-09 · on “What Is a Particle? (2020)”
The same is true about the terms "waves" and "fields" when it comes to quantum mechanics. They're analogies. The concepts need names, but I think they do more harm than good because people then start with a mental model of a membrane or a surface - something they have experience seeing waves in. And then after 1 or 2 steps where the analogy helps, it breaks down, and people start being confused. Of course the alternative isn't any better. If they had named it a "Wazoo function" and a "Quantum Flarg" everyone would've just kept asking "OK but what IS a Wazoo? What IS a Flarg" and not been satisfied with a "Yeah, it's a fundamental own thing". Feynman, of course, has a pretty definitive respon